As the journal enters its second year under its updated title, Natural Language Processing, which more accurately reflects the rapidly evolving field it serves, I would like to inform our readers of several recent developments aimed at broadening coverage and enhancing the efficiency of the editorial workflow.

We have expanded the team of Associate Editors, and I am delighted to welcome Asif Ekbal, Saad Ezzini, Hansi Hettiarachchi, Véronique Hoste, Dimitar Kazakov, Salima Lamsiyah, Young-Suk Lee and Aline Paes, who join Sandra Kübler, Diana Inkpen, Burcu Can and Tharindu Ranasinghe in this role. I am also pleased to welcome Mingyu Wan from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, who is joining the journal’s Editorial Board. The Editorial Board, together with the journal’s reviewers, plays a vital role in the selection of content and in upholding the journal’s quality standards.

The Industry Watch and Emerging Trends columns, led, respectively, by the distinguished columnists Robert Dale and Ken Church, continue to be highly influential, attracting a diverse and global readership, and constitute significant assets to the journal.

Building on the success of its thematic columns, Volume 32 will introduce two new columns. The first, entitled Natural Language Processing for Social Good (NLP4SG), will focus on the positive societal impact of NLP research and applications. It will examine how language technologies can contribute to addressing major global challenges in areas such as healthcare, education, environmental sustainability and human rights. The column will cover a broad range of applications, including content moderation, mental health support, human rights monitoring and accessibility-enhancing technologies. In addition, it will feature case studies, discussions on evaluation and deployment, and analyses of underexplored domains in which NLP can generate meaningful and sustained social impact. This column will be led by Tharindu Ranasinghe, Associate Editor of the journal.

The second column, Responsible Natural Language Processing (RNLP), will address issues related to the design, evaluation, and governance of NLP technologies. While modern NLP systems provide powerful capabilities for communication, personalisation and content generation across text, speech and multimodal media, they also raise significant concerns regarding bias, fairness, transparency, explainability, misuse and the erosion of human agency. RNLP will provide a dedicated forum for connecting technical advances with ethical considerations, accountability and real-world deployment. It will bring together interdisciplinary perspectives, highlight practical approaches to improving fairness, transparency and explainability, and explore how governance, user experience and cultural context can be integrated into system design. This column will be led by Salima Lamsiyah, Associate Editor of the journal.

In addition to original and unpublished research articles, the journal welcomes survey papers. We also invite proposals for special issues on timely topics of broad interest in natural language processing, as well as submissions of squibs and book reviews. The journal particularly encourages contributions reporting findings from multilingual and low-resource language projects and welcomes innovative studies employing state-of-the-art deep learning methods and large language models. Book reviews are overseen by Eugenio Martínez Cámara, who serves as Book Review Editor.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the journal’s editorial assistants, without whose dedication the journal could not operate effectively: Marie Escribe, Gabriela Llull, Milica Ikonić Nešić, Alicia Picazo Izquierdo, Marta Alcaide, Eden Lioi, Alicia Martínez Mendoza, Laura Noriega, Ibi Petrocelli, Lucía Sevilla Requena, Anna Temerko and Xiaojing Zhao.

I would like to highlight the crucial role of, and the continued support provided by, Jess Miorini, Publisher at Cambridge University Press (CUP), whose unwavering assistance has been invaluable to both the editorial assistants and me at every stage of the journal’s operation.

My thanks also extend to the production team, in particular Lucie Hudson and Thiru.

I am equally grateful to our readers and contributors for their continued interest in the journal, as well as for their valuable submissions and suggestions.

Finally, in order to further enhance the efficiency of the publication workflow, the journal will adopt a continuous publication model from 2027 onwards.

As Executive Editor of Natural Language Processing, I am strongly committed to further strengthening the journal’s success and will continue to devote every effort to ensuring that it offers high-quality, engaging and diverse content to the research community.

Ruslan Mitkov, Executive Editor