Dictionaries

About Dictionaries

Dictionaries — Journal Profile

Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America is the peer-reviewed journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, the scholarly society for lexicography in North America. It carries the print ISSN 0197-6745 and the online ISSN 2160-5076, is read on Project MUSE, and publishes articles on all aspects of lexicography, on areas of linguistic inquiry that relate to lexicography, and on the study of reference works in general as they bear on dictionary-making — in the words of the Society's own description of its journal. Its regular sections report on reference works in progress and on working knowledge from current lexicographical projects, and a substantial portion of each year's journal is devoted to reviews of newly published dictionaries, lexicography websites, and critical and historical studies of lexicography. For a reader who meets the one-word title in a catalogue, this profile explains what a journal called simply Dictionaries actually does, who publishes and edits it, how its review process works on verified evidence, what its recorded bibliometric position is with sources stated, and how a lexicographer, linguist or historian of reference works should judge whether their work belongs in it.

Identity: A One-Word Title With a Precise Referent

Identification here rests, as it must with so generic a title, on the ISSN pair and the publishing society, not on the word Dictionaries alone. OpenAlex resolves both 0197-6745 and 2160-5076 to one source record, S2764944651, named Dictionaries. The Dictionary Society of North America names its journal on its own site as Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, gives the print ISSN 0197-6745 in its subscription information, and describes the same scope quoted above. The contributor instructions hosted on Project MUSE are headed with the full title and address submissions for the same journal. Three independent anchors — the Society, the platform, and the OpenAlex record — therefore describe one and the same publication. Any other serial, book or website using the word dictionaries without these ISSNs and without the Society is a different thing, and citations should always carry the full title or an ISSN so that the journal is not lost among the reference works it studies — an irony the journal's own contributors, who write about how dictionaries are catalogued and cited, would appreciate.

The Society behind the journal gives it its context. According to the Society's own account, the Dictionary Society of North America was founded by participants in a colloquium on research on the history of English dictionaries held at Indiana State University in Terre Haute on 20–21 May 1975, with the stated purpose of fostering scholarly and professional activities relating to dictionaries, understood as lists of words or other vocabulary items with information about their meaning or other linguistic properties. The Society carries out that purpose through meetings, research projects and publications, including a newsletter and this journal. It meets every other year — its meetings list runs from Terre Haute and Urbana through London in Ontario, Berkeley, Durham, Boston, Chicago and Bloomington to a virtual meeting in 2021, Boulder, and Buffalo — and its 25th biennial meeting in Buffalo in May 2025 was framed as a celebration of the Society's fiftieth anniversary. The journal is thus not a commercial publisher's product in search of a market; it is the journal of a learned society at the centre of North American lexicography, and its contents reflect the Society's membership of dictionary-makers, scholars of dictionaries, linguists and historians.

What the Journal Publishes: Scope in Detail

The Society's description, quoted in part above, is unusually complete, and this profile follows it closely because it is the authoritative statement of scope. First, the journal publishes articles on all aspects of lexicography. That covers the theory and practice of dictionary-making: how entries are structured, how senses are divided and ordered, how definitions are written, how usage labels are applied, how corpora are built and used as evidence, how bilingual and specialised dictionaries are compiled, and how digital dictionaries and dictionary apps change each of those tasks. Second, it publishes work from areas of linguistic inquiry that relate to lexicography — semantics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, language variation and related fields — where the linguistic work bears on dictionary-making. Third, it publishes the study of reference works in general as they bear on dictionary-making, which brings in encyclopedias, glossaries, thesauri and other wordbooks, historic and modern. A manuscript in one of those three lanes, argued as scholarship, is in scope; a manuscript that merely uses a dictionary as a source, without saying anything about dictionaries or reference works themselves, generally is not.

Two regular special sections give the journal part of its character. Reference Works in Progress reports on current lexicographical projects — the Society's current wording also names a Working Knowledge section reporting on and excerpting current projects — and these sections are, according to the contributor instructions, by invitation of the editor, although inquiries and proposals for a themed section or special issue are invited. Reviews occupy a substantial portion of each year's journal: reviews of recently published lexicons and lexicography websites, reviews of critical and historical studies of lexicography, and occasionally reviews of biographies and popular literature related to dictionary-making and etymology. Reviews are overseen by the reviews editor and are by invitation only, although suggestions of books, online dictionaries or websites that the journal should review are welcomed. Recent special issues show the range in action: volume 44, issue 2 in 2023 was a special issue on Indigenous lexicography, guest edited by Christine Schreyer and Mark Turin, and a later special issue took up the reception of dictionaries by their users — how readers accept, object to, annotate, campaign against or otherwise answer back to dictionaries — treating reception as worthy of study in its own right, alongside production. A special issue on children's dictionaries addressed the history, compilation, corpora, design and classroom use of dictionaries for children. Together these issues map the field's present concerns: Indigenous and minority-language lexicography, the public life of dictionaries, and lexicography for young readers.

