About the Journal

Constructions is a diamond open access journal with free online access to all contributions and no author processing fees. All submissions to the journal are subjected to a strict double-blind reviewing process. Constructions aims at a balanced representation of research within all current Construction Grammar models. One of the long-term goals is to establish contact between researchers from various perspectives. The term ‘construction’ as understood in this journal is deliberately chosen to have a broad extension and is not limited to any specific definition or specific constructional framework. Constructions is not restricted to any particular language or language family, and aims at combining theoretical, empirical, and applied issues.

Aims and scope

Constructions publishes high-quality papers on all aspects of language that take a constructionist approach (in the broadest sense), i.e. that are couched in a version of Construction Grammar and/or draw on the concept of linguistic constructions. Both theoretical and empirical papers are welcome. Empirical papers can be work-in-progress reports, as long as the research question(s) and methods of analysis are made transparent. Needless to say, work-in-progress reports are subject to the same high standards of peer review as all other papers.

Open access policy

All new papers are published under a CC-BY 4.0 license by default. Authors can choose a different license upon request, preferably one of the Creative Commons licenses. As a minimum requirement, the license must ensure that the paper is openly available for everyone, for free, forever. Papers published before the transfer of "Constructions" to HHU Düsseldorf in 2021 are not published under Creative Commons licenses unless the authors explicitly requested it. Regardless of the license they choose, authors retain full copyright over their contributions.

Open data policy

Authors of empirical papers are required to include a data availability statement in their papers. We strongly encourage authors to make their datasets and analysis scripts publicly available, e.g. on repositories like OSF (for peer-review, an anonymized view-only link can be created on OSF). An anonymized link to the dataset should already be included upon initial submission, i.e. in the review stage.

Publication ethics and malpractice statement

The research reported in manuscripts submitted to Constructions must have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and must comply with all relevant legislation. For details and best-practices, see Wager & Kleinert (2011), available here. The members of the editorial board, and the editors-in-chief in particular, will do their best to prevent misconduct by informing the authors of the ethical conduct required by them, and they will try to identify misconduct and deal with potential allegations of misconduct accordingly. In particular, this includes the possibility of retracting papers that have been found to be in violation of pertinent legal or ethical standards. Retraction means that a paper is still publicly accessible (unless there are important reasons for removing it entirely), but with a retraction notice.

Examples of misconduct include, but are not limited to:

- plagiarism,

- misrepresentation of authorship (e.g. uncredited co-authors, "honorary" authorships),

- fabricated data,

- undisclosed conflicts of interest relevant to the published paper.

To submit a complaint or raise a concern of potential misconduct, please contact the editors-in-chief in confidence. Our aim is to acknowledge complaints or appeals within 5 days of receipt. We will do our best to keep complainants updated throughout the process.

Wager E & Kleinert S (2011) Responsible research publication: international standards for authors. A position statement developed at the 2 nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. Chapter 50 in: Mayer T & Steneck N (eds) Promoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment. Imperial College Press / World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (pp 309-16). (ISBN 978-981-4340-97-7)

Peer-review policy

All papers submitted to Constructions are subject to double-blind peer review. We rely on at least two reviewers for initial submissions and at least one reviewer for resubmissions of papers for which the reviewers requested major revisions. To make sure that the review process remains anonymous, we ask reviewers to refrain from trying to find out the identity of authors. We will never reveal the identities of reviewers to authors; however, reviewers are free to self-identify if they wish to do so.

The peer reviewers are kindly asked to use the following criteria when assessing a paper:

Structure & presentation

• How clearly is the research question stated, and how clearly is the argument developed?
• Is the length of the contribution reasonable in relation to its content, merit, potential impact?
• Is the paper well accessible also to non-experts in the field?
• Is the paper convincing in terms of reader-friendliness/guidance, cohesion, clarity and precision of expression?
• Does the English need improvement/correction (the aim is a clear and grammatical variety of ‘Global (academic) English’ rather than a perfect specimen of British or American English)?
• In the case of empirical papers: Does the contribution include a data availability statement? Is the study presented in such a way that reproducibility and replicability are ensured?

Content

• How does the paper contribute to a better understanding of ‘constructional modelling’?
• How original and innovative is the contribution?
• (How) Does the paper relate to theoretical questions?
• Does the paper include empirical data? (And if so, how do you judge the methodology chosen?)
• Is the methodology sufficiently and clearly explained?
•  Is the methodology appropriate?
• Does the paper link the theoretical background to its data analysis?
• Does the paper have clear research questions/hypotheses?
• Would you regard this paper as a potential lead article for discussion/peer commentaries?

Final judgement:

(a) publish

(b) publish with minor revisions

(c) publish with major revisions

(d) revise and resubmit

(e) reject

If you are, for any reason, unable to review a particular article, please let us know as soon as possible. In this case, it would be very helpful if you could suggest another suitable reviewer.

We kindly ask reviewers to submit their reports within 6 weeks in order to safeguard timely publication.

We reserve the right to desk-reject manuscripts that do not fit the journal's scope or are clearly insufficient in terms of quality.

Ownership

Constructions is a scholar-owned journal, owned and edited by its editorial board, headed by the editors-in-chief.

Publisher

Constructions is published by the University and State Library of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Until 2021, the journal was published by the University of Osnabrück.

Publication frequency

Constructions typically publishes one issue per year containing all submissions accepted for publication during that year. In addition, we occasionally publish special issues.

Archiving

The journal contents are currently archived publicly via Zenodo. We are working towards additional automatic archiving options with the team of the University and State Library Düsseldorf, and hope that they can be implemented in the near future.

Copyright and licensing

Authors retain full copyright of their papers published in Constructions. All papers accepted for publication in Constructions since 2022 are published with a CC-BY 4.0 license by default.  Please note that the licenses of individual papers can vary, however.

Indexing

The journal is currently indexed in

• the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• ERIH Plus
• Google Scholar
• Free Journal Network (FJN)

 

Statistics

These statistics are provided to comply with the requirements of Plan S.

2024

• Manuscripts received: 11
• Manuscripts accepted: 5
• Manuscripts rejected: 2 (4 still under review at the end of 2024 - acceptance rate: 5/7 = 71.4%)
• Reviews requested (only for published articles): 11
• Reviews received (only for published articles): 9

2023

• Manuscripts received: 22
• Manuscripts accepted: 11
• Manuscripts rejected: 7 (4 still under review at the end of 2023 - acceptance rate: 11/18 = 61.1%)
• Reviews requested (only for published articles): 24
• Reviews received (only for published articles): 22