Submissions

Submission Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
2. Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal.
3. All authors have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper and satisfy the Authorship Guidelines.
4. The mauscript is initially submitted in PDF format. An OpenOffice, Microsoft Word or Latex file must be submitted when the paper is accepted for publication.
5. The main body of the manuscript is fewer than 15,000 words. Please include the manuscript word count on the first page. 
6. All DOIs for the references have been provided, when available.
7. Please incorporate all tables directly in the manuscript, following the flow of the text.
8. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). Each file is no more than 20MB per file. The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximize quality, the original source file is preferred). Every image or figure should be numbered according its the position in the manuscript.
9. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found under Submissions. Please ensure that your article includes a competing interests statement in accordance with our Competing Interests Guidelines.
10. If the work is subject to an ethics assessment committee, the committee has approved this research.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Peer Review

All submissions are initially assessed by the General Editor, who decides whether or not the article fits the scope of the journal and is suitable for peer review. If it is, the manuscript is assigned to an Associate Editor, who, in collaboration with the General Editor, invites at least two independent experts to assess the article. Submissions are assessed for whether they address topics of relevance to Laboratory Phonology, are original, are methodologically sound, follow appropriate ethical guidelines, present results clearly, support their  conclusions with relevant data, and correctly reference previous relevant work.

Authors may recommend or ask for the exclusion of specific individuals from the peer review process. The journal does not guarantee to use these suggestions. All reviewers must be independent from the submission and will be asked to declare all competing interests.

Laboratory Phonology utilizes a single-blind review process, as author identity is difficult to ensure in a close-knit discipline such as Laboratory Phonology. Single-blind review means that reviewers know the authors’ identities, but the authors do not have access to information regarding the reviewers’ identities unless the reviewers volunteer the information.

Reviewers are asked to provide constructive and formative feedback, even if an article is not deemed suitable for publication in the journal. Reviewers are asked to finish their assessments within four weeks.

Reviewers are asked to provide comments on whether the submitted article:

1. addresses topics of relevance to laboratory phonology;
2. is original;
3. is methodologically sound;
4. follows appropriate ethical guidelines;
5. presents results clearly;
6. supports its conclusions with relevant data;
7. correctly references previous relevant work.

After the Associate Editor has received all reviews, they will make a final decision on the manuscript, in collaboration with the General Editor. They will send a report to the corresponding author, which includes the text of the reviews. If the final decision is that the article has to be revised, the authors are invited to submit a revised manuscript by a specified date. The revised submission is normally considered by the same Associate Editor, and, if it is again sent out for review, by at least one of the original reviewers who evaluated the original submission. In most cases, the review process for revised submissions is otherwise the same as for original submissions.

Authorship All listed authors must qualify as such, as defined in our Authorship Guidelines, which have been developed from the ICMJE definitions. All authors must have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper. Funding and Ethics Authors are required to specify funding sources and detail requirements for ethical research in the submitted manuscript. All authors must confirm that they fit the definition of an author during submission (see Authorship Guidelines). Preprints and Editorial Submissions

The journal is happy to accept submissions of papers that have been loaded onto preprint servers or personal websites, have been presented at conferences, or other informal communication channels. These formats will not be deemed prior publication. Authors must retain copyright to such postings. Authors are encouraged to link any prior posting of their paper to the final published version within the journal, if it is editorially accepted.

Members of the editorial team/board are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review. A competing interest must also be declared within the submission and any resulting publication.

Licences

Laboratory Phonology allows the following licences for submission:

• CC BY 4.0 - More Information  
  Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Publication Cycle

The journal is published online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year.

Laboratory Phonology publishes Special Collections in rare instances, primarily when these are connected to the Association for Laboratory Phonology. Please contact the General Editors if you would like more information.

Publication Fees

Authors publishing in Laboratory Phonology face no financial charges for the publication of their article. Authors from institutions that already have an OLH membership will have the cost for the article's publication covered by the consortium of libraries participating in the Open Library of Humanities (OLH), ensuring long-term sustainability. We recommend that authors from non-member institutions ask their libraries to support OLH with annual contribution that will cover any current/future publication in the journal. Should a submitting/corresponding author be from an institution that already has an OLH membership, please indicate it accordingly when submitting your paper.

Authors from OLH non-member institutions that have access to funds earmarked for Open Access publication (via a research grant or through their institution) will be asked to use those funds to cover the £450 Voluntary Author Contribution (VAC) of their publication in Laboratory Phonology. Authors without access to such funds will be asked to request a waiver through the submission system. This waiver will then be logged against the submission.

We intentionally use the term Voluntary Author Contribution (VAC) to sharply distinguish this from an Article Processing Charge (APC), a fee that is required for publication at most Gold Open Access journals. Laboratory Phonology is emphatically a Diamond Open Access journal: it does not charge obligatory fees to either readers or authors, in the interest of scholarly equity. The Voluntary Author Contribution (VAC) covers all publication costs (editorial processes; web hosting; indexing; marketing; archiving; DOI registration etc.) and ensures that all of the content is fully open access. This approach maximises the potential readership of publications and allows the journal to be run in a sustainable way.

If you do not know about your institution’s policy on open access funding, please contact your departmental/faculty administrators and institution library, as funds may be available to you.

Shortly after publication, authors that have not already requested a waiver from OLH will receive a VAC request email along with information on how payment can be arranged. If the VAC situation has changed since submission to publication, a VAC waiver can also be requested at this point.

If you have any questions, please email paula.clementvega@bbk.ac.uk.