As Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (BLC) enters its 12th year of publication, we the editors of the journal are pleased to report to the BLC readers that the state of the journal is strong.
This positive self-assessment is backed up by a number of events and facts from the past year. First, over the years we have been fortunate to have the support of a large number of colleagues as reviewers and Editorial Board members, and in the past year we have further strengthened this support base by drawing ten new members into the Editorial Board. These colleagues will no doubt contribute significantly to the quality of BLC. Second, Thomson International has included our journal in their SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index) database and for the first time released the impact factor for BLC. Although the quality and impact of a journal are not necessarily tied to its impact factor, we are pleased that BLC's impact factor compares well with many established journals in linguistics and social sciences. Third, the past year has seen a large increase in the number of high-quality submitted and accepted manuscripts. In light of this increased volume, Cambridge University Press (CUP) will publish BLC as a quarterly journal starting from 2009. In addition, to alleviate the concern with a long time lag between acceptance and publication, CUP will proceed with incremental publishing for our journal, providing advanced online copies of accepted papers to readers ahead of the actual printing of the journal.
In short, our journal has experienced significant growth in the past years and we as editors are pleased to see this progress. We would like to encourage colleagues and readers of BLC to provide comments and suggestions on the future of the journal, so that BLC is always on an upward momentum in serving the field that it represents.
