Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • Where available, DOIs or other URLs have been included with references.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
  • I/we understand that at least one author must be a current member of the Linguistic Society of America (https://lsadc.org) at the time of publication.
  • Manuscripts are submitted in PDF format and, if there are supplementary files, they and the manuscript are submitted in a single .zip file.
  • The submission does not contain any personally identifying information — this is a double-blind peer-review process.
  • The author or authors understand that submission of an item to this journal constitutes acceptance of the policies on personal data collection and use mentioned in the Privacy Statement at the bottom of this page.

Author Guidelines

Online submission
Submissions are accepted only through this online portal.

LSA membership
At least one author must be a current member of the LSA at the time of publication. LSA membership is not required to submit to PDA.

Manuscript format/style
Documents must be submitted in PDF file format. If a submission includes multiple files, they must be uploaded in a single .zip file. On initial submission, articles may be written/formatted in any way that makes them easy to read and understand. However, we recommend using the Word or LaTeX PDA template/stylesheet from the outset, provided that the first page header with the PDA logo and title and author information are removed. Otherwise, it is best to at least keep figures and tables where they most appropriately belong in the text; to use footnotes rather than endnotes; and to use a font no smaller than (for example) Times New Roman or Calisto 11 pt with single-spacing. Once accepted, articles will be required to adhere strictly to the PDA stylesheet. Authors will be responsible for providing a publication-ready PDF version of their accepted work.

Inclusive language
PDA supports the LSA’s inclusive language policy  (available here), both in general writing style and in choice of examples. Authors may be asked to revise nonconforming manuscripts prior to review.

Anonymity in the review process
PDA has a double-blind review policy.

For reviewers: Reviewers are free to sign their reviews, if they wish. The PDA team will not otherwise reveal the identity of external reviewers to authors.

For authors: The proper anonymization of their work is ultimately the responsibility of the authors. If the PDA team sees that a document has not been properly anonymized, we will ask that this be done before proceeding further. We recommend:

  1. Do not include a cover page which presents identifying information.
  1. Avoid referring to yourself in the first person. Do not use statements like: “In Smith 2013, I argued that …”. Rather rephrase as: “Smith (2013) argued that …”. If you prefer a more personal style, you can change back to first person statements once your manuscript has been accepted.
  1. Do not replace your name with “Author” in citations as this practice does not always successfully hide an author's identity. If the article or book title is left blank in citations to prevent an author’s identification, reviewers lose the ability to identify the literature on which a claim is based, preventing them from being able to do an adequate review. Instead, please use phrasings such as those suggested in point 2.
  1. Do not add acknowledgements to a manuscript that is still under review.

For authors and reviewers: To ensure that any uploaded documents are completely anonymous, authors and reviewers should check them for identifying metadata.

  1. Word for Mac: (i) While your document is open, open the “File” dropdown menu, and select “Properties…”. In the pop-up window that opens, select the “Summary” tab. Delete any identifying information (author name, company, initials, email, etc.) associated with your file. (ii) While the document is open, open the “Tools” dropdown menu and select “Protect Document…”. In the “Privacy” section of the pop-up window that opens, tick the box next to “Remove personal information from this file on save”.
  2. Word for Windows: While your document is open, click the “File” tab, then click “Info”. From the options that appear, click on “Check for issues” and select “Inspect Document”. Review the results of the inspection and click “Remove All” next to any identifying information that was found.
  3. For PDF documents: Open your file in Adobe Acrobat. From the “File” dropdown menu, select “Properties…”. You can then delete identifying information from the pop-up window that opens.

Manuscript length
Submissions must not exceed 18,000 words of main text including notes and appendices, but excluding tables and references. Nonconforming submissions may be returned without comment or review. (PDA explicitly welcomes data-rich submissions. Therefore, exceptions may be made in some cases when overlength is due primarily to the inclusion of data, at the editors’ discretion.)  Submissions that are within the 18,000 word limit but are otherwise lengthy (over 12,000 words) will be assessed for appropriateness and may be returned for revision before being sent out for review.

PDA’s length policy is in place for multiple reasons, including that it is difficult to provide a timely review for very long submissions as it takes longer to assess them at every stage of the process. After publication, readers may be less inclined to read longer papers than shorter ones, which can reduce the impact of long papers. 

Number of manuscripts that can be submitted to PDA
Authors may have up to two papers in the review and production pipeline at the same time, if at least one is co-authored.

Submitting to other venues at the same time
Following accepted ethical practice in academia, authors are not allowed to submit the same manuscript to more than one publication venue at a time (e.g. a different journal or an edited book). Papers at any stage of the process, including accepted papers, which are found to have been submitted elsewhere will be immediately rejected, and the editorial team of the other publication may be alerted to the double submission. Authors who have submitted similar research elsewhere are expected to consult the editors and are strongly encouraged to send a copy of the other work along with the submission to PDA.

Submitting previously published work
As the policy stated above indicates, PDA will not consider papers that have been published elsewhere. Submissions incorporating results that have been published in a working papers or conference proceedings volume may be considered for publication in PDA, provided that they build substantially on those results and develop the ideas and evidence along new lines or in greater depth. Articles based on MA theses or dissertation chapters may be acceptable after appropriate revision. Contact the editors beforehand to confirm whether a submission incorporating components of previously published research will be eligible for review. 

Data and referencing
Authors and referees are asked to pay special attention to referencing and to how data is handled in the submission. References should not only include the work consulted, but also the original source if at all possible. Data sources should be clearly referenced and, if publicly available, cited as such (e.g. with a url), or appended to the article as supplementary material. Where the data is not publicly available, authors should explain why it is not made available, typically in a footnote. Generally speaking, the contents and supplementary materials for articles reporting results of empirical studies should be sufficient to allow replication by other researchers. For original data collected in the field, the availability of field notes will clearly depend upon circumstances, but if such notes are available we recommend that they be referenced and made available. Authors reporting original field work should be careful to report the appropriate metadata—where and when data were collected, how it was collected (in detail), and characteristics of those it was collected from including age, education, gender, whether bi- or multilingual, etc., along with a report on the general conditions of the language and community.

Authorship
Complete and accurate identifying information for all authors, along with their email addresses must be provided on the initial submission of a manuscript. The corresponding author should be clearly indicated. Changes to a paper’s authorship after the fact must be requested and justified in writing to the editors. Authors being removed from a submission must provide confirmation in a brief email message to the editors. The ultimate decision to make changes after the initial submission, or to decline the submission, rests with the editors.

Copyright and license
Authors retain copyright of their work, which is to be published under a CC BY 3.0 license. The Copyright License Agreement is available for review in advance of submission.

Privacy Statement

Personal information entered into this site is used exclusively under the terms and conditions of the Privacy Policy of the Linguistic Society of America. Registered users of this site may be contacted by the LSA about its programs and services and can control what personal information of theirs, if any, is stored here, either by editing their profile or by asking the editors or our support staff to do so.