Editorial

As we now only have one editorial per year, there are many things to pack in here. First, as announced last year, ReCALL went completely open access on 1st January 2024 – all papers published since then are entirely free to read. As planned, no authors have needed to pay their own APCs (article processing charges), with fees being covered by transformative agreements, authors’ institutions or a waiver agreement. Our policy is science first – financial considerations should never be a barrier to good research publications. It is still early days, though, to see if policy changes have impacted submissions in any substantial way.

The 2023 impact factor for ReCALL increased again, this time to 4.6. If you are not familiar with this, essentially it means that each article published in 2021 was cited 4.6 times on average in the two-year period 2022–2023. Given the continued high quality of articles published in the journal, we have hopes the impact factor will remain high, though the fluctuations can be quite substantial due to other causes, such as the low numbers in our fields and changing algorithms. For example, from 2023, an impact factor is attributed to all journals in the Web of Science Core Collection, expanding the field from 194 to 297 journals in Linguistics, and from 269 to 756 in Education; ReCALL now ranks 5th and 22nd in those respective fields. Further, it must be pointed out that the impact factor should not be mistaken for a measure of journal “quality”, despite its importance for many stakeholders.

Cambridge University Press (CUP) funds a prize for the “best paper” published in ReCALL in the three latest issues (35.3, 36.1, and 36.2) leading up to the Editorial Board meeting at the EUROCALL conference, held this year in Slovakia. The Editors draw up a shortlist that is then voted on by the Editorial Board. We are delighted to announce that this year’s prize goes to Oliver James Ballance (2024) for his paper “Sampling and Randomisation in Experimental and Quasi-Experimental CALL Studies: Issues and Recommendations for Design, Reporting, Review, and Interpretation”. Readers will know that the vast majority of papers published in ReCALL involve some kind of empirical study or data collection and analysis; this paper is unusual, as it takes a stance on a methodological issue.

CUP experienced a major cybersecurity incident in early June. The Press was able to respond to this incident quickly, taking immediate action to contain it and limit its impact. As part of this action, they took some of their systems offline as a precautionary measure. Although various effects continued to be felt for some time, nearly everything seems to be up and running. We can reassure authors that CUP found no evidence that personal data was breached. The only direct impact authors and readers might have noticed would have been a slower turnaround time between acceptance and publication online in FirstView, and the final issue of 2024 (36.3, September) appearing online a few weeks later than scheduled.

We are looking forward to our next issue in May on the theme of Migrants’ and refugees’ digital literacies in life and language learning, edited by Linda Bradley, Nicolas Guichon, and Agnes Kukulska-Hulme. We also have another special issue planned for 2027: Artificial intelligence and CALL: Exploring the implications of generative-AI tools for language education, to be edited by Branislav Bédi, Neasa Ní Chiaráin, and Manny Rayner. The call will be available shortly via the journal homepage. This special issue was approved at the same time as the one on migrants; the choice to place it second reflects the recency of the appearance of ChatGPT, which took much of the world by surprise when a basic free version was released on 30th November 2022. Though many researchers have since sought to study its effects (both constructive and disruptive), it is not always optimal to conduct research in a crisis situation, reacting to external forces – just as we saw with early studies during the COVID-19 crisis. Further, the technology is advancing rapidly, with many new tools appearing, often with specialised functions, and existing ones being updated frequently, all of which needs taking into account.

The publishing world has also had to take on board the changes that GenAI can bring. On the positive side, it has the potential to open up academic publishing to ever more researchers with different language backgrounds around the world. ReCALL welcomes and encourages appropriate uses to further this end. At the same time, authors are, as always, responsible for the entirety of their work and should carefully check and validate any outside input – GenAI can in no way be held responsible for errors in submitted work, which is why it cannot be cited as a co-author. This applies most obviously perhaps to language, where authors use GenAI to improve the text itself. Even here, though, transparency is essential to pre-empt suspicion from reviewers and readers alike. More debatable is using it to suggest research questions or study designs, create research instruments, analyse the results, create visuals, or generate the accompanying text. ReCALL has therefore updated its policy on the use of GenAI, with a longer statement and the requirement for full transparency of use (or indeed non-use), in line with best current practice at CUP, in other journals, and COPE guidelines. If in doubt, get in touch, or be open in your cover letter. This has been an opportunity to update our other author declarations, and to institute a clear policy on inclusive language, coming soon. We hope that this will help encourage good practice and transparency in several areas for open science.

