It has become a regular feature at EUROCALL and other conferences for the editors of various CALL-related journalsFootnote 1 to collaborate in providing a workshop on “Publishing your Research in CALL Journals”. Given the continuing demand for such workshops, this editorial would seem a good opportunity to focus on the requirements for getting published in ReCALL.
The whole process can be long and time-consuming, and some researchers may be put off submitting their work at all because of the high standards required and the consequent high rejection rate. However, it is important to remember that the work of even the most experienced researchers is sometimes not accepted for publication! Many of the articles which are initially rejected can be improved and brought up to publication standard following suggestions from our reviewers.
Once you have decided to submit your work for publication, where do you start? Ideally, you will already have read several articles relevant to your research in a number of journals, but before deciding where to send your article (and even before writing up your research) you need to read carefully the specific requirements for each journal – they may appear to be very similar but sometimes differ in certain aspects - and it is very important to remember that it is not acceptable to send the same article to more than one journal. All journals publish their requirements, and the relevant web pages for ReCALL are given below.
It is always a good idea to ask a colleague to read your work before submission, and ask for any obvious shortcomings to be pointed out. In particular, if you are not a native speaker of English, ask for any mistakes to be corrected by a native speaker.
Once a paper has been submitted, there will be a sometimes lengthy process of communication between author and editors and between editors and reviewers (all papers are reviewed ‘blind’ and reviewers do not know the identity of authors). It is helpful to look at this process in some detail to find out what editors and reviewers are looking for. All the information about publication in ReCALL can be found at http://www.eurocall-languages.org/recall/contribnotes.html, http://www.eurocall-languages.org/recall/contribguide.html and http://www.eurocall-languages.org/research/research_policy.html, as well as on the ReCALL pages of Cambridge Journals Online at www.journals.cambridge.org/jid.REC.
However, the key elements that our editors and reviewers consider are:
• Relevance
• Originality
• Content and structure
At this point, it is worth reproducing some of the important detail published in the Guidelines for Contributors and Reviewers:
“Papers submitted to EUROCALL conferences (and to the ReCALL journal) should meet the following criteria for original academic research in the CALL field:
• There should be a clearly-stated topic of investigation, under a suitably academic title, supported by a rationale which relates the investigation to specific areas of research and/or development and/or practice in computer-assisted language learning.
• The topic should be located with regard to other work in CALL and related fields, by means of a literature or state-of-the-art review, which makes it clear what has been learned from the work of others, and what is original about the current investigation.
• There should be a coherent and appropriate method of investigation, in which the nature of actual or potential findings, outcomes or products is clearly indicated. Methods may include theoretical discussion, experimental or ethnographic studies, design or evaluation methodologies, action research, or any other systematic way of generating an outcome to the investigation.
• Where appropriate, there should be evidence, or consideration, of relevant data analysis and its role in indicating, supporting or confirming findings or conclusions. This should indicate whether data is actual or potential, whether analysis is quantitative or qualitative, and whether the investigation is repeatable or replicable.
• Actual or potential conclusions or products should have a relevance to research, development, or practice in CALL beyond the context of the investigation itself”.
When ReCALL editors first receive an article, the first things to be checked are:
(i) The word count: ReCALL stipulates a limit of 8000 words, so an article which greatly exceeds that number will be returned to the authorFootnote 2.
(ii) References: It is usually clear from the list of references whether the topic of the paper is likely to be relevant to ReCALL.
(iii) Structure: Ideally, the Abstract will summarize the content of the article, again indicating relevance. The structure of an article will vary according to the specific research, but it will normally include an Introduction; an indication of the research question(s) addressed; a description of the method(s) used to conduct the research; a discussion section; conclusions drawn, and an indication of how the research has contributed to previous knowledge and what further research might be needed in the future.
The paper will next be sent to two reviewers (with the names of authors and their institutions removed) who are asked to provide their comments under headings which correspond with those in the Guidelines. Their responses are normally received within two months, and then passed to the authors. The authors are not told who the reviewers are, and at no stage is there direct correspondence between authors and reviewers. The reviewers make recommendations under the following headings:
• Accept the article as it stands (this very rarely happens!)
• Accept the article with changes (sometimes only minor changes)
• Reject
• Reject but encourage resubmission
• Recommend for publication in the EUROCALL ReviewFootnote 3
If the article requires relatively minor changes, the author will be asked to submit a revised version, usually with an accompanying note explaining what changes have been made in response to the reviewers’ comments. If a major rewrite is required, the paper may have to go through the review process again.
Once a revised paper is submitted, that is not the end of the story! It is then carefully edited, to improve readability if necessary. At this stage there will usually be a number of queries and suggestions from the editor which the author needs to respond to. One of the most frequent irrations for many editors is that publications referred to in the text are not included in the references, and vice versa, not to mention incomplete publication details. Full details of how the references should be set out are published online, and inside the back cover of ReCALL.
After copyediting, the author will be asked to check the edited text carefully before it is sent to Cambridge University Press for typesetting. Once the paper has been sent to CUP, any correspondence will be between CUP and the author. CUP's typesetters will send authors proofs of their article for checking, and will indicate any queries, which must be responded to immediately. Once the full journal is ready for printing, authors will receive final proofs for checking once again.
I hope the above description has provided clarification, particularly for researchers who are new to publishing their work, and that submissions to ReCALL will continue to arrive!
All three papers in this issue of ReCALL relate to intelligent systems for language learning, in one form or another. The paper by Luiz Amaral and Detmar Meurers looks at the relationship between the design of language learning activities and the restrictions that are necessary to make natural language processing tractable and reliable, and also at the pedagogical considerations and the influence of activity design choices on the integration of intelligent CALL systems into foreign language teaching practice. Sungjin Lee and colleagues in South Korea introduce yet another acronym, RALL (Robot-Assisted Language Learning), in their fascinating introduction to their use of robots in the teaching of English to elementary school students. Finally, Howard Chen discusses the use of automatic speech recognition technology in the development of a website designed for trainee teachers of English to improve their oral skills.
