Guide for Authors
Submission
Authors are requested to submit their papers electronically by using the
Language & Communication
online submission and review web site
http://ees.elsevier.com/lac. This site will guide authors stepwise through the submission
process. Authors are requested to submit the text, tables, and artwork in electronic form to this address. Authors who are unable to
provide an electronic version or have other circumstances that prevent online submission must contact the Editors prior to submission
to discuss alternative options; email:
txtayl@wm.edu. The Publisher and Editors regret that they are not able to consider
submissions that do not follow these procedures.
Special Issues
Persons
interested in developing a special issue should contact Talbot Taylor at the above email address.
Ethics in publishing
For information on Ethics
in publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict
of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within three years of beginning
the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission declaration
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously
(except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication
elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was
carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English or in any
other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
Changes to authorship
This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:
Before
the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names,
must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name
should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they
agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the
author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Journal Manager to the
corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Journal Managers will inform the Journal Editors
of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.
After
the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published
in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more
information on this and copyright see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest
possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together
with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of
contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher
is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations
(please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s)
must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use
by authors in these cases: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Retained author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred
to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the funding source
You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article
and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data;
in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement
then this should be stated. Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose
articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions
of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
Open access
This journal offers you the option of making your article freely available to all via the ScienceDirect
platform. To prevent any conflict of interest, you can only make this choice after receiving notification that your article has been
accepted for publication. The fee of $3,000 excludes taxes and other potential author fees such as color charges. In some cases, institutions
and funding bodies have entered into agreement with Elsevier to meet these fees on behalf of their authors. Details of these agreements
are available at
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies. Authors of accepted articles, who wish to take advantage of this
option, should complete and submit the order form (available at
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/openaccessform.pdf). Whatever
access option you choose, you retain many rights as an author, including the right to post a revised personal version of your article
on your own website. More information can be found here:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Language and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted,
but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission
please visit
http://webshop.elsevier.com/languageservices
or our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com
for more information.
Submission
Submission to this journal proceeds totally
online. Use the following guidelines to prepare your article. Via the homepage of this journal (
http://www.ees.elsevier.com/lac/)
you will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of the various files. The system automatically converts source files to
a single Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the article, which is used in the peer-review process. Please note that even though manuscript
source files are converted to PDF at submission for the review process, these source files are needed for further processing after acceptance.
All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the author's
homepage, removing the need for a hard-copy paper trail.
Authors are advised to consult a recent issue of the journal (a free sample copy is available online
at:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02715309) to become familiar with layout and conventions.
Use of wordprocessing software
It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the wordprocessor
used. The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed
and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use the wordprocessor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words.
However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one
grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic
text should be prepared in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see also the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier:
http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication).
Note that source files of figures, tables and text graphics will be required whether or not you embed your figures in the text. See also
the section on Electronic artwork.
To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check'
functions of your wordprocessor.
Article structure
Appendices
If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and
equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on.
Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.
Vitae
Include
in the manuscript a short (maximum 100 words) biography of each author.
Essential
title page information
•
Title.
Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval
systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
•
Author names and affiliations.
Where the family name
may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this clearly. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work
was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in
front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available,
the e-mail address of each author.
•
Corresponding author.
Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at
all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication.
Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code)
are provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding
author.
•
Present/permanent address.
If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done,
or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address
at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for
such footnotes.
Abstract
A concise and factual abstract is required (of
around 100 words). The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract
is often presented separate from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. References should therefore be avoided, but if essential,
they must be cited in full, without reference to the reference list. Non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if
essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.
Highlights
Highlights are mandatory for this journal. They consist of a short collection of bullet points that convey the core findings
of the article and should be submitted in a separate file in the online submission system. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and
include 3 to 5 bullet points (maximum 85 characters, including spaces, per bullet point). See
http://www.elsevier.com/highlights
for examples.
Keywords
Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum
of 6 keywords, avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, "and", "of"). As far as possible, keywords
should conform to those used in LLBA (Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts; see:
http://www.csa.com/factsheets/llba-set-c.php).
These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.
Abbreviations
Define
abbreviations that are not standard in this field in a footnote to be placed on the first page of the article. Such abbreviations that
are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there, as well as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of abbreviations
throughout the article.
Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements in a
separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote
to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing
assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).
Quotations
Quotations
are to be cited in single inverted commas with indications, where appropriate, of any omission, added emphasis, or other alteration to
the original.
Phonetic transcription
In your choice of phonetic symbols,
please adhere to IPA conventions. The SIL Charis IPA font is preferred for the presentation of IPA symbols (for more information, please
visit:
http://scripts.sil.org/CharisSILfont).
Footnotes
Footnotes
should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article, using superscript Arabic numbers. Many wordprocessors build
footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and
present the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.
Table
footnotes
Indicate each footnote in a table with a superscript lowercase letter.
Artwork
Electronic artwork
General points
•
Make sure you use uniform lettering and sizing of your original artwork.
• Save text in illustrations as 'graphics' or enclose
the font.
• Only use the following fonts in your illustrations: Arial, Courier, Times, Symbol.
• Number the illustrations
according to their sequence in the text.
• Use a logical naming convention for your artwork files.
• Provide captions
to illustrations separately.
• Produce images near to the desired size of the printed version.
• Submit each figure
as a separate file.
A detailed guide on electronic artwork is available on our website:
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions
You are urged to visit this site; some excerpts from the detailed information are given here.
