This past week marks the sixth anniversary of the launch of the publishing platform called EL Publishing (ELPub), which was established by Peter K. Austin, David Nathan and Julia Sallabank in July 2014 to publish top quality peer-reviewed open access electronic and print journals, multimedia and monographs on documentation, description and support of endangered languages. We publish on the theory and practice of language documentation, language description, sociolinguistics, language policy, and language revitalisation. In 2016 we established the Language Contexts series, to publish information about the linguistic ecology and contexts in which one or more endangered languages or varieties is spoken, rather than about the structure of the languages/varieties themselves. Articles include information about speaker demography, social organisation, culture, linguistic ecology, language vitality, and language use and transmission in the local community, its diaspora and the Internet. There is also discussion of the range of languages/varieties in use by speakers, including socio-cultural factors affecting language/variety choice. So far, we have published eight Language Contexts articles.
In 2019 we began a new series called Language Snapshots which are short articles that aim to provide key summary information about endangered and minority languages, and about the social and cultural situation of their speakers and communities. Language Snapshot articles aim to complement existing reference materials such as Glottolog, the Endangered Languages Project, or Ethnologue (unfortunately, access for most users now requires payment of at least $480 per year). We have published five Language Snaphots articles so far.
The Language Snapshots series is intended as an avenue for publishing accurate, up-to-date summary information on endangered languages and their use, and on current research, that is not available elsewhere. Contributors are likely to be researchers (including early career researchers such as graduate students), community members, or others working on language revitalisation, language documentation, dictionary or text creation, history or ethnography. Articles could be based on materials prepared for a grant or scholarship application, or the introduction to an MA or PhD thesis. Submitted articles are lightly reviewed by an areal specialist and the series editors. Publishing a Language Snapshot might be a first step before later expanding the content to a longer and more detailed Language Contexts article.
All EL Pub publications are free to download under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) licence and are published at no cost to authors. Design and layout is managed by Tom Castle, a professional designer and artist based in London. David Nathan, linguist and digital language resource developer based at the Groote Eylandt Language Centre, designs and manages our detailed catalogue and website.
To date we have published 16 volumes of Language Documentation and Description and are currently working on several future volumes, including a special issue edited by Candide Simard (University of South Pacific) on the Sylheti language spoken in Bangladesh, India, London and elsewhere. A further special issue edited by Lise Dobrin and Saul Schwartz called “The Social Lives of Linguistic Legacy Materials” is being prepared for 2021. All publications on our website are fully indexed and searchable via a Search facility designed and built by Edward Garrett.
For up-to-date information on EL Publishing visit our website or like and follow us on Facebook. If you are interested in submitting a paper or a book proposal for publication please contact elpublishing2017@gmail.com.