About

Language Documentation and Description (LDD) is an international journal that publishes peer-reviewed research on language documentation, language description, and language support, broadly conceived.

Focus and Scope

LDD publishes research articles on the theory and practice of language documentation, language description, sociocultural aspects of language use and linguistic research, language policy, language revitalization, and related topics. The journal has a focus on small, minority, and endangered languages.

While the default language of publication is English, LDD welcomes submissions in Spanish, French, and other major languages as the journal’s editorial expertise allows. Authors may opt to provide an additional abstract in a language other than English in order to increase accessibility for their article’s readership.

LDD publishes four basic categories of content:

  1. General Research Articles on topics within the scope and focus described above.
  2. Review Articles. Review articles differ from reviews in using one or more recently published book-length works to make a larger point of the author’s own. Review articles evaluate the place of new works in their theoretical and topical literatures and assess their contributions to linguistics and adjoining fields.
  3. Language Context Articles. These offer detailed information on the social and cultural contexts in which languages or varieties are spoken, covering topics such as speaker population, social organization, cultural features, linguistic ecology, multilingualism, language vitality, and language use and transmission in the community, diaspora, and digital sphere.

LDD welcomes proposals for special issues on relevant topics that fall within the journal’s scope. While the journal is no longer accepting individual Language Snapshot submissions, we welcome proposals for collections of Language Snapshot articles (these provide compact overviews of one or more languages or varieties, with up-to-date information on the language, its speakers, and current research activity). Prospective authors are encouraged to contact the managing editor with queries or proposals for special issues, Language Snapshot collections, or review articles. 

Open Access Policy

LDD 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. All articles will be published under Creative Commons licenses. See the Copyright and Licensing Policy for more information.

Copyright and Licensing Policy

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms. If a submission is rejected or withdrawn prior to publication, all rights return to the author(s):

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC), or Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  • Provided they are the owners of the copyright to their work, 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, in a journal or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
  • 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.
  • Submitting to the journal implicitly confirms that all named authors and rights holders have agreed to the above terms of publication. It is the submitting author's resonsibility to ensure all authors and relevant institutional bodies have given their agreement at the point of submission.
  • It will be the responsibility of the authors to secure all necessary copyright permissions for the use of third-party materials in their manuscript. Authors will be required to provide written evidence of this permission upon acceptance of their manuscript.

Publication Scheduling

Beginning with volume 22 (2022), LDD is published as a single volume throughout the year. Articles in the general issue are made available without delay once they have gone through production. Articles in special issues are published together at one time.

Journal History

LDD was first published on an annual basis by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project at SOAS, University of London. Volume 1, edited by Peter K. Austin, appeared in 2003. Between 2003 and 2021, 21 volumes were published, comprising over 250 papers.

In 2014 Peter K. Austin, David Nathan, and Julia Sallabank launched EL Publishing, a free, platinum open access publishing platform independent of SOAS. International editorial and advisory boards were established, along with full peer review of all submissions. Volume 13 of LDD and all previous papers were published by EL Publishing under a Creative Commons licence.

In 2018 LDD began publishing articles describing the sociolinguistic ecologies and vitality of particular languages or groups under the category of Language Contexts. In 2019 LDD began another new article series, Language Snapshots, providing concise descriptions of linguistic ecologies and current research. Publication of papers in Spanish and French commenced in 2020.

In 2022 the journal was moved to the University of Virginia to ensure its sustainability and better serve its readership.

Sponsoring Organizations

Language Documentation and Description is published with the support of the University of Virginia Library, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Program in Linguistics.

University of Virginia Library
University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
University of Virginia Program in Linguistics