Introduction
The Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics (PAL) series publishes articles in English dealing with all major areas of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and language acquisition. The articles are selected from among those presented at the Annual Symposia on Arabic Linguistics and are subject to a rigorous editorial and peer-review process prior to final acceptance for publication.
The PAL volumes are published by John Benjamins (Amsterdam and Philadelphia). Their goal is to disseminate high quality research on Arabic framed within current linguistic theories and models of analysis. The first volume of appeared in 1990 as part of John Benjamins’ series Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. As of 2013, the volumes will be published under a new series Studies in Arabic Linguistics with the same publisher.
Reviewing
The goal of the reviewing process is twofold: First, to help the editors of each volume reach a decision regarding a manuscript submitted to the volume, and second, to provide invaluable feedback to authors to help them improve the manuscript in significant ways before final publication. We, therefore, expect reviewers to provide constructive criticism, but without denouncing. Courteous criticism will be much more helpful to the author, to the PAL series, and ultimately to the field of Arabic linguistics. Also it would be especially helpful to the author, should you refer to scholarly literature, that you provide full bibliographic information.
Reviews are expected to be a written report between 1 and 5 pages in length, stating a recommendation regarding the manuscript, reasons for such a recommendation, as well as specific comments/questions/suggestions to the author(s).
Please submit your review to the editors as a Word or PDF document via e-mail.
We ask that you begin the report with a brief introduction summarizing the main points and contributions of the manuscript and explicitly indicating what your recommendation is from among the following options:
- Should be rejected.
- Should not be published unless revised (extensively).
- May be published with (minor) changes.
- To be published as it is, not withstanding editorial/stylistic adjustments.
In the body of your report, please provide the reasons for your recommendation. You may find it useful to consider the following questions when writing your report.
- Is there originality, significance, and contribution of the research to the existing literature?
- Is prior research of the topic acknowledged and discussed?
- Is the argumentation cogent? Are the arguments convincing and well presented? Are relevant data provided in support of the position being taken?
- To the extent you can tell, are the data accurate?
- If relevant, is the experimental design suitable?
- Is the paper clearly written? Are the theoretical assumptions explicitly laid out? Are terms clearly defined?
- Is the paper well organized? Is it written in a style that is suitable for an academic refereed publication? Is the paper appropriate in length for the topic being addressed? Are the data clearly transcribed and appropriately glossed?