Scope

Journal of Semantics aims to be the premier journal in semantics. It covers all areas in the study of meaning, with a focus on formal and experimental methods. The Journal welcomes submissions on semantics, pragmatics, the syntax/semantics interface, cross-linguistic semantics, experimental studies of meaning (processing, acquisition, neurolinguistics), and semantically informed philosophy of language.

Types of articles

Journal of Semantics all types of research articles – with the usual proviso that length must be justified by scientific value. Typical contributions fall anywhere in the range of 500 - 20,000 words range. Very rarely we will consider manuscripts that fall outside of this range provided that the content of the paper warrants it.

Short Contributions

Short Contributions should be compact (between 500 and 4,500 words) yet make an influential contribution to the field. Such contributions may point out challenges that are highly relevant to theoretical issues in semantics and pragmatics ('squibs') or they may influence the future direction of the field, be it theoretically, empirically, technically or any other way. In other words, such contributions provide a stimulus to (part of) the field, without necessarily offering a fully worked out model or theory. Short contributions are online only and will be published Open Access before issue publication.

Please see the Information for Authors page for more information

Editorial decisions within 6-12 weeks The Journal aims to make editorial decisions within 6-12 weeks of submission, depending on the specifics of the manuscript.

Refereeing

We ask reviewers for papers submitted to Journal of Semantics to take the journal's high standards into account when preparing a review report. A copy of the standard invitation letter we send to referees is available to download.

For Short Contributions, we provide separate instructions. We remind referees of Short Contributions that the aims of shorts could be quite different from that of longer contributions. In particular, shorts need not provide a fully elaborate theory or model of a phenomenon. Yet such manuscripts are to be refereed in accordance to the same high standards as regular contributions, and we additionally ask referees (i) to judge whether the short format is suitable, given the paper's aims and (ii) to judge whether these aims provide a significant stimulus to the field. We also point out that revisions to shorts should be manageable in a relatively short time frame. Referees are asked to consider recommending a different (longer) format if the necessary revisions go beyond that.

Authors may include their names on their manuscripts, but they need not do so. If authors want to remain anonymous, it is their own responsibility to remove any information contained in the manuscript that may reveal their identity.

To avoid conflicts of interest, the managing editor handles any manuscript submitted by one of the Editors, in collaboration with one anonymous associate editor. Together, they are responsible for selecting referees and making an editorial decision. The head of the Advisory Board may act as an editor in case a submission is authored by an associate of the Managing Editor.