Linguistics

As of November 2024, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listed 906 indexed journals under “linguistics”, most of which are diamond open access – that is, they do not charge fees to either authors or readers. A further list of open access linguistics journals can be found in the oaling blog.

Important open access linguistics journals include:

• Constructions
• Glossa DOAJ
• Glossa Psycholinguistics
• Semantics & Pragmatics DOAJ
• Linguistik Online DOAJ
• Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft DOAJ
• Biolinguistics DOAJ
• Open Linguistics DOAJ
• Dialogue & Discourse DOAJ
• Journal of Historical Syntax DOAJ
• Syntactic Theory and Research

In addition, there are many journals dedicated to the linguistic investigation of particular languages or language families, such as Studies in African Linguistics, Finno-Ugric Languages and Linguistics, Indo-European Linguistics, and Isogloss.

The most important repositories in linguistics include LingBuzz (for general linguistics) and semanticsarchive.net (for the core areas semantics and pragmatics). Depending on authors’ disciplinary identities, linguistics papers can sometimes also be found at Humanities Commons (CORE) or arXiv.org.

The Open Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) also provides an overview of relevant repositories.

Linguistics researchers work with different types of data, from experimental findings to text corpora. Here, the principles of openness and transparency have become increasingly important in recent years. Berez-Kroeker et al. (2022) published an Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management. Linguistic research data and software can be deposited in the Tromsø Repository of Language and Linguistics (TROLLing).

Access to text and language corpora plays a significant role in linguistics – especially in corpus and computational linguistics. The dominant way in which corpora are provided is to set up a web-based query option (either freely accessible, usable free of charge after registration, or not freely accessible). This makes optimal use of the structure and annotation of the corpora and requires neither download nor software installation. However, as a rule, the corpora and tools themselves cannot be downloaded and reused for further dissemination or analysis. This is often due to copyright reasons.

Examples include the COSMAS corpora of the IDS (Institute for the German Language) in Mannheim, Varitext (French, University of Cologne), and the DWDS (Digital Dictionary of the German Language), where a core corpus (Kerncorpus) can be freely downloaded. By contrast, LAUDATIO (Humboldt Universität Berlin), which focuses on corpora of historical language stages, practises an open access model. The European initiative LRE Map covers a large number of linguistic resources (data, tools, guidelines). In linguistics, the open source idea plays an increasingly important role insofar as some tools are offered under open licences, and the standardisation and interoperability of data are taken into account.

Open Text Collections, an initiative funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), aims to make text collections for descriptive linguistics available in a sustainable and open way.