Editorial policies

NEJLT welcomes new excellent submissions of completely original content, and follows globally-recognised academic best practices in publication and attribution. Our goal is to publish excellent research, while protecting authors from biases, and also ensuring that readers receive high-quality and interesting papers that have been rigorously reviewed.

Full open access

NEJLT is full open access. This means that accepted papers may be downloaded directly from the web and will not be charged for. There are also no fees for submitting or for publishing. There are no plans to collect fees at any point in the future from any part of the NEJLT process.

From 2020, paper published in NEJLT will also appear on the ACL Anthology, which is a fully open access library with direct PDF download, managed by ACL volunteers.

The business model of the journal relies on publishing support, and on the donation of volunteer time and effort from the editorial team and reviewers. NEJLT does not accept commercial sponsorships and does not pay for reviews or academic editing; in turn, work published in NEJLT is also available free.

Papers are published under the CC-BY 4.0 license. This means that NEJLT is an Open Access Gold journal.

Vancouver Convention on authorship

The Vancouver Group are the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), who in 1985 introduced a set of criteria for authorship. The criteria have seen many updates over the years, to match the latest developments in research and publishing. Their scope far surpasses the topic of authorship, and spans across the scientific publication process: reviewing, editorial work, publishing, copyright, and the like.

NEJLT expects all submissions' author lists to include all and only relevant authors, following the ICMJE recommendations.

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following four criteria:

  1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

  2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

  3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND

  4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged.

These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criteria 2 or 3.

Preprints

Submissions that have been previously published non-anonymously on a pre-print server (like arXiv) or other page are sometimes OK. NEJLT adopts the ACL policy on submission in general, though manuscripts published as anonymous preprints (as offered by e.g. OpenReview) are always welcome.

This policy is repeated below (as of October 2019):

*ACL conferences and TACL require that submissions be anonymized. A submission will not be considered anonymized if the authors post (or update) a non-anonymized preprint version within an anonymity period lasting from 1 month before the submission [deadline] until the time of final notification (or withdrawal). Submissions will be rejected if not properly anonymized.

  • Anonymized preprints within the anonymity period are allowed. This is currently only possible on certain platforms but ACL may consider using such a platform for all submissions in the future.
  • Non-anonymized preprints before the anonymity period are allowed, although we encourage authors to wait to post them until after the anonymity period.
  • If a non-anonymized preprint version exists, authors must declare its existence at submission time but should not cite it and are asked not to publicize it further during the anonymity period – the submitted paper should be as anonymous as possible.

The notion of preprint is understood broadly to refer to any non-refereed paper posted online, including but not limited to preprint servers such as arXiv. Note that the rule applies only to preprints that authors post themselves, so it does not apply to (say) non-refereed proceedings volumes. The restriction on updating is to prevent authors from circumventing these rules by “flag planting” with a placeholder version over 1 month in advance.

In addition, papers must always remain anonymous for three months from the time of submission, unless a final decision is reached in that time. This means that posting a paper on e.g. arXiv while it is under review may lead to a desk reject. The rejection embargo at NEJLT is twelve months before re-submission.

Our field moves quickly. It is even more important then to give the best possible environment to reviewers. In exchange for asking that author identities are not published, NEJLT endeavours to provide a rapid but diligent process.

The overarching principle is to not afford authors accidental advantage or disadvantage by means of their affiliation or identity, to maintain fair and even reviewing. Evidence indicates that knowing a paper comes from a prestigious source distorts reviews, both in computer science and in other fields. Effective anonymity reduces this effect, a result which is good both for authors and for readers.

If in doubt, you are welcome to contact the EiC or a board member to work out a solution for your manuscript.

Conflicts of interest

NEJLT offers a high degree of blinding during review. This means it is possible for sitting board members to be co-authors on submissions. However, the following rules apply:

  • No person with a conflict-of-interest with an author may have influence over or observe the decision making process for that author’s submissions.
  • The sitting EiC may not be listed as an author on any submissions.
  • No editor aside from the managing editor, action editor, and editor-in-chief may be privy to deliberations around a manuscript.

NEJLT follows TACL in using the definition of conflict-of-interest (COI) set forth by the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), namely, a person has a COI with a submitted paper if that person:

  1. is a co-author of the paper; or
  2. has been a student or supervisor of one of the authors in the previous five years; or
  3. has co-authored a paper or collaborated with one of the authors in the previous five years; or
  4. is employed at the same company or institution as an author; or
  5. has any other circumstances that could cause a bias in evaluating the paper.

Policy on Publishing Ethics

NEJLT follows the COPE guidelines on handling allegations of unethical practice, following TACL, and currently also follows TACL guidelines in general.

Plagiarism or redundant (duplicate) publication:

Research Fraud:

Reviewer or editor misconduct during the review process:

Other ethical problems: