Editorial

Editors’ notes

The present issue is the second of the year, and the last for 2025. This is an important change for our journal which, since its inception in 1974, has always published three issues a year, generally distributed over a single issue and a heftier double one (whether 1–2 or 2–3). The reverse side of the coin was that we were often late on schedule: each issue frequently appeared with a delay that stretched from a few months to around one year.

That we repeatedly lagged behind the expected publication date may be explained by the nature of our field, a small discipline (discipline rare or kleines Fach) to which few practitioners dedicate part of their academic time, and still fewer a large amount of their activity. As a consequence, we can only count on a limited number of proposals each year, compared with other well-established journals of linguistics. The consequence was that we had to wait a rather long time before finalized papers and reviews could reach the critical mass of about 450 pages for a year’s production, as required by the terms of our contract with Benjamins. Only then could we close our “editorial year”.

Such a situation was not satisfying for the authors, who often needed to wait patiently for their paper or review to be finally assigned to an issue. This did not reflect well either on our journal, as punctuality is among the parameters taken into account in rankings. Following the advice of our correspondent at Benjamins, Anke de Looper, we therefore decided to bring the number of issues down to two per year. Our decision should make the year of publication in an issue match that of its first appearing online, at least for most articles and reviews. We hope that this change will be favorably received by all, subscribers, readers and authors.

As usual, we extend our warmest thanks to the colleagues who have been willing to give us some of their time to review the papers which were destined for this issue (“destined”, as one was eventually rejected):