We invite high-quality papers on all aspects of language that take a constructionist approach (in the broadest sense). 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.

 

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).

 

Submission

To submit a paper, please register on this site (top right) and then log in with your username and password. After logging in, you can make a new submission here. You will be asked to upload your paper as a PDF file. Please make sure that the PDF file is anonymized to ensure double-blind peer review. There are no specific formatting requirements for initial submission. However,  we encourage authors to use our typsetting templates (see section "Style guide" below).

 

Style guide

As "Constructions" is a platinum open-access journal, we have to kindly ask authors to typeset accepted papers themselves. We therefore strongly recommend to use our LaTeX template  when writing a paper. Alternatively, you can use this Word template. For using it, you will have to install the free fonts Baskerville and IBM Plex Sans. This is not a prerequisite for submitting a paper, though - you can also submit in any other format and do the typesetting after peer review.

 

Peer Review Process

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.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all colleagues who have agreed to review for the journal!