The editors were pleased to see the recent publication in Language at the end of 2021 of an extensive survey of the peer review process in linguistics journals. The authors of the survey, English Today editorial board member Alexandra D'Arcy and co-author Joseph Salmons, describe in familiar detail the peer review process as the standard review practice in the discipline of linguistics, and report on data collected from a survey of journal editors conducted in late 2018 (D'Arcy & Salmons, Reference D'Arcy and Salmons2021).
D'Arcy and Salmons's review of standard and best practices in linguistics journals comes at a very important time for English Today. Long-time readers of the journal will know that English Today maintains two tracks for publication: peer-reviewed articles of up to 6000 words and editorial-reviewed articles of up to 4000 words. What readers may not realise, though, is that the number of manuscripts submitted for peer review to English Today has increased since D'Arcy and Salmons conducted their survey in 2018. While English Today still relies upon outstanding work submitted for editorial review, the journal increasingly publishes a majority of papers that are reviewed by the “gold standard” of a double-blind jury of peers.
Because manuscripts submitted for peer review are generally longer than those submitted for editorial review, readers may have also noticed that the length of articles published in English Today has been increasing. This is something that Founding Editor Tom McArthur observed in his editorial for the second issue of Volume 21 (McArthur, Reference McArthur2005), where, for the first time, only seven longer papers were published in the issue. This current issue (Volume 38, Issue 1) contains five papers, each of which has gone through rigorous peer review and a number of revisions.
While most reviewers of submitted manuscripts undertake the reviews without any expectation of acknowledgment or compensation, one special group whose contributions can be acknowledged is the journal's editorial board (listed on the inside cover). Without the contributions of numerous anonymous reviewers – both members and non-members of the editorial board alike – English Today would not be able to bring you the high-quality research that readers have come to expect from the journal.
Finally, this issue, the first of Volume 38, represents one more milestone for English Today: Cambridge University Press has agreed to increase the annual number of pages for the volume from 256 to 288. This is the first increase of the journal's annual page quota since it was increased from the 176 pages of the first three volumes to Volume 4's 256 pages in 1988. The current English Today, Volume 38, will be the largest published volume and will allow more space for the outstanding contributions that we are bringing to readers.
It is only fitting, then, that we formally acknowledge in this editorial the five papers and three book reviews published in this issue. Ulrike Stange examines the use of the preverbal modifier so in present-day Englishes. We are also very pleased to bring focus to English in Africa in two papers published in the volume. Monica Adokorach and Bebwe Isingoma examine norms of pronunciation in Uganda, and Antoine Willy Ndzotom Mbakop investigates question tags in Cameroon English. Michael Chesnut and Nathaniel Ming Curran explore the use of English in coffee menus in Korean coffee shops. Finally, Jason Toncic investigates historical and contemporary connections between magic and the standardisation of English. Book reviews by Hamzeh Moradi, Qiong Li & Jianying Du, and Chen Wang complete the volume.
The editors