Formats
Regardless
of the application used, when your electronic artwork is finalised, please 'save as' or convert the images to one of the following formats
(note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):
EPS: Vector drawings.
Embed the font or save the text as 'graphics'.
TIFF: Color or grayscale photographs (halftones): always use a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF: Bitmapped line drawings: use a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF: Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale): a
minimum of 500 dpi is required.
If your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
then please supply 'as is'.
Please do not:
• Supply files that are optimised for screen use (e.g., GIF, BMP, PICT,
WPG); the resolution is too low;
• Supply files that are too low in resolution;
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately
large for the content.
Color artwork
Please make sure that artwork
files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and with the correct resolution. If, together with your accepted article,
you submit usable color figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color on the Web
(e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed version.
For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted article.
Please indicate your preference for color: in print or on the Web only. For further information on the preparation of electronic artwork,
please see
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because of technical complications which can arise
by converting color figures to 'gray scale' (for the printed version should you not opt for color in print) please submit in addition
usable black and white versions of all the color illustrations.
Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a
brief title (
not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum
but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.
Tables
Number tables consecutively
in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and indicate them with superscript lowercase
letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results
described elsewhere in the article.
References
Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference
list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are
not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list they
should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of the publication date with either 'Unpublished
results' or 'Personal communication'. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication.
Web references
As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last
accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given.
Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired, or can be included in
the reference list.
References in a special issue
Please ensure that
the words 'this issue' are added to any references in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles in the same Special
Issue.
Reference management software
This journal has standard templates
available in key reference management packages EndNote (
http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp) and Reference Manager
(
http://refman.com/support/rmstyles.asp). Using plug-ins to wordprocessing packages, authors only need to select the appropriate
journal template when preparing their article and the list of references and citations to these will be formatted according to the journal
style which is described below.
Reference Style
Text: All citations
in the text should refer to:
1.
Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the
year of publication;
2.
Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication;
3.
Three or more authors:
first author's name followed by "et al." and the year of publication. Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of
references should be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically. If quoting from a reference, page numbers should also be indicated;
e.g. "(Pullman, 1996, p. 21)".
Examples: "as demonstrated (Allan, 1996a, 1996b, 1999; Allan and Jones, 1995). Kramer et al. (2000)
have recently shown ...."
List: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary.
More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after
the year of publication.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication: Baker, G., 1998. The private language
argument. Language & Communication 18 (4), 325-356.
Reference to a book: Giles, H., Coupland, N., 1991. Language:
Contexts and Consequences. Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book: Probst. G.,
1991. Images of Germany and the Germans in American media. In: Bredella, L. (Ed.), Mediating a Foreign Culture: The United States and
Germany. Gunter Narr Verlag, Tubingen, pp. 81-92.
Video data
Elsevier
accepts video material and animation sequences to support and enhance your scientific research. Authors who have video or animation files
that they wish to submit with their article are strongly encouraged to include these within the body of the article. This can be done
in the same way as a figure or table by referring to the video or animation content and noting in the body text where it should be placed.
All submitted files should be properly labeled so that they directly relate to the video file's content. In order to ensure that your
video or animation material is directly usable, please provide the files in one of our recommended file formats with a preferred maximum
size of 50 MB. Video and animation files supplied will be published online in the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web
products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. Please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose
any frame from the video or animation or make a separate image. These will be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the
link to your video data. For more detailed instructions please visit our video instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Note: since video and animation cannot be embedded in the print version of the journal, please provide text for both the electronic and
the print version for the portions of the article that refer to this content.
Supplementary
data
Elsevier accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific research. Supplementary files
offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips
and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products,
including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable,
please provide the data in one of our recommended file formats. Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with
the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each file. For more detailed instructions please visit our artwork instruction
pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Submission checklist
The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please
consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure that the following items are present:
One author
has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
•
Telephone and fax numbers
All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description, footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked'
and 'grammar-checked'
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference
list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources
(including the Web)
• Color figures are clearly marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge)
and in print, or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the
Web is required, black-and-white versions of the figures are also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please
visit our customer support site at
http://support.elsevier.com.
Use of
the Digital Object Identifier
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The
DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic
publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press'
because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information. The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example
taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059
When you use the DOI to
create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change.
Proofs
One set of page proofs (as PDF files) will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an
e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post) or, a link will be provided in the e-mail so that authors can download the files
themselves. Elsevier now provides authors with PDF proofs which can be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version
7 (or higher) available free from
http://get.adobe.com/reader. Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany
the proofs (also given online). The exact system requirements are given at the Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/tech-specs.html.
If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return
them to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark
the corrections and any other comments (including replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the
pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text,
tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission
from the Editor. We will do everything possible to get your article published quickly and accurately – please let us have all your
corrections within 48 hours. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication: please check carefully
before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that
Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.
Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail. For an extra
charge, paper offprints can be ordered via the offprint order form which is sent once the article is accepted for publication. The PDF
file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining
the terms and conditions of use.
Additional Information
Discount
Authors are entitled to a 30% discount on Elsevier books (excluding major reference works).
Fast Electronic Publication
Once the article has been proofed by the author, it will be published immediately on the journal's 'Articles in Press' section
on ScienceDirect, thus making it available to subscribers to read and cite. For more information, visit:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02715309.
For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission)
please visit this journal's homepage. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating
to proofs, will be provided by the publisher. You can track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle. You
can also check our Author FAQs (
http://www.elsevier.com/authorFAQ) and/or contact Customer Support via
http://support.elsevier.com.
