CURRENT RESEARCH IN CHINESE LINGUISTICS (ISSN 1726-9245) (formerly known as Newsletter of Chinese Language) was first published in 1989 by T.T. Ng Chinese Language Research Centre of the Institute of Chinese Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The journal publishes a single volume yearly containing four issues since 2026 instead of two issues.

Current Research in Chinese Linguistics is indexed and abstracted in the following databases:

·    CSSCI (Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index)
·    DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
·    EBSCO Discovery Service
·    Linguistic Bibliography Online
·     Linguistics Abstracts Online
·    MLA International Bibliography
·    TCI
·    TDOne (TDNet)
·    THCI (Taiwan Humanities Core Index)

I. Aim and scope

CURRENT RESEARCH IN CHINESE LINGUISTICS aims to provide a platform for publishing excellent outcomes of diachronic and synchronic research of Chinese. In doing so, we hope to push forward and deepen investigations in Chinese linguistics. The journal accepts manuscripts on topics in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and interaction of the interface properties between any of these linguistic components of Chinese and related languages. Work done from a cross-dialectal or cross-linguistic perspective is especially welcome. We look forward to the submissions from our colleagues.

II. Frequency

Four issues per year (January, April, July, October).

III. Manuscripts

The journal publishes research papers and comments and responses on specific subjects.
The journal accepts papers submission in general but may call for papers when there is a special topic.
Manuscripts should be written in English or in Chinese, limited to 20 single-spaced pages, submitted online: https://www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/clrc/english/pub_crcl.html. The format of the manuscript is not limited in the first submission.

IV. Editing Affairs

The Chief Editor/Associate Editors can decide to accept a manuscript or not on the basis of reviewers’ opinions. If there is difficulty in deciding the manuscript, then the Chief Editor/Associate Editors can consult the opinions of the Editorial Board. Each manuscript will be reviewed anonymously by at least two reviewers. The flow chart for manuscript processing is nine staged:

1. manuscripts received (submission acknowledgement, plagiarism and AI writing checks, and rejection notification for manuscripts not aligned with the journal’s aims and scope),
2. searching for reviewers,
3. review,
4. revision,
5. second review (second review after revision according to the reviewers' opinions),
6. additional review (For those difficult or controversial manuscripts that need one or two additional reviewers),
7. final review by the Chief Editor/Associate Editors based upon the reviewers’ or Editorial Board’s opinions),
8. typesetting,
9. printing.

It normally takes at least 6 months for the procedure of soliciting reviewers and submission for reviewing in general.

V. Reviewers

The journal invites scholars within the specialty as reviewers in various aspects.

VI. Review Criteria

The manuscript is categorized according to the following review criteria:

(1) the relevance to the aim and scope of the journal,
(2) the level of originality of the ideas,
(3) the level of sufficiency of the evidence,
(4) the level of rigor in argumentation.

The review results are categorized as four levels:

(A) published without significant revision
(B) definitely published if certain revisions are made
(C) reconsidered for publication after a thorough revision
(D) rejected as unsuitable for publication

For those manuscripts that have problems in writing mechanics (too many misspelled words or grammar) or whose theme is beyond the scope of this journal, the manuscripts will be returned to the authors without any review.

(A) and (B) are at the similar category; (C) and (D) are at the similar category. If two reviewers’ comments belong to (A) and (B) for a paper, the Chief Editor/Associate Editors can decide to accept it directly, or if two reviewers’ comments belong to (C) and (D) for a paper, the Chief Editor/Associate Editors can decide not to accept it. If the reviewers’ comments cross the two different categories, the paper should be re-reviewed again or reviewed by the third person.

VII. Manuscript handling procedure

·    Manuscript submission: The format of the manuscript is not limited in the first submission. Manuscripts should be submitted online:  https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13692366.

·   Revision: For those provisionally accepted manuscripts, the journal will provide the reviewers’ revising suggestions to the author who is requested to follow the format of this journal and revise the manuscript according to the reviewer’s suggestions.
·   Publishing: The revised manuscript will be published after the final review. The priority (order) of publishing will be decided by the time order of the final review.

VIII. Copyright, publication ethics and malpractice statement

(1) Relevant information on Open Access

Current Research in Chinese Linguistics (CrCL) has been an open access journal since 2012, and thus all content (including content published in or before 2012) is freely available to users or their institutions without charge, registration, or the need to create an account. The journal does not have article processing charges (APCs) nor article submission charges. Articles published in this journal are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in the journal under the license, but modifications to the work are prohibited. No part of this publication may be used for commercial purpose without written permission from the publisher. For permission, contact the publisher, T.T. Ng Chinese Language Research Centre, Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Authors retain the copyright except for commercial rights, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights of all their published papers. Authors also retain the right to self-archive the article.

(2) Archive

All journal articles can be downloaded from this website free of charge. These articles are open access with user’s rights defined by CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.

(3) Publication and authorship

• List of references should be provided.
• Information of the research funding should be provided.
• No plagiarism is allowed.
• No fraudulent data is allowed.
• Publishing same article in more than one journal is forbidden.
• All copyrighted material should be properly credited in the article.

(4) Author’s responsibilities

• Authors are obliged to participate in double-blind peer review process.
• All authors should have significantly contributed to the research.
• All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
• Authors should obtain written permission for quotations from unpublished material, or for all quotations in excess of 250 words in one extract or 500 words in total from any work still in copyright, and for the reprinting of illustrations or tables from unpublished or copyrighted material.

(5) Peer review/responsibility for the reviewers

• Judgments should be objective.
• Reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders.
• Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.
• Reviewed articles should be treated confidentially.

(6) Editorial responsibilities

• Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article based on reviewers’ opinions.
• Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept.
• Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
• When errors are found, editors should promote publication of correction or retraction.
• Editors should preserve anonymity of reviewers.