Dear readers of the Journal of Natural Language Engineering,
I am honoured to address you as the new Executive Editor of the journal, a role I took on recently from Professor John Tait. As someone who, along with the other editors and members of the Editorial Board, has the responsibility for the overall quality of the journal, my main goal is to continue actively pursuing the journal objectives and to raise the standards even higher. These objectives are concerned with promoting applied natural language processing (NLP) research in the form of first-class original research and with bridging the gap between traditional computational linguistics research and the implementation of practical applications with potential real-world use.
When John became Executive Editor in 2000, the reviewing process was not as efficient and rigorous as now. He introduced the triple reviewing process and measures that helped improve the turnaround time. Now the journal is the first publication choice for authors of natural language engineering research and we owe much gratitude to John for that. As a result of the successful development of the journal and as an evidence of their unreserved support, Cambridge University Press recently confirmed that the volume of a typical issue would be increased from 96 to 144 pages. In fact, what you are holding in your hands now is the first issue which contains 144 pages. All this means more space for outstanding NLP research.
My personal ambition is to shorten the reviewing process even further, at the same time making sure that it is as rigorous as possible so that only top-quality publications are included. In general, I would like to dedicate much of my knowledge and energy to making the journal even more popular and successful.
I would like to seize this opportunity and thank those members of the Editorial Board (Justine Cassell) and the Book Editor (Ted Briscoe) who recently completed their term and to welcome the new members (Rada Mihalcea, Hwee Tou Ng, Dragomir Radev and Bernardo Magnini) as well as the new Book Editor (Kemal Oflazer). All members of the Editorial Board, past and present, can be proud of their contribution to the establishment of a prospering and well regarded journal.
I am not only succeeding John in this position, but I am also continuing his passion and belief in undertaking this important job, which I regard as an excellent example of service to the community.
