Languages: Elevating Excellence and Diversifying Perspectives

After two years in the job of Editor-in-Chief, it is my pleasure to welcome Professor Anthony Pak-Hin Kong from The University of Hong Kong (HKU) as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Languages. Anthony, a Fellow of both the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and the Academy of Aphasia, is a speech-language therapist specializing in aphasiology, disordered discourse analyses, and neurogenic communication impairments in multilingual speakers. Currently serving as the Head of the Academic Unit of Human Communication, Learning, and Development (HCLD), he is also the Director of Aphasia Research and Therapy (ART) Laboratory at HKU. He is leading a number of federally funded clinical research projects that focus on language rehabilitation for Chinese-speaking individuals with aphasia following stroke, traumatic brain injury, or dementia. These investigations include the Intensive and Comprehensive Aphasia Program (ICAP), neuromodulation of Chinese aphasia, gesture–verbal therapy, and linguistic biomarkers of dementia.

Two years ago, Languages received its first impact factor of 0.9, and the figures from 2024 show that the impact factor has remained constant. Languages is also in the first quarter of the SJR data. In addition, the number of citations and scores on Citescore have increased each year. This is a clear indication of a growing number of researchers in the broad field of languages and linguistics, which see the benefit of publishing in an open access journal and choose to submit their manuscripts to Languages. Among the most cited papers in this journal are studies in widely differing fields, including contributions focusing on the use of ChatGPT in language learning, on identifying bilingual phenotypes, and on sampling and generalizability in Lx research. Since the launch of the journal in 2016, Languages has developed into one of the major outlets for language-focused research.

Although many journals only accept papers in a narrowly defined area, we believe there is room for a journal that has a wider scope. After all, for many societal issues, information from different fields is needed to inform decision-making processes. A journal such as Languages, which has a wider scope than most academic journals, helps to overcome the compartmentalization of research and may make it more likely that a researcher notices relevant articles in an area outside their own specific field. The appointment of Professor Kong marks a significant expansion in the scope of Languages and opens up new possibilities for exploring a wide range of topics in communication sciences and disorders, clinical linguistics, and psycholinguistics.

One of the key attractions of Languages is, beyond any doubt, the possibility for researchers to edit Special Issues on a topic of their choice. However, we have recently tightened procedures for Special Issues to ensure that the quality of individual contributions is closely monitored. In addition, the rejection rates for the journal have doubled in comparison with previous years. We believe that these measures are needed if we are to take the journal to the next level.

The success of Languages is certainly due to the excellent work of the team behind it. These are, first of all, the previous Editors-in-Chief, Usha Lakshmanan, and her successors, Juana Liceras and Raquel Fernández Fuertes. However, a journal can only thrive with the support of the research community. We are very fortunate at Languages that 62 internationally renowned researchers are members of the Editorial Board. Their expertise in the reviewing process is crucially important to uphold the quality of the publications that appear every year. In addition, we are impressed with the dedication with which the Languages team at MDPI support the Editorial Board in the reviewing and publication processes.

We are confident that Languages will continue its upwards journey in the coming years, and we will do everything we can to help facilitate this. But most of all, we look forward to working with the research community to drive the research agenda forward across various fields. This is a challenging task, but one of the most interesting ones a researcher can hope to be involved in.

We wish everyone a very productive 2025 and look forward to seeing your publications in Languages.

Best regards,

Anthony Pak-Hin Kong and Jeanine Treffers-Daller (Co-Editors-in-Chief)