Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics

The new submission formatting requirements are described in  the Formatting Instructions for TACL Submissions document dated August 3, 2018; template files are available on the submissions-instructions page .

Camera-readies will use the same files, but have customized instructions: see the Formatting Instructions for TACL Camera-readies document, dated August 3, 2018. 

The new files mostly adapt the ACL 2018 files, which means they impose A4 paper size, provide line numbers for submissions for ease of reviewer reference to specific document locations, and are compatible with natbib. We have discontinued supplying Word templates, and authors will need to supply LaTeX source to MIT Press for publications.

Highlights of the newly revised instructions:

• The first section lists the most common mistakes that lead to desk rejection (submission) and publication delays as non-compliant papers are returned to the authors for correction (camera-readies).
• Explanations and examples for correctly parenthesizing citations are supplied.
• The new reference formatting requirements make the scholarly record more easily trackable, e.g., by requiring version numbers for arXiv preprints.

Due to a large number of spam registrations, the ability for users to create a TACL account is now disabled.  Please contact support@transacl.org if you would like to register as an author; include the following information:

First name

Last name

Desired username (The username must contain only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens/underscores.)

Desired email address for emails from TACL to be sent to 

The ACL has adoped new policies for *ACL conferences and TACL regarding submission and review; these are listed here.

These policies go into effect for the Jan 1st, 2018 TACL submission round.  This implies that submissions for the Jan 1st round must obey its corresponding anonymity window, which begins December 1st, 2017.

[The problem was resolved on December 23rd, 2016

Original subject: Please do not try to submit until further notice: system problems]

There is a technical problem preventing submission uploads to the TACL system.  We are working to resolve the issue, and will post an announcement when it is fixed, but please bear in mind that in late December, system administration staff are often out of the office.

Reviewers should still be able to submit reviews via the system, action editors should still be able submit decisions, and email to editors-in-chief@transacl.org still functions: we believe the issue is with correctable corruption in the directories where uploaded files are stored

The "Resubmission Policy for ACL, EACL, NAACL, EMNLP Conference Submissions" has been revised to clarify the status of papers withdrawn from conferences.

The short version is: "TACL considers papers that were reviewed by a conference and not accepted, such as papers that were withdrawn during an author response period before an official decision was received, to have been rejected from the conference."

See the Author Guidelines for the full version.

There has been a slight change to how revisions of (b) papers should be resubmitted: by email instead of system upload.  The protocol for revisions of (c) papers remains the same - via the system.

Updated instructions are at the "Revision and Resubmission Policy for TACL Submissions" section of the instructions.

With the expiration of Michael Collins' term as co-editor-in-chief of TACL, Mark Johnson and Kristina Toutanova have been selected to be co-editors-in-chief together with continuing co-editor-in-chief Lillian Lee.

Thanks very much to Michael Collins for all he did for TACL! 

TACL has switched to using CC-BY 4.0, the Creative Commons "Atttribution" license. See Stuart Shieber's Journal of Language Modelling 2012 article, The case for the Journal's use of a CC-BY license, for  discussion.

This change applies retroactively to previously published TACL papers.