Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Open Handbooks in Linguistics Initiative



An Open Access Initiative for Linguistics Handbooks
October 4, 2016


We are extremely pleased to announce the formation of an editorial board for the new series Open Handbooks in Linguistics. We are committed to creating a high-quality venue for the publication of linguistics handbooks that is completely open access. We consider the open access publishing model to be especially important for handbooks for the following reasons:


  • Handbooks can represent a significant benefit to scholars around the world with limited or no access to commercial publishers' book products, since they summarize current research in a compact and organized fashion.
  • Commercial publishers in our field are producing many more handbooks than in the past, since they represent a significant profit opportunity. Many linguist-hours are being poured into these volumes, but their focus and direction is being at least partly driven by publishers' goals, rather than by the field's needs.
  • Open exchange of ideas is essential to the advancement of science, and open access to our research products is therefore a key priority for our field, as for all scientific work.


This initiative developed from a dramatic outpouring of responses to a casual Facebook post. We intend to capitalize on this grass-roots enthusiasm by creating this series in a yet-to-be-determined publication venue. We will curate handbooks which provide insightful review and analysis of current trends in our field, authored by leading scholars from all corners of the discipline.

The volumes will be accessible to anyone with an internet connection.  


Membership in the editorial board is currently limited to professors at the 'full' rank. Colleagues at that rank who are interested in supporting this initiative, particularly from institutions and subfields that are underrepresented in this initial list, are invited to contact Heidi Harley, hharley@email.arizona.edu.  

Note: Our initial group consists of volunteers we reached initially on social media, which is very limited in its reach. Interested colleagues who are learning of this initiative for the first time via this announcement are MORE than welcome to write to me to volunteer. The only constraint is that volunteers should have the rank of Professor, at this initial stage of development.

Editorial board members to date:

David Adger, Queen Mary University
Artemis Alexiadou, Humboldt University Berlin
Tor A Åfarli, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Diana Archangeli, University of Arizona
Peter Austin, SOAS University of London
Tista Bagchi, University of Delhi
Eric Bakovic, University of California San Diego
Balthasar Bickel, University of Zurich
Roberta D'Alessandro, Leiden University
Hana Filip, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf
Kai von Fintel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus
Michael Hammond, University of Arizona
Heidi Harley, University of Arizona
Martin Haspelmath, Max Planck Institute-SSH Jena and Leipzig University
Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh
Laura Kallmeyer, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
Simin Karimi, University of Arizona
Jeffrey Lidz, University of Maryland
Diane Lillo-Martin, University of Connecticut
Mark Liberman, University of Pennsylvania
Terje Lohndal, Norwegian University of Science and Technology/UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Diane Massam, University of Toronto
Jason Merchant, University of Chicago
Marianne Mithun, University of California, Santa Barbara
Shigeru Miyagawa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology/University of Tokyo
Stefan Müller, Freie Universität Berlin
Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Universität zu Koln
Steven Pinker, Harvard University
Norvin Richards, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Johan Rooryck, Leiden University
Joseph Salmons, University of Wisconsin Madison
Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan
Marc van Oostendorp, Meertens Institute/Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Natasha Warner, University of Arizona
Tony Woodbury, University of Texas at Austin
Alan Yu, University of Chicago

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