Journal Natural Language Processing

(formerly Journal of Natural Language Engineering)

*** Call for Special Issue Proposals ***

In recent years the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) has enjoyed unprecedented developments since the emergence of Deep Learning and, lately, Large Language Models. At the same time, NLP is following the trend of many other areas in becoming highly specialised, with a number of application-orientated and narrow-domain topics emerging or growing in importance. These developments, often coinciding with a lack of related literature, necessitate and warrant the publication of specialised volumes focusing on a specific topic of interest to the NLP research community.

The Journal Natural Language Processing (formerly Journal of Natural Language Engineering), which features six 160-page issues per year and has had its impact factor increase yearly, invites proposals for special issues on a competitive basis covering any topics in applied NLP which have emerged as important recent developments and have attracted the attention of a number of researchers. The Journal Calls for Proposals for special issues have resulted in high-quality outputs and this year we look forward to another successful competition.

Proposals on topics covering a variety of methods, tasks, resources and applications from Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Speech and Language Processing, Text Analytics and related areas are eligible. Special issues on timely NLP topics such as latest language models including Large Language Models/Generative AI, are welcome.

Special issue proposals may be based on a successful workshop or a body of work associated with a particular group or section of the community. In the case of papers previously submitted to workshops, the Guest Editors will not be able to re-use previous workshop reviews. In addition, the call for papers of the accepted proposals must be open to all interested parties and all authors will be given equal treatment; in the case of proposals based on previous workshops, submissions cannot be limited to workshop participants only. Prospective proposers are also encouraged to consult the successful Journal columns "Industry Watch" and "Emerging Trends" for additional inspiration.

Interested parties have the option of preliminary feedback by emailing expressions of interest accompanied by a brief description of the intended special issue to the Executive Editor (Ruslan.Mitkov@ua.es). He will give a brief indication of whether the topic is appropriate to the Journal. In the case of initial positive feedback, the prospective Guest Editors will be asked to submit a proposal for a special issue that will be reviewed by the Editors of the Journal and by other members of the Journal Editorial Board.

The proposal for a special issue should include a brief outline of the field and rationale as to why it is important to launch a special issue on the particular topic of interest at the current time. It should include a relevant literature survey (related previous special issues, volumes, workshop and conference proceedings) and should explain the added value of the proposed special issue against the background of other relevant or competing publications and volumes (if applicable). It is desirable that evidence for the estimate of expected submissions to the special issue be provided and justified. The proposals should also include a tentative Guest Editorial Board. It is desirable that at least one (preferably two) of the members of the Guest Editorial Board is on the Editorial Board of the Journal Natural Language Processing. The proposal should also include a tentative time-scale for the production of the special issue (the time-scale committed to in the proposal should be adhered to, if the proposal is accepted), and information about the prospective Guest Editors such as relevant experience, publications etc.

Time-scale

- Deadline for submission of special issue proposals: 28 April 2025 (proposals to be emailed to Ruslan.Mitkov@ua.es with a copy to NLP@cambridge.org)

- Notification of acceptance/rejection: 19 May 2025

- Calls for papers related to the successful proposals (at least 2 calls are recommended): 7 June 2025 first call July-September 2025 second (and third call, if applicable)

Once the special issue is approved and launched, Guest Editors are expected to adhere to the same reviewing and acceptance standards as regular issues of the Journal. In particular, each submission needs to be reviewed by three members of the Guest Editorial Board or other experts in the field. To ensure geographical diversity and balance, and to avoid over-reliance on the same reviewers, each submission must not be reviewed by three experts from the same country, and no single reviewer should evaluate more than two submissions. If the Executive Editor is not satisfied with the review process for a special issue paper, he may either reject the paper or send it for additional review. As a last resort, the Executive Editor has the discretion to reject the entire special issue if the reviewing practices are found to be flawed.

All special issues are required to include a survey of the field (at least 15 pages) as its first article, which can be written either by the Guest Editors or experts in the field commissioned by the Guest Editors. This is in addition to a 1-2 page preface by the Guest Editors.

Best Regards

Dr Tharindu Ranasinghe | Lecturer in Security and Protection Science School of Computing and Communications | Lancaster University Contact me on Teamshttps://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=t.ranasinghe@lancaster.ac.uk www.lancaster.ac.ukhttps://www.lancaster.ac.uk/