LDD publishes research articles on the theory and practice of language documentation, language description, sociocultural aspects of language use and linguistic research, language policy, language revitalization, and related topics. The journal has a focus on small, minority, and endangered languages. All articles are made freely available online once they have completed the production process.

LDD’s shift to publishing through Aperio coincides with new editorial leadership—Lise Dobrin and Mark Sicoli, both of UVA’s Department of Anthropology and Interdepartmental Linguistics Program, join as editors, with Dobrin serving as the new Managing Editor.

LDD was founded in 2003 as a print journal published at SOAS in London under the editorship of Peter Austin. In 2014 the journal moved online to the EL Publishing platform (www.elpublishing.org) established by Austin together with colleagues David Nathan and Julia Sallabank. Austin, Nathan, and Sallabank will continue as editors under the new arrangement with Aperio.

Aperio, a service of UVA Library, publishes discipline-leading, high-quality open access journals. By removing price and permission barriers, Aperio increases the dissemination, visibility, accessibility, and impact of research and scholarship across disciplines, while providing its journals with a stable and committed institutional home.

Dobrin says, “When LDD was founded, the language documentation research agenda was still exploratory and new. But it is now solidly at the center of linguistics, and the important work published in LDD has contributed to making it so. It will be a privilege to steward the journal in the coming years as language documentation continues to expand and develop. I am especially pleased that the journal will still be open-access, and that Aperio will provide support for linked multimedia, so that the results of documentary linguistic research can flow without impediment to all who might benefit.”

“UVA Library welcomes LDD to Aperio. We hope LDD will attract additional journals elevating endangered languages and cultures. Open access is an inclusive space and the UVA Library is committed to an inclusive scholarly ecosystem,” says Carmelita Pickett, AUL for Scholarly Resources & Content Strategy.

LDD is the fourth journal in Aperio’s portfolio and is available at www.lddjournal.org. The journal remains free for both readers and authors, and past volumes remain available. All articles will continue to be published using a Creative Commons license meaning authors retain their copyright and have the right to attribution.