This is going to be a rather different item than “Koerner’s Korner” from previous years. There are a number of reasons for this.

To begin with, E. F. K. (“Konrad”) Koerner is no longer supervising the day-to-day affairs of Historiographia Linguistica, after having done so, as founder and “Editor-in-chief”, for 46 straight years. Instead, there is now — as for Diachronica (which he founded in 1984 and edited until 2001) — a new arrangement:

This change wraps up a long career at the helm of HL, but, as is stated clearly in the composition of the board, it does not constitute the end of K. Koerner’s contribution to the journal. The executive and review editors remain in constant contact with him and happily benefit from his vast experience. They are also thankful for the trust that K. Koerner has placed in them, and they hope to live up to the expectations of the authors, the members of the board and the readers of HL.

The transition has been progressive. The fact that the new editors first assisted K. Koerner before taking on more responsibility has made it possible for the change to proceed smoothly. This change does not in any way imply that anything will be altered regarding the scope and the orientation of the journal. HL’s central purpose is of course to encourage and disseminate research on ideas developed in the core disciplines of grammar and linguistics, and on aspects, social, institutional and biographical, which may be relevant to situating them in their historical context.

The core disciplines do not however exhaust the topics that may be of interest to us. The description of HL’s scope, as it appears on the site of the journal, is as wide as it should be, given that the study of language has never been cordoned off from, as the presentation of the journal makes clear, “anthropology, sociology, pedagogy, psychology, neurology, and other disciplines”. These “other disciplines” such as, of course, the philosophy of language, logic and mathematics (see e.g. the paper by Nevin in this issue), also include biology, and even ethology and primatology (on the latter two, see the paper by Stephen Anderson on Schwidetzky in issue 47.1); as well as perhaps more marginal direct (i.e. in linguistics rather than in philosophy, e.g. in discussions on materialism) contacts with physics and chemistry: the concept of ‘valency’ was borrowed from the latter, and energetism in linguistics links to speculative physics. We should also keep an open mind on language technologies, such as computational linguistics, machine translation, the automatic treatment of corpus data, programming languages for linguistic analysis etc. These modern applications are sui generis historical objects (they involve, for example, vast stratified networks of researchers) that will probably attract more attention in the future.

A major change in our publication policy is introduced starting with the present issue. From now on, all papers will be published online before their number reaches the “critical mass” for putting together a full issue, which will then be printed. This is an excellent initiative from Benjamins and has many advantages: papers are published earlier, production delays are shortened (since papers are formatted as they arrive, not in bulk), and subscribers looking forward to receiving the next issue can be satisfied (and placated) more promptly.

In spite of this new organization we must apologize for being again months behind the regular schedule for the publication and printing of the whole issue. The reasons for this tardiness remain the same: the challenge of finding referees, the fact that submissions are unevenly spread in time, the occasional need for significant revisions and the attendant necessity of multiple exchanges with authors.

The new “online first” policy is implemented in the context of a recent upheaval in academic publishing, and a general drive toward fast publishing. Some academic publishers are now evolving in the direction of a generalized “open access” through an intermediate step, in the form of “transformative journals”. This trend is consolidated by the fact that research institutions appear to be increasingly encouraging authors to publish under lax licenses and full open access (with no embargo period). Rights protecting authorship now tend to be minimal and new publishers (sometimes offering limited service and competence) are entering the scene. This situation may be understandable in fields where the pressure for fast publishing is high and in which subscription to the major journals is (or was) very costly. It may less be so for linguistic historiography, a field not averse to long-term reflection and in which, more trivially, journals offered rather modestly-priced subscriptions. Further, that authors may now be asked to shoulder the cost of publication is not, in our view, desirable, for the obvious reason that authors cannot all be equally well funded by their respective institutions. This policy will also entail a reallocation of financial resources between scholars and libraries, a potential source of (hopefully, temporary) problems. Amidst these uncertainties, our greatest hope is that Benjamins will remain the safe harbor it is, with highly competent and efficient people working in good conditions.

The colleagues listed below have been kind enough to put their expertise in the service of HL, reporting on proposals and helping improve the texts submitted to us for the issues 47.1 and 47.2/3. They deserve our deepest thanks fort their good will and their assistance. (Our sincerest apologies go to anyone whom we may have inadvertently omitted.)

On several occasions, Ekaterina Velmezova has helped us assess the relevance of a paper, and find a referee. Her help has always been greatly appreciated.

We wish to express our gratitude to the authors of the articles and reviews that have appeared in HL. We thank them for their patience in answering our various queries.

Special thanks must be extended to Klaas Willems (Ghent), our Review Editor since September 2010, for securing informative reviews and editing them in line with our stylistic conventions. The task of the Review Editor is certainly not an easy one. It entails tracking new publications, judging their importance and looking for expert reviewers who are willing to dedicate time to writing a review – and who are increasingly difficult to find. Without the help of Klaas Willems we would not be able to cope with the many books devoted to the history of linguistic thought or related subjects that have appeared in recent years.

Last, but by no means least, special thanks go to Anke de Looper of John Benjamins Publishing Company in Amsterdam, who for many years has taken care of the various tasks that have to be performed on the publisher’s side with great care, attention to detail, and patience. And it would be very remiss of us if we failed to acknowledge the work, efficiency and generous support of Patricia Leplae, JB’s Production Manager. It has always been a pleasure to collaborate with her.