Peer Review, Editors and How to Submit

The contributor instructions hosted on Project MUSE, in the version fetched for this profile, give the clearest verified account of the process. The journal encourages submission of manuscripts for articles treating any aspect of lexicography or related linguistic inquiry, or the study of reference works in general. Within reason, length of manuscripts for regular articles is not a concern — a notable policy in a field where a thorough study of a dictionary's history or microstructure cannot always be compressed. Manuscripts are accepted for consideration only by electronic submission in Microsoft Word, and initial submissions must contain an abstract and several keywords. Article submissions that fit the journal remit are reviewed anonymously by two or more referees. Because manuscripts are distributed to referees electronically for anonymous review, authors must remove all indications of authorship from the text and from identity-tracking markers such as document properties and tracked changes. Submissions should be sent to the editor, named in those instructions as Lynne Murphy, and should follow the Dictionaries Style Sheet in formatting and in citation and referencing style, the style sheet being linked from the Society's journal page.

Reviews follow a different route, and authors should not confuse the two. Reviews are overseen by the reviews editor, named in the fetched instructions as Traci Nagle, and are by invitation only; suggestions that the journal should review a particular book, online dictionary or website are welcomed, and the instructions direct such suggestions about books for review to Paul Fallon. The special sections are likewise by invitation, with inquiries invited. The practical summary for a prospective contributor is therefore simple: research articles are openly submitted to the editor and anonymously refereed by at least two readers; reviews and section contributions begin with an inquiry or an invitation, not with a finished, unsolicited text. No submission fee or article processing charge is stated in the fetched instructions, so any fee position is described here as not published in the sources verified for this profile; authors should confirm the position with the editorial office if a charge would affect their decision to submit.

Publication Pattern, Access and the Society Model

The journal appears in numbered volumes with two numbers a year in its recent pattern: the Society's journal page showed Dictionaries 46.2 as the current issue when fetched, and the special-issue history — 42.1, 43.1, 44.2, 45.2 — is consistent with a twice-yearly rhythm in which each volume carries two issues. Volume numbering reaching 46 also gives a rough, checkable sense of the run's length alongside the Society's fifty-year history, without needing an unverified first-publication claim. Access follows the society model. Individuals who join the Dictionary Society of North America receive one print copy of the journal per issue and password-protected access to the online version through Project MUSE, together with the Society's newsletter. Institutions can subscribe in print, digital, or combined form by contacting the Society. Back issues may be purchased from the Society for 100 US dollars plus shipping, with individual members receiving a fifty percent discount on individual issues, prepayment being required before shipment — prices stated on the Society's journal page when fetched, and liable to change, so they are reported here as the Society's published terms at fetching rather than as permanent facts. The journal is also read more widely through Project MUSE library subscriptions, which is how most university readers encounter it.

On open access, the verified position is limited and this profile states it plainly. OpenAlex records the source as not an open access journal as a whole. A search of the Directory of Open Access Journals API for the print ISSN, saved with this profile's research files, returned no result rows, and in line with careful practice that outcome is recorded here as a listing that could not be verified, not as proof of any definitive status. Authors subject to a funder open access mandate should therefore discuss compliance routes with the editor before submission rather than assuming a gold open access option, and should check the journal's current self-archiving terms on the platform or Society pages at that time.

Metrics and How to Read Them for a Society Journal

The bibliometric figures in this profile are attributed to the OpenAlex source record fetched directly for this work, S2764944651. On that record, Dictionaries has 880 works and 2,705 citations, with summary statistics giving an h-index of 25, an i10-index of 72, and a two-year mean citedness of 0.33. Recent yearly counts in the same record show 22 works in 2024 and 21 works in 2025, consistent with a small, twice-yearly society journal publishing a modest number of substantial pieces rather than a large article volume. Its leading topics in OpenAlex are lexicography and language studies, linguistics and language studies, and historical linguistics — a topic profile that matches the Society's stated scope closely, which is a useful external check that the record and the journal are the same entity.

