The Open Library of Humanities launches Syntactic Theory & Research

We are delighted to announce the launch of another Open Library of Humanities journal on our in-house publishing platform Janeway. Syntactic Theory & Research focuses on theoretical linguistics and publishes a wide range of articles on the syntax of natural languages and closely related fields. It promotes work on formal syntactic theory and theoretically-oriented descriptive work on particular languages and comparative grammar. The journal also publishes research on the interfaces between syntax and related fields such as semantics, morphology, and phonology, as well as theoretical and experimental studies in sentence processing, language acquisition, and other areas of psycholinguistics that bear on syntactic theories. 

Syntactic Theory & Research (STAR) emerges as a new journal building upon the best traditions of Syntax: A Journal of Theoretical, Experimental, and Interdisciplinary Research, which is published by Wiley Blackwell under a hybrid model. The two former co-editors along with many former members of the editorial board of Syntax will serve in the same capacity at the new journal, which enjoys broad support of the international academic community. This move has been possible thanks to the support of our more than 340 library partners that financially support the Open Library of Humanities making diamond open access possible. 

OLH Executive Director Dr Caroline Edwards said: "It’s fantastic to be flipping Syntactic Theory & Research to diamond open access with the OLH. We have a strong community of linguistics journals published by the OLH, which includes Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, and Laboratory Phonology. Syntactic Theory & Research is a brilliant addition, extending the OLH’s support for syntactic scholarship worldwide."

Prof Klaus Abels and Prof Suzanne Flynn, the journal’s founding editors, commented: "As the first open access journal in theoretical and experimental syntax, STAR will fill a gap in the publication landscape of our field. We are excited that the fruits of research will be freely accessible to researchers globally. Given that native speaker linguists of many understudied and endangered languages rarely have access to paid-for journals, the step to open access is not just principled but answers a scientific imperative for the field of linguistics in particular. We call on our colleagues, professional bodies, departments, university libraries, and research funders to financially support the editorial services necessary to ensure that STAR becomes a world leading journal." 

Syntactic Theory & Research is one of seven new journals joining the OLH in 2023-2024, which includes five other journals that are “flipping” away from subscription models: Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture; Political Philosophy; Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science; Review of the History of Economic Thought and Methodology; [in]Transition and Quaker Studies (formerly published by Liverpool University Press in partnership with the OLH). Thanks to the support of our international network of library members, the OLH has been able to undertake the complex, skilled technical work of migrating these journals and committing to fund the cost of their publication in perpetuity.

About OLH: The Open Library of Humanities is an award-winning, academic-led, diamond open-access publisher of 30 journals based at Birkbeck, University of London. With initial funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and subsequent support from Arcadia, a charitable fund, the platform covers its costs by payments from an international library consortium rather than any author fee. This funding mechanism enables equitable open access in the humanities disciplines, with charges neither to readers nor authors. 

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