Constitution of the Journal

Preamble

Dialogue & Discourse is committed to:

• publishing the best research in the area of discourse and dialogue (as specified by the Aims and Scope document)
• in a timely manner (mean time between submission and decision of 3 months), and
• open to interested readers everywhere (open access).

To achieve this, D&D gives itself the following constitution.

Editor in Chief (and Editor-elect)

The job of the editor rotates among the managing editors. The tenure is 6 months. At any time, at least the editor and the editor-elect (the board member that will be editor after the current one) has been designated.

The editor of the journal has the following responsibilities:

• is the first port of call for all incoming communications (submissions, queries etc.) and is responsible for their timely processing;
• assigns papers to executive board members / action editors;
• moderates discussions on the executive board and, if otherwise no decision can be reached, makes final decisions.

The editor is supported in this by the editor-elect; e.g., the editor can ask the editor-elect to take on some of the responsibilities listed above.

Managing Editors

The managing editors jointly manage organisational questions. The editors also have responsiblities for specific areas, through also being area chairs.

The normal term of service for a managing editor is 4 years. (When the journal starts, however, exactly half of the managing editors will have a term of 5 years, so that at the beginning of year 5 only half of the board changes.) Under normal circumstances, a managing editor whose term has completed will remain on the board until a successor has been found.

In exceptional cases, the board of managing editors can vote to terminate a board member's term early. For this a two-thirds majority is required.

Candidates for successors of leaving editors have to be proposed by a member of the board and accepted by a two-thirds majority. Delegates from endorsing organisations also have to be accepted by a two-thirds majority of the current members of the board.

The areas are served by at least two managing editors, the action editors for that area. Their responsibilities are:

• assigning reviewers (with guidance from the editorial board, see below) to submissions;
• communicating the state of the reviewing process to authors;
• resolving possible conflicts in the reviews;
• make a suggestion on acceptance to editor.

The areas are:

• dialogue systems
• discourse
• linguistics of dialogue
• psychology of dialogue

Editorial Board

The editorial board consists of international experts in the fields covered by the journal.

Researchers are invited into the board by the executive board. The term of service on the board is 3 years. (Again, for the first terms there will be a split between board members with terms of 2 years and those with terms of 3 years, to effect a staggered transition.)

In exceptional cases, the board can vote to terminate a board member's term early. For this a two-thirds majority is required.

Procedures

Reviewing is single-blind (the identities of reviewers are not known to authors, but that of the authors is known to the reviewers). At least three reviewers will review each submission that is not a desk reject. No conflicts of interest are allowed for reviewers (e.g. members of same department, academic supervisors, etc.) Managing Editors and members of the Editorial Board may submit articles to the journal, they will however be excluded from all stages of the decision process.

There is a special category of ``invited papers'', which will be marked as such when published, and which do not undergo the normal review process (but may undergo an editorial process where suggestions for improvements are sought). Invitations for such papers are made by the current editor in chief, if a proposal for an invitation has found a majority on the board of managing editors.

There can be thematic special issues of the journal, which are edited by guest editors. Such special issues can be proposed to the editor in chief by all researchers from the community, and proposals are accepted by majority vote of the board of managing editors. Special issues should have an open call for submissions. At least half of the reviewers for the special issue will be selected by the board of managing editors.