As always, we have to thank our reviewers – a total of 132 people from 37 different countries between 1st October 2023 and 30th September 2024. Many of them reviewed more than one version of the same paper, with some reviewing several submissions. Their role is essential not (just) as gatekeepers, but in providing valuable feedback to authors to help improve the papers to the standard expected in ReCALL and vastly facilitating the editor’s decision on the final manuscript. This work is entirely voluntary and, unfortunately, undertaken with little recognition, despite its central role in scientific publication. A very big thank you then to all of the following:

Muhammad Abdel Latif, Victoria Abou Khalil, Müge Adnan, Ángela Alonso, Mohammad Amiryousefi, Alberto Andujar, Rima Bahous, Jessie Barrot, Lucía Bellés-Calvera, Cathryn Bennett, Serge Bibauw, Zeynep Bilki, Françoise Blin, Jill Boggs, Atipat Boonmoh, Kate Borthwick, Jeremie Bouchard, Hossein Bozorgian, Lisa Bradley, Emma Brooks, Louisa Buckingham, Marco Cappellini, Ahmet Cekic, Hao Jan Chen, Kate Tzu-Ching Chen, Chin-Wen Chien, Yazdan Choubsaz, Alejandro Curado Fuentes, Fotini Diamantidaki, Sofia Di Sarno García, Melinda Dooly, Vera Dugartsyrenova, Mohsen Ebrahimzadeh, Linda Edwards, Laura Eilola, Even Einum, Khaled Elebyary, Martina Emke, Fiona Farr, Lionel Fontan, Luciana Forti, Ana Frankenberg-Garcia, Soraya García Sánchez, John Gillespie, Alice Gruber, Stella Hadjistassou, Regine Hampel, Han Han, Francesca Helm, Anesa Hosein, Zeping Huang, Philip Hubbard, Samira Ibnelkaid, Peter Ilic, Volkan İnceçay, Sake Jager, Teppo Jakonen, Juhyun Jang, Kristi Jauregi Ondarra, Lianjiang Jiang, Napat Jitpaisarnwattana, Sofie Johansson, Ayad Kamalvand, Qian Kan, Regina Kaplan-Rakowski, Brent Kelsen, Ferit Kılıçkaya, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Gosia Kurek, Chun Lai, En-Minh (John) Lan, Yu-Ju Lan, Mimi Li, Rui Li, Meei-Ling Liaw, Tanjun Liu, Yeu-Ting Liu, Rong Luo, Eva Malessa, Marni Manegre, Katja Mäntylä, S. Susan Marandi, Antonio Martínez Sáez, Paul Meara, Bing Mei, Giulia Messina Dahlberg, Imma Miralpeix, Mohammed Mohsen, Valentina Morgana, Gary Motteram, Carmen Muñoz, Liam Murray, Naseh Nasrollahi Shahri, Quint Oga-Baldwin, Florence Oloff, Fredrik Olsson, Carlos Ordoñana Guillamón, Marina Orsini-Jones, Agnieszka Palalas, Anastasia Pattemore, Luke Plonsky, Helene Pulker, Zhi Quan, Barry Reynolds, Mahshid Rezaeyan, Elaine Riordan, Ali Roohani, Mehmet Sak, Mathias Schulze, Jeremie Séror, Rustam Shadiev, Natalia Shalaeva, Huawei Shi, Peppi Taalas, Dara Tafazoli, Kevin W. H. Tai, Eda Tekin, Mark Teng, Guy Trainin, Wen-Ta Tseng, Nina Vyatkina, Jing Wang, Judy Wang, Zhe Wang, Seth Wiener, Joseph Yamazaki, Gang Zeng, Danyang Zhang, Zhe Zhang, Nicole Ziegler, Bin Zou

I’m delighted to be able to finish on a positive note and with some good news. There is always a balance to be found between continuity and innovation. I have been Editor of ReCALL for over 10 years, first with June Thompson and Françoise Blin; now is a good time to think of the next stage of our history. Pascual Pérez-Paredes has been shadowing ReCALL business throughout 2024 and will be joining me as co-Editor from 1st January 2025. Pascual is a Professor of Applied Linguistics and Linguistics at the Universidad de Murcia in Spain, previously at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely and is a well-known figure in CALL, as well as a member of several advisory boards, journals, and associations. His expertise and experience at ReCALL, first as a member of the Editorial Board and then as Associate Editor, places the journal in the best of hands for the next few years. We also welcome a new Associate Editor, Nina Vyatkina, who is Professor and Interim Chair of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas in the USA. Our heartfelt thanks to both of them for their past input and future commitment! The full list of Editorial Board members and others can be found on the ReCALL website.

Reference

Ballance, O. J. (2024) Sampling and randomisation in experimental and quasi-experimental CALL studies: Issues and recommendations for design, reporting, review, and interpretation. ReCALL, 36(1): 58–71. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344023000162