Submissions Guidelines

Submitting a Paper for Review
Submission and Review Policy
Manuscript Length
Manuscript Style—Submitted Manuscripts
Manuscript Style—Accepted Manuscripts
Copyright

1. Submitting a Paper for Review

• Articles (except for contributions from Europe) and all Remarks and Replies:

Send a Word document and/or PDF file to: [email protected]

• Articles (European contributions):

Send a Word document and/or PDF file to: [email protected]

• Squibs and Discussion:

Submit paper (any format) electronically to: [email protected]

2. Submission and Review Policy

a. The ms. must be original (not published elsewhere) and may not be submitted simultaneously for consideration elsewhere.

b.  The ms. may include results reported in a thesis or in non-peer-reviewed venues, such as conference proceedings or a working papers volume. However, if the results have been made available in one of the latter types of venue, the ms. should substantially build on them.

c. When submitting a ms., authors are asked to provide a list of any related works—by any or all of the authors, whether published, submitted for publication, or in preparation—on the same topic. Indicate in what respects the submitted ms. is novel.

d. For more on ethical guidelines, see https://direct.mit.edu/journals/pages/publication-ethics and the COPE website. The MIT Press is a member of COPE via its membership in the Association of University Presses.

e. All submissions—articles, contributions to Remarks and Replies, and contributions to Squibs and Discussion—undergo double-blind review. Manuscripts submitted for review should include

• no author’s name or affiliation, either on the title page or at the end of the reference list
• no running heads that show the author’s name
• no internal references that make the author’s identity clear (e.g., when referring to your own previously published work, refer to yourself in the third person: As Smith (2011) observes rather than As I observed in Smith 2011)
• no hidden identification information, or metadata
• It is the author’s responsibility to anonymize the manuscript. Manuscripts that arrive with author’s identification will be returned without review.

f. Contributions to Remarks and Replies that respond to a previously published article are of course welcome. In such cases, the author(s) of the original article may wish to respond in turn. Such contributions are also welcome. However, the journal reserves the right to limit the exchange to that rejoinder, to conserve space for work with the widest possible import for its readers.

Peer Review Taxonomy

Identity transparency: Double anonymized
Reviewer interacts with: Editor
Review information published: None

3. Manuscript Length

The editors request that article manuscripts be limited to 50 manuscript pages, and Remarks and Replies manuscripts to 25 manuscript pages. These page guidelines include notes, tables, and figures but not references and are based on double-spaced pages typed in a 12-point font and with 1¼-inch margins.

The editors request that Squibs and Discussion manuscripts be limited to 12 pages (guidelines as above). Manuscripts accepted as Squibs will not be required to propose a solution to problems they address as long as their relevance to theoretical issues is made clear.

4. Manuscript Style—Submitted Manuscripts

Contributors should follow the Linguistic Inquiry style sheet in preparing manuscripts for submission. The current style sheet is available in PDF format here: Style Sheet.

5. Manuscript Style—Accepted Manuscripts

If a manuscript accepted to appear in Linguistic Inquiry does not fully conform to the style sheet, it is the responsibility of the author(s) to provide a final draft that does follow the style requirements, before the publication process can begin. We will be happy to answer any questions authors may have about the style sheet requirements (contact Sheelah Ward, [email protected]).

In view of the double-blind review process, the following changes are needed once a paper has been accepted for publication. If you are sending the accepted, final version of your article, Remarks and Replies contribution, or squib for copyediting:

• put your name (and any coauthors’ names) on the title page
• put your (and any coauthors’) affiliation (department + institution) and e-mail address at the end of the reference list
• change third-person references to yourself in the text back to first-person references (e.g., change As Smith (2011) observes to As I observed in Smith 2011)

6. Copyright

It is the policy of The MIT Press to own the copyright to the contributions it publishes. This policy most effectively protects authors and the Press from the consequences of copyright infringement and facilitates the appropriate use of contributions by others, while granting authors full rights to reuse their own material. Therefore, in compliance with U.S. Copyright Law, we request that authors submit a signed copyright transfer form before production begins.