Journal of the International Phonetic Association: Transition to Continuous Publishing

On the recommendation of the JIPA Editor, and following joint agreement between the Executive Committee and Cambridge University Press (CUP), the journal will adopt a continuous publishing model. Under this model, articles will be published online as soon as they are ready, each assigned a DOI and full citation details, while still being grouped by volume year. This transition aligns JIPA with current best practices in academic publishing and ensures faster dissemination and enhanced citation of research. Traditional front and back matter — such as editorials, Council member lists, obituaries, reports, and other IPA news — will continue to appear annually in a consolidated report at the end of the year.

JIPA Licensing for Generative AI Platforms

In mid-2025, the IPA Council was consulted regarding a proposal from CUP to license content from the Journal of the International Phonetic Association to selected generative-AI platforms. While CUP retains the subsidiary rights to pursue such agreements, the IPA was offered the opportunity to opt in or out of the specific arrangement. Following discussion and a formal vote (N=24), 87.5% (21) of Council members voted in favour and 12.5% (3) against, with no abstentions. The resolution was therefore adopted.

This decision is expected to enhance the visibility and reach of JIPA research within AI-driven environments and ensure the IPA’s continued involvement in promoting the ethical use of phonetic data in artificial-intelligence systems.

IPA Chart in languages other than English

Draft translations of the IPA Chart have grown over recent years and have been made available on the IPA website. The Alphabet, Charts and Fonts (ACF) committee together with the Executive decided on a rigorous reviewing procedure before a draft is recognised as the official version for a language. Revised charts will ultimately be published in JIPA, as the Chinese Chart was in JIPA 41/2 (2011). Translators are requested to submit a cover letter indicating the sources used for the terms they have used, together with a list of any problems they encountered. In the simplest case, translations are passed out to two or more reviewers for comments. This is not considered to be necessary in multi-authored efforts, as the translation has been agreed upon by a group of experts. Indeed, lone translators are actively encouraged to open up their draft to a group of other phonetic experts teaching and researching in the same language so that an open consensus can be reached. This procedure is considered more preferable than the more conventional blind review. The French, Catalan and German Charts are examples of such larger group efforts. Chart translations in Basque, Catalan, Czech, Italian, Estonian, European Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Lithuanian, Vietnamese and Welsh are finished, those in Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Icelandic, Swedish and Persian are close. A new webpage with official translations should be up and running in 2026, as will the first publications in JIPA.

Planning for the IPA Convention 2029

The ACF committee and the Executive have begun planning for the IPA Convention, to take place in 2029, forty years after the first Convention in Kiel. In preparation for areas and proposals that will be discussed, an online forum is being created to allow IPA members to introduce and discuss topics that they would like to see addressed at the Convention. This should be open in 2026. Initial discussions have also taken place on suitable locations.

Changes to Unicode in 2025

Unicode version 17, published this past September, includes some new phonetic characters. The 27 additions to the Combining Diacritical Marks Extended block can be seen at https://www.unicode.org/ The Latin Extended-D has five new characters. They can be seen at https://www.unicode.org/ There remain a large number of provisionally assigned phonetic characters in the Unicode pipeline and that will hopefully be published next year with Unicode 18. The proposals for these characters can be seen at https://www.unicode.org/alloc/ The characters with phonetic use include U+1AEC-1AF0, compound tone diacritics (5 characters); 208F, primary + secondary stress (for dictionary use); 209D-209F, subscript w y z; A7DD, capital ɷ; AB6E, capital ꭒ from French dialectology; 107BB-107BF, superscript old-style IPA tone letters (5 characters); 1DF1F-1DF24 and 1DF2B-1DF2C, IPA ligatures for (8 characters) 1DF2D-1DF3D and 1DF82, IPA letters with palatal hook (18 characters); 1DF3E-1DF56, letters with an overstruck bar, including para-IPA barred ɥ and w (25 characters); 1DF57-1DF59, letters from the Spanish RFE alphabet (3 characters); 1DF67, ɮ with a ʓ-like palatal curl; as well as some more obscure letters and support for several older notations such as the English Phonotypic Alphabet. Old-style spacing tone marks appear in 1DFC5-1DFC8 (double grave, mid-height acute, and upward-right and downward-right arrows), with stacked arrowheads at 1DFC9-1DFCC. In the range 1DFCD-1DFFF are 51 superscript IPA, para-IPA, Sinological and RFE letters.

The ACF committee would like to thank Kirk Miller for his work on changes to Unicode.

The ACF committee members are Michael Ashby, John Esling, James Kirby, Asher Laufer, Benjamin V. Tucker – Adrian P. Simpson (chair).

Conference co-sponsorship and IPA Student Awards

In 2025, the IPA co-sponsored the 3rd International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI 2025), held 16–18 May in Herrsching, Germany. Four early-stage researchers received IPA Student Awards following a reviewing process by the Committee on Conference Sponsorships and Student Awards. With its theme ‘Variation and change in tone and intonation systems across space and time’, TAI 2025 provided a focused and supportive environment for early-stage researchers to engage with current developments in the field and to interact with researchers working on tone and intonation from a wide range of perspectives. The four awardees were:

• • Maria Lialiou (University of Cologne, Germany)

• • Teerawee Sukanchanon (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand)

• • Zhou Wangqian (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

• • Fengyue Zhao (Cornell University, USA)

Congratulations to the awardees!

IPA Student Mobility Program

In 2025, the first IPA Student Mobility Awards of up to €1,500 were offered to support student members undertaking short-term research stays abroad. Participating students benefited from academic networking, training in experimental techniques, and new opportunities for collaboration across laboratories. Applications were reviewed by the Committee on Conference Sponsorships and Student Awards.

The three 2025 recipients were:

• • Cristina Crison Chávez (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)

• • Ming Liu (The University of Hong Kong)

• • Teerawee Sukanchanon (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand)

Congratulations to all awardees!

Committee on Conference Sponsorships and Student Awards:

Patrice Beddor, Ioana Chitoran (chair), John Esling, Jonathan Harrington, Katerina Nicolaidis, Masaki Taniguchi.

Phonetic Documentation of Languages

In 2025, the Phonetic Documentation of Languages committee awarded a total of $\$$ 10,000 to the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme to support four proposals with a phonetics/phonology component:

• • Servo Kocu, on Maybrat

• • Ahmed Sosal Altayeb Mohammed Ali, on Dahalo

• • Celeste Escobar, on Guarani

• • Bruno Olsson, on Yaqay

The committee members who reviewed the 2025 proposals were Plinio Almeida Barbosa, Janet Fletcher, Marc Garellek, James Kirby, and Ailbhe Ní Chasaide. Sincere thanks to all members for their work. – Pat Keating (chair).

Outreach and Social Media Initiatives

The IPA Social Media and Outreach Committee announced the launch of the Association’s official YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@IPAphonetics). Two initial projects were introduced:

1. 1. Historical Footage Archive, which collects and shares digitised audiovisual materials documenting the history of phonetic research; and

2. 2. JIPA Illustration Videos, a series of short multimedia presentations in which authors of Illustrations of the IPA provide accessible overviews of the sound systems they describe.

These initiatives aim to broaden the Association’s public visibility, promote phonetic science globally, and preserve valuable historical resources for future generations.

Social Media and Outreach Committee

Mariapaola D’ Imperio (chair), Katerina Nicolaidis, Jane Setter.