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Natural Language Processing

Editorial statement

Natural Language Processing encourages papers reporting research with a clear potential for practical application. Theoretical papers that consider techniques in sufficient detail to provide for practical implementation are also welcomed, as are shorter reports of ongoing research, conference reports, comparative discussions of NLP products, and policy-oriented papers, e.g., examining funding programmes or market opportunities.

All contributions are peer reviewed and the review process is specifically designed to be fast, contributing to the rapid publication of accepted papers.

As you prepare your manuscript, consider that your open access article processing charge is likely covered by one of Cambridge University Press’s transformative agreements, which support open access publishing. Read more about the agreements here and check whether your institution is covered here. If funding is not available through a transformative agreement, waivers are available.

Submissions

Submission of a paper to Natural Language Processing is held to imply that it represents an original contribution not previously published and that it is not being considered elsewhere.

Any queries regarding manuscript submission or editorial policy should be directed to the Editorial Team at [email protected].

Manuscript requirements

Abstract: Papers should be preceded by an abstract of approximately 300 words.
Spacing: Manuscripts should be single spaced throughout, with wide margins. Pages should be numbered consecutively.
Title page: The first page of the manuscript should give the title, the name(s) and full mailing address(es) of the author(s), together with e-mail addresses(es) when possible.

Please note that all manuscripts should be submitted in LaTex: please use the style files available below to prepare your manuscript:
NLP LaTeX Files

Get in touch with [email protected] if you encounter any issues or have queries regarding the LaTeX files.

Article types

Article: it presents a detailed and rigorous original study which contributes directly to its field.

Book Review: it provides insight and opinion on a recently published scholarly book.

Editorial Note: a short note written by the journal Executive Editor to discuss a specific journal-related topic or announce recent journal-related developments. By invitation only.

Emerging Trends: a paper written by the Emerging Trends Editor which discusses emerging trends or issues of particular importance for the field of Natural Language Processing. By invitation only.

Industry Watch: a paper written by the Industry Watch Editor which discusses applications or developments in the world of commercial Natural Language Processing. By invitation only.

Position paper: an essay which presents an arguable opinion about an issue, typically that of the author.

Squib: it does not need to have all of the components that an Article would normally have; it differs from a full-length article in that it need not have a fully developed analysis or solution to a particular problem.

Survey paper: it provides a comprehensive summary of research on a certain topic, and a perspective on the state of the field and where it is heading.

Conventions

Spelling British or American English spelling may be used provided it is used consistently throughout the paper.

Footnotes should be kept to a minimum. Any acknowledgements, or explanation of the genesis of an article, should appear as the first note keyed to the article title by an asterisk (*). Note indicators in the text should follow punctuation.

Bibliographical references should be given in parentheses in standard author-date form in the body of the text: (Lee and Devore 1968: 236). When a second or subsequent work by a particular author in the same year is cited, references should be distinguished by letters (a, b, c, etc.) placed after the date. When a work is written by three or more authors, the first name only should be given with et al. added. A group of references within the text should be date ordered, the earliest first.

A complete list of references cited, arranged alphabetically by author's surname, should be typed single-spaced at the end of the article. The style adopted for particular types of publication should be as follows:

Akmajian A. and Lehrer A. (1976). NP-like quantifiers and the problem of determining the head of an NP. Linguistic Analysis 2, pp. 295-313.

Huddleston R. (1984). Introduction to the Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McCord M. C. (1990). Slot grammar: a system for simpler construction of practical natural language grammars. In Studer R. (ed.), Natural Language and Logic: International Scientific Symposium. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp. 118-45.

Salton G., Zhao Z. and Buckley C. (1990). A simple syntactic approach for the generation of indexing phrases. Technical Report 90-1137. Department of Computer Science, Cornell University.

Style

Subheadings should be typed with prefatory numbers indicating the level of importance, 1, 1.1, 1.1.1. No more than three levels of subheading should normally be used.

Quotations Single inverted commas should be used except for quotations within quotations, which should have double inverted commas. Longer quotations of more than 60 words, or quotations which are of particular importance or the focus of your discussion, should be set off from the text with an extra line of space above and below, and typed without inverted commas.

Hyphenation should be kept to a minimum: lifetime, cooperation, subheading.

Numbers should be written out up to 100, except where they refer to precise measurements. Above 100, use a comma rather than a space where four or more digits are involved (2,000 not 2 000). The words 'per cent' should be written out rather than abbreviated to %. Centuries too should be written out in full ('the nineteenth century' rather than 'the 19th century'). Make all journal numbers Arabic.

Abbreviations Do not use pp. before page numbers if the volume number is also given. Use Zip code form (MA, IL) for US state names. Elide page numbers to the shortest pronounceable form: 56-7, 281-3, but 215-16. Contractions and acronyms should have no full points (Dr, NATO), but abbreviations and their plurals should retain them (vol., vols., ed., eds.).

Please also note:

Make the titles of published works italic (not bold) by underlining or using an appropriate word processor font.
Do not use inverted commas around chapter titles in edited books, journal articles, and the titles of unpublished dissertations.
Use minimum capitalisation, that is proper names and the first word of the title only capitalised (French, Spanish, Italian citations follow this rule, but German nouns retain capitals in the normal way).
Anglicise places of publication: Brunswick, The Hague, Florence, rather than Braunschweig, 's-Gravenhage, Firenze.

Illustrations

Tables should be numbered consecutively and designed to fit a printed page of 247 x 174mm. Vertical lines should not be used and horizontal lines should be used only at the top and bottom of the table and below column headings. Totals and percentages should be labelled and units identified.

Illustrations should be provided on separate pages, numbered consecutively in a single sequence whether they are line figures or photographs. Captions should be typed on a separate sheet, single spaced. Indicate in the margin of the typescript approximately where in the text tables and figures should fall.

Figures. On acceptance, authors will be asked to provide artwork of a professional standard suitable for direct reproduction. Line drawings, good photo prints and sharp copy are acceptable. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.

Photographs should be provided with a resolution of 300 dpi, numbered sequentially with any other illustrations (Fig. 4, Fig. 5, not Plate I, Plate II).

Last updated: 11 March 2024

Policy on prior publication

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.

English language editing services

Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.

In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.

Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.

Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.

Authorship and contributorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.

Author affiliations

Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.

For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.

ORCID

We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:

Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.

See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.

If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.

ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.

Supplementary materials

Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.

Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.

Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.

Author Hub

You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.

In particular, any use of an AI tool:

to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.