Letter from the President

Like all of you I'm sure, I am trying to stay safe and sane while living with the new COVID-19 surge and the uncertainty of new variants. I have to admit I feel rather fortunate because I retired after more than 30 years at the University of New Mexico in June 2020. So although it was not in my plan to retire into a pandemic, I have watched as my colleagues deal with lockdowns, school closures that keep children at home, hours and hours spent modifying syllabi and lesson plans to deal with online courses, learning how to use Zoom and asynchronous learning platforms, and more. My life consists rather more simply in doing curbside grocery pickup.

Plans are still in place to host ICLC-16 in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2023. As more developments occur, I will share them via our ICLA website. The Board is still hopeful that by 2023, with the vaccines that are now available and more coming, we will be able to hold ICLC-16 as a normal, face-to-face conference.

Our plans for a special issue of our Cognitive Linguistics journal devoted to Early Career Researchers is proceeding well. John Newman has graciously agreed to serve as Guest Editor. Authors are being mentored by editors on the editorial board, with the Special Issue being scheduled as the first issue of 2022. Special thanks to John and Dagmar for putting together this important special issue for our early career scholars.

The journal has a new Associate Editor: Karin Madlener joined the Board Spring 2020 with responsibility for L1 development and L2 learning. There are now 29 Editorial Board members, two of whom, Dingfang Shu and Kari Sullivan, joined in 2020. Since July 2020, the journal has been operating under the Open Data policy. This means that all submitted manuscripts need to include a Data Availability Statement and all underlying data should be made available in a publicly accessible data repository, wherever possible. The journal now also accepts Registered Reports, a form of empirical article in which the research question and the methods and proposed analyses to address it are pre-registered and reviewed prior to research being conducted. Registered Reports are a two-stage process. A study proposal is evaluated by the editorial team and if successful, it is sent out for Peer Review before data collection. If successful, the author is given an in principle acceptance and is invited to submit a completed manuscript. After data collection and analysis, the same reviewers evaluate the full study. If successful, the manuscript is published regardless of the results.

As I mentioned in my previous message to the membership, we are also still planning a special virtual event for early career scholars, probably to take place in 2022. I will post more information about this event as plans develop. We are also in the early stages of planning a virtual event to take place summer 2021. Stay tuned for more information about this.

Please stay safe. Wear a mask. Continue to practice social distancing. I look forward to seeing all of you in Buenos Aires in 2023.

Sherman Wilcox