COMMENTARY Peer review in linguistics journals: Best practices and emerging standards

Abstract

We present new data on peer review practices in linguistics journals, reporting the results of an online survey of editors. This paper aims to increase understanding of the processes and practices of peer review for everyone involved—editors, authors, reviewers, and readers. Apprehending concretely how peer review happens from beginning to end and how editors think about it should help to demystify the process, especially for graduate students and early career researchers, and make the experience somewhat less stressful across the board. Editors, authors, and reviewers all share, we trust, a desire for high professional standards and best practices. We hope to stimulate further discussion of these issues in the field and development of field-wide standards.*.