Our aim

Radical (ISSN 2592-656X) is an open access journal devoted to the study of phonological form in language. It is managed exclusively by phonologists for phonologists. In order to to promote scientific discussion, Radical employs an original publication process based on two main principles:

1. 1. Papers can be prepublished and accessed by spontaneous reviewers
   2. Relevant reviews are published with the paper

We believe that evaluation is fundamentally a public and long-term process that cannot be reduced to the opinion of a limited number of experts in a limited period of time. For this reason, we want to open the scientific debate by broadening the pool of reviewers and by making public the debates that take place during the evaluation of a paper.

The Radical reviewing guidelines are specially conceived to facilitate the publication of studies with provocative, innovative and possibly non-conformist analyses which provide new ways of conceptualizing our discipline. Papers submitted to our journal can be radically theoretical, radically descriptive, radically experimental, radically methodological, radically GP, radically OT, etc.

Alongside papers of regular length, the journal is open to shorter manuscripts of the type we call “phonological sparks“, intended to encourage debate around questions of general principles in phonology. 

Is it something new?

E-print repositories already exist in several disciplines (physics, mathematics, biology, linguistics…). Most of them are simple archives gathering published and unpublished papers (e.g. ROA, linguzz, arXiv) or only published papers (e.g. Semantic Scholar). However, some platforms also propose a feedback system which goes from informal comments (e.g. BioRxiv) to real evaluation (e.g. F1000Research). These tend to clear the difference between e-print repositories and classical journals.

How to publish?

We accept only short papers (20-25 Radical-stylized pages) Submitted manuscripts are checked before being pre-published on the journal’s website. The author has two options: anonymous or non-anonymous pre-publication. In both cases, editors contact reviewers who are experts in the subject matter. Readers of the journal may also submit a review that will be taken into consideration by the editors. When a paper is considered acceptable, it falls into the publication category of the journal.

Contributions to the “phonological sparks” section are limited to 5 pages, 1.5 spaced.

How to review?

A review can be submitted by a selected or spontaneous reviewer. All reviewers must adhere to the Radical reviewing guidelines. After checking the content and degree of expertise, the reviews are sent to the author. The latter may choose to take into account the comments of their reviewers in their manuscript and/or reply to them separately. Depending on the discussions between the author and his reviewers, editors may choose whether to publish the paper or not. If the paper is published, discussions revealing relevant debates on the substance of the author’s proposal may also be published through the public reactions. Thus, the work of reviewers is respected and recognized as a true scientific and publishable work. Reviews can be anonymous or not, at the choice of the reviewers.

How to cite?

Three categories of texts can be cited from Radical: published papers, pre-published manuscripts and reviews. Only published papers and reviews may be labelled Radical: A Journal of Phonology. Manuscripts are only “available on the Radical website”. The citation of a review must include the name of the reviewer (if not anonymous), the name of the author, the title of the article and the journal Radical. We propose the following format:

Reviewer, A. (2018) “Comments”. In Author, A. (auth.) “Title of the paper”, Radical: A Journal of Phonology, 1(1), 1-5.

Radical is indexed in the Linguistic Open Access (LingOA) archive.