Interpretation needs field context. Lexicography is a small, specialised field; its journal cannot accumulate citations at the rate of a biomedical or general linguistics title, and a two-year mean citedness of a third of a citation is a property of the field's size and citation habits, not a verdict on quality. The h-index of 25, accumulated across the whole run, is the more informative figure for a journal of this kind, because dictionary scholarship is cited for decades: a history of a major dictionary or a study of definition practice remains a standard reference long after a two-year window has closed. A correction point follows. The earlier thin record on this site gave an h-index of 7 with no source named. That figure does not match the OpenAlex record fetched here, and because h-index values are database-specific, an unsourced value should not be quoted at all. This profile therefore replaces it with the attributed OpenAlex figures above and advises any reader quoting a metric for this journal to name the database and the date checked, exactly as this profile has done.

Readership and Standing in the Field

The readership is the field itself. Practising lexicographers — the editors and compilers of commercial, scholarly and digital dictionaries — read Dictionaries for method, for history that informs present practice, and for reviews that assess new lexicons as working tools. Scholars of lexicography and metalexicography read it as their field's central North American journal. Linguists whose work touches meaning, variation or history read it where their questions meet dictionary-making. Historians of books and reference culture read its historical studies and its Reference Works in Progress reports, which document projects that may not publish results for years. The Society's small grants programme, advertised for practical or scholarly lexicographic projects by independent researchers, dictionary makers and early-career scholars, shows the same community from another angle: this is a field of practitioners as well as professors, and the journal writes for both. That dual audience explains the journal's tone — scholarly and refereed, but hospitable to reports from inside live projects and to reviews written as professional assessment, in a way a purely theoretical journal would not be.

Is Dictionaries Right for Your Manuscript?

The strongest fit is a study that is itself about dictionaries or reference works: a history of a dictionary or dictionary tradition, an analysis of defining practice, labelling, sense division or corpus use, a study of bilingual, specialised, Indigenous, children's or digital lexicography, or an account of how users receive and respond to dictionaries. A strong fit also includes linguistic work that explicitly draws out its consequences for dictionary-making, as the scope statement invites. Work for the special sections and themed issues follows the inquiry route described above, and reviews begin with the reviews editor. A weak fit is a general linguistics or literature paper that cites dictionaries only as authorities for word meanings, a word-list without analysis, or a commercial product announcement without scholarly apparatus. Before submitting, an author should carry out three checks on verified public sources: read the Society's journal page and the current contributor instructions on Project MUSE, and confirm the manuscript follows the Dictionaries Style Sheet; strip the file of every identity marker, including document properties, as the instructions require, and include the abstract and keywords at first submission; and, if a funder mandate or an employing institution imposes an open access or indexing condition, confirm the current position with the editorial office, because neither an open access charge nor a wider indexing list could be verified in the sources for this profile. A manuscript that is genuinely about dictionaries, prepared as the instructions direct, is aimed at the one journal whose entire readership is guaranteed to care about its subject.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the ISSNs of Dictionaries?
Print ISSN 0197-6745, as given by the Dictionary Society of North America, and online ISSN 2160-5076; both resolve to OpenAlex source S2764944651.

Who publishes Dictionaries?
The Dictionary Society of North America, the learned society founded in 1975 to foster scholarly and professional activities relating to dictionaries. The journal is read online on Project MUSE.

Who edits it?
The contributor instructions fetched on Project MUSE direct article submissions to editor Lynne Murphy, with reviews overseen by reviews editor Traci Nagle.

How does peer review work?
Article submissions that fit the remit are reviewed anonymously by two or more referees. Authors must remove all indications of authorship, including document properties and tracked changes, before submitting electronically in Microsoft Word, with an abstract and keywords.

What does it publish?
Articles on all aspects of lexicography, related linguistic inquiry, and the study of reference works; invited reports on reference works in progress; and a substantial reviews programme covering new lexicons, lexicography websites and studies of lexicography.

What are its metrics?
On the OpenAlex record fetched for this profile: 880 works, 2,705 citations, h-index 25, i10-index 72 and two-year mean citedness 0.33. Quote metrics with their source, because values differ by database; the earlier unsourced figure on this site has been superseded by these attributed figures.

How do readers get it?
Society members receive print copies and Project MUSE access with membership; institutions subscribe through the Society in print and/or digital form; and libraries provide Project MUSE access. Back issues were listed by the Society at 100 US dollars plus shipping when fetched, with a member discount.