Submission Policies

The editors reserve the right to determine the suitability of submissions. For additional information, please contact the editors. 

Peer Review

To support the quality of scholarship published and to support the editors’ decision making, L2 Journal employs a double-anonymous model of peer review. All article types, with the exception of articles in the “From the Editor” section of the journal, are subject to this review process. 

For every article subject to peer review, journal editors select 2-3 reviewers who have expertise in the relevant subject areas. Peer review generally takes 6-8 weeks. 

Editorial decisions draw on peer review assessments but ultimately lie with the journal editors. 

Publication Schedule 

L2 Journal publishes on a continuous publication model, i.e., articles are published as soon as they are ready, without the need to wait for a traditional issue to be compiled.

Publication Types

L2 Journal publishes multiple types of articles, including general articles (empirical pieces, theoretical pieces); pedagogical reports (practitioner oriented pieces that are either reflective or practical in nature); and brief reports (short preliminary empirical pieces). 

In addition to general issues, the L2 Journal regularly publishes special issues on a broad range topics of relevance to language educators. These special issues are edited by guest editors, who are first vetted by the journal’s general editors and advisory board. Special issue articles are subject to the same peer review process as general issues. More information is available here. 

Rights to Authors

L2 does not require copyright transfer, only permission to publish and archive the article. Copyright holders retain copyright ownership, granting a nonexclusive license to the journal and eScholarship to publish the article, meaning that the author may also publish it elsewhere. Before submitting an article to the journal, please be sure that all necessary permissions have been cleared in any third party material. All articles published in the journal are subject to the journal’s author agreement, which is available in the first step of the submission process or by contacting us to request a copy.

Removal

Once published, a journal article cannot generally be revised or removed. We feel it is important to provide perpetual access to materials published whenever possible and appropriate. However, we will remove publications under special circumstances, including in the case of submission errors, rights violations, or inappropriate content. Please be aware, however, that even after the removal of a work, a citation to the work will remain in our system, along with a URL.

If you would like your work removed from eScholarship, please contact the editors.

Revising Work

Once manuscripts are published, we are generally unable to revise them. If a significant error or omission is discovered, contact the editors.

Plagiarism Policy

We assume that any work submitted to the L2 Journal, either in its submitted form or in a revised form, currently is not being considered for publication elsewhere, nor previously has been published. 

Authors need to clear permissions for use of any copyrighted material that is not subject to fair use.

Open Access Policy

This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution (no APCs). Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author..

Beginning with issue 9(2), the L2 Journal is published under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Long-term Preservation Policy

All materials submitted to eScholarship are automatically deposited in CDL's Merritt Preservation Repository for long-term preservation.