Linguamática is a scientific journal created 16 years ago (2009) by Xavier Gómez Guinovart, José João Almeida, and me. It is a joint venture between the University of Vigo and the University of Minho. Our main goal was to create a forum where we could discuss Natural Language Processing in the languages we were studying. For example, if we are conducting research on the Portuguese language, writing a paper about that work in English is tedious. You end up having to translate each example and explain every detail specific to the language. When writing in your own language, however, there is common ground on which we can build our work. Given the joint venture, the journal began accepting papers in any language from the Iberian Peninsula.
Note that we did everything on our own and with the help of two dozen scholars who reviewed paper proposals. During these 16 years, we have never charged authors or readers and have never received funding from universities (just hosting and, more recently, DOI attribution).
First, we invited well-known researchers to join the scientific committee. Then, we installed the Open Journal System on a university computer and publicised the journal on mailing lists. Since we did not expect many submissions for the first editions, we sent out specific invitations for invited papers. We continued this practice for the first few years to ensure the journal’s success.
To make some editions viable, we published special issues for events that included extended versions of selected papers. We did this for multiple events with a wide range of papers and subjects.
Currently the original editors gave the place to Hugo Gonçalo Oliveira and Marcos Garcia as the main editors.
About Rankings
Scholars are evaluated by their research work, and publications are evaluated by the publication forum (not the work quality). This is a discussion I do not want to open, so let’s ignore that, and go on. We soon started adding Linguamática to journal indexes. One of the most important was to add it to Scopus, which required us to add an English title and abstract. But it worked, and Scopus accepted us. We are indexed since 2016, and Linguamática is ranging from Q2 to Q3, having its last year as the worst, with Q4.
Scholars are evaluated based on their research, and publications are assessed based on the publication forum, not the quality of the work. I don’t want to open that discussion, so let’s ignore it and move on. We soon began adding Linguamática to journal indexes. One of the most important was adding it to Scopus, which required us to provide an English title and abstract. It worked, though, and Scopus accepted us. We have been indexed since 2016, and Linguamática ranges from Q2 to Q3. Its last year was the worst, with Q4.
While this fall to Q4 made us sad, these 8 years with Q2 and Q3 made us very proud, especially for a journal that does not publish in English. As you might understand, scholars and researchers prefer to cite work written in English when publishing in other forums that use the English language. It is a shame, but understandable.
Anyway, if you want to help making Linguamática a Q2 journal again, please cite work published in this Journal. I am sure you will find very relevant work to cite. And, if we get a higher ranking, this will make it a better forum for your work, that is relevant for your evaluation.