We invite paper submissions for the Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association (DGKL/GCLA) 2026. The Yearbook aims to enable the dynamic exchance of ideas relating to all aspects of Cognitive Linguistics both within the association and in the global Cognitive Linguistics community.
The spectrum of topics covered by the Yearbook is as broad as Cognitive Linguistics itself. As such, the Yearbook of the DGKL/GCLA does not impose specific topical requirements on contributions, as it aims to document the full range of topics investigated by members of the Cognitive Linguistics community. This includes work not just in Cognitive Linguistics in a narrow sense, but also in closely related fields such as psycholinguistics, gesture research, and Cognitive Poetics. It also includes work by researchers in related frameworks that do not (yet?) consider themselves part of the Cognitive Linguistics research program, as long as there is a clear connection to the perspective adopted by the latter.
The yearbook also does not impose specific methodological requirements, as it aims to document the full range of methods employed by researchers in the community. However, recent decades have seen a clear shift away from introspective approaches and towards a range of empirical methods, including standard experimental paradigms from psychology and psycholinguistics as well as a wealth of usage-based methods, ranging from the analysis of individual texts and conversations to quantitative corpus-linguistic methods applied to very large corpora. This is a highly desirable trend and we hope to see it represented strongly in the Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association.
Formatting
Manuscripts should follow the standard conventions of the field (outlined in more detail in the Generic Style Rules for Linguistics):
- The manuscript starts with a title, followed by an abstract of ca. 100-300 words, followed by up to five keywords
- The sections are numbered, starting with 1 (1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1, 1.2.2, …).
- References are given as in-text citations, e.g. (Lakoff 1987). The full bibliographical references are listed alphabetically at the end of the paper, following the Unified Style Sheet for Linguistics.
Apart from that, there are no specific formatting requirements; we recommend to use minimal formatting. Initial submissions can be in PDF format; once accepted, we need the submission in an editable format (.docx, .odt, LaTeX source files) with high-resolution versions of all figures in the paper as separate files. Apart from the manuscript, please add a separate title page with the names and email addresses of all authors. Please also fill in the „Template for legal and ethical declarations“; you will find the template in the ScholarOne submission system (see link in the next section) as a Microsoft Word file (if you don’t have Word, the template can also be edited in e.g. LibreOffice, GoogleDocs, or other word processing software).
Submission instructions
Please submit your papers (ca. 7,000–10,000 words without references) via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gcla. Feel free to approach the editors (Stefan Hartmann, hartmast@hhu.de, and Antje Quick, antje.quick@uni-leipzig.de). with expressions of interest ahead of time, to see if your envisaged paper is a good fit for the Yearbook.
Initial submissions should be in PDF format (with no restrictions on printing, copying, commenting etc.). Upon acceptance, the final version should be submitted in an editable format (.docx or LaTeX source file).
Tentative timeline (with extended deadlines)
From 2025 onwards, the Yearbook is published continuously, i.e. accepted papers appear ahead of print as soon as they are typeset (usually a few weeks after acceptance). The tentative deadlines below apply if you want to make sure that your paper is published in the 2026 volume.
- April 15: Deadline for the submission of first drafts
- End of May: Notifications of acceptance / rejection
- August 1: Deadline for the submission of revised versions
Peer review
The Yearbook of the DGKL/GCLA operates a double-anonymous review process. The referees are asked to assess the following aspects:
- Are the research questions and hypotheses convincing?
- Are the methods used appropriate for addressing the research question?
- Is the paper well-structured?
- Is the paper written in a clear and accessible style?
Reviewers will then make one of the following recommendations to the editors:
- accept as-is
- accept with minor revisions
- revise and resubmit for review
- reject
The final decision is made by the editors. In the initial round of reviewing, each paper is assessed by at least two independent experts from the field. If there is a second round of reviewing, the editors will usually consult one of the two original reviewers.
