The Journal of Natural Language Engineering (JNLE) has enjoyed another very successful year. Six 160-page issues a year featuring original, cutting-edge research and surveying important areas of NLP provide excellent service to the research community. The increasing level of interest in the journal is reflected in the growing number of submissions (more than 170 in the last twelve months), which enables the journal to be very selective – the acceptance rate for the last year stands at seventeen per cent only. We have diversified the content of the journal, which makes it even more attractive to our readership. In addition to papers reporting original work, we now also include survey papers. The widely read and truly inspirational Industry Watch (IW) and Emerging Trends (ET) columns (led by Robert Dale and Ken Church, respectively, who are master columnists), are a real asset to the journal. Going forward, each regular JNLE issue will feature either an IW or an ET piece. In addition, regular book reviews critically summarise and evaluate recent books published in the field. Every year, the journal will publish two thematic special issues featuring papers from a specialised area of NLP that has had considerable impact on our discipline. The selection of special issues will follow a competitive call for proposals, which will be distributed towards the end of every calendar year.
Our passion to continually improve the journal and, as a result, our contribution to the community drives our quest for highly diversified and up-to-date content. We are launching a new category of papers, i.e., ‘keynote’ or ‘invited’ papers, which will be penned by leading lights in the field.
Next year, the journal will be celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary. For a journal that has been steadily growing and going from strength to strength for more than twenty-five years, this anniversary will indeed be a special achievement. I have invited one of the founding editors of the journal, John Tait, to write an editorial note for the first issue of volume 25, in which he will present the history and development of the journal to readers, sharing interesting details as to how the journal was established. One of the initiatives of volume 25 will be a selection of ‘anniversary papers’, in which influential scholars will reflect on some of the developments in the field during the last quarter of a century.
I am very much indebted to Patrick McCartan, Publishing Director, and Brian Stone, Editor for Social Science and Humanities Journals at Cambridge University Press (CUP), for their unreserved support. I am also grateful to Caela Moffet, Production Editor, for her efficiency, as well as to Jesse Lund, CUP Marketing Executive, for promoting the journal.
I am extremely thankful to my editorial assistants Sara Moze, Shiva Taslimipoor, April Harper, Omid Rohanian, Anna Feherova and Sandra Elfiky, who have been assisting me in the most competent, dedicated and committed fashion, and whose input is essential for the success of the journal.
I do not mind repeating what I have said in the past: as Executive Editor of the JNLE, I am deeply passionate about making the journal an even greater success. I shall not spare any effort to make sure that JNLE offers even more high-quality, interesting and diverse content to the research community.
