First post

Dear colleagues, 

A couple of months ago, we have been in touch about the volume on Dialect Classifications of Languages in Europe (DIACLEU).  Due to the extra workload caused by the pandemic and a difficult and time-consuming negotiation process with the intended publisher, we had to postpone the official kick-off of the project.

Unfortunately, we had to decide not to continue with Mouton de Gruyter as a publisher. Even with the full support of the series editor (Jürgen Schmidt), the editorial staff was very slow in replying to our correspondence about the volume. It turned out that they were not prepared to offer any technical support during the reviewing process. But, more crucially: Mouton de Gruyter never responded to our questions about open access and related costs, even not after interventions by the series editor.

Consequently, we started looking into different other publication options. We opted for Language Science Press (https://langsci-press.org), a peer reviewed open-access publisher specialized in linguistics. The editors of the series Language Variation (https://langsci-press.org/catalog/series/lv) are very enthusiastic about the idea and after the Christmas break we will submit an adapted version of the proposal.

Moving to Language Science Press has a number of advantages:
– open access
– no fees for authors and editors
– digital publications free of charge accessible for readers
– authors keep copyright and are free to distribute their output
– printed versions can be ordered for a reasonable price
– good support during the editorial and reviewing process
– high visibility
– compliant with current publication guidelines in a lot of European countries (Plan S)
– possibility to start publishing chapters online as soon as they are ready. So, we do not have to wait for all papers to be able to publish the volume
– possibility to group chapters in different sub-volumes (e.g., per language family) in addition to a volume with all languages
– easier to keep the content of the papers up-to-date

We hope you are still prepared to write a paper for this volume and continue to work with us. We are convinced that this move will have positive consequences for both the quality and the accessibility of the volume, and will create less time-pressure on the authors of the individual chapters. Anyway, we would appreciate if you send the chapter before 31st December 2021.

The general email address for this project is diacleu@fryske-akademy.nl. Please use this address for communication about the project.   To increase the visibility of the project and to facilitate the writing and editorial process, we launched the website https://www.diacl.eu/. There you can find author guidelines, a scientific terminology list, a sample chapter, a template to write the chapter. It will also offer the possibility to discuss technical and content issues related to the volume.  Attached to this email you can find the guidelines, the sample chapter and a template.

Best wishes,

Gotzon Aurrekoetxea
Ariane Ensunza
Jožica Škofic
Hans Van de Velde