It is now 5 years since we took over the Editorship of Applied Psycholinguistics. In that time, we have endeavored to refocus the journal toward empirical work in psychology and linguistics across languages and learners. We introduced a new subtitle for the journal to this effect, and we have produced Special Issues reflecting current “hot topics” in the field, for example, the role of genetics in developmental language disorders (January 2005), grammatical processing in language learners (January 2006), nonword repetition and word learning (October 2006), and the upcoming Special Issue on language acquisition and bilingualism, reflecting on the consequences for a multilingual society. We have been delighted to see that the impact factor of the journal is now at 1.37 and that the number of submissions based on cross-language comparisons continues to increase. We welcome this trend, as in our view a cross-language approach to studying the psychological processes involved in language is particularly likely to discover fundamental processes, developments, and impairments.
Cambridge University Press is in the process of making its journal operations fully electronic, and this has streamlined the editorial load considerably. Therefore, only one of us, Martha Crago, is renewing her contract with the Press to edit the journal. Both of us, however, would like to record how much we have enjoyed reading the innovative and thoughtful submissions that we have received. We would also like to record how much we have valued the time and effort expended by the referees who have helped us with our editorial work, some of whom have been called on many times, and in particular how much we have appreciated the energy and dedication shown by the members of our Editorial Board. We await with anticipation the next 5 years of submissions.
