Minutes of ACAL EXECUTIVE MEETING
(Note from the Secretary: Since ACAL at Rutgers was cancelled, the usual ACAL business meeting was not held. In place of that, the Executive Committee met; these are the results of that meeting.)
March 24, 2020
Chaired by Akin Akinlabi, ACAL President
Present: Akin Akinlabi (President), Laura Downing (Vice President/President-Elect), Laura McPherson (EC member), James Essegbey (EC member), Katie Franich (EC member), Lee Bickmore (Past President), Sharon Rose (ACAL Treasurer), and Mike Cahill (ACAL Secretary). This meeting was held by Zoom, with thanks to Laura McPherson for arranging this. When necessary to avoid ambiguity, the ACAL meeting and the ACAL association will be labeled as such.
Much of the business below is a result of Rutgers University making the difficult decision to cancel hosting the ACAL 51 conference due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Generally the EC meets at ACAL before the general business meeting, at which time the necessary decisions and information are passed to those meeting attendees. ACTION: Cahill will pass on selected notes of this meeting to the general ACAL association membership, and post this on the ACAL association web site in the place of the normal business meeting minutes.
1. Name of conference
It was decided that the cancelled Rutgers ACAL meeting would still be referred to as ACAL 51, and next year’s meeting at the University of Florida will be termed ACAL 52.
2. Term extension of ACAL EC members
Election of a new Vice-President/President-elect and a new EC member was scheduled for the 2020 ACAL general meeting. With a physical meeting impossible, the current President, Vice President, and EC member whose term was due to expire (Laura McPherson) all agreed to extend their terms one more year, and elections will be held in 2021 at the University of Florida.
3. ACAL dues and the cancelled ACAL 51
It was decided that the collection of ACAL association dues would proceed normally, with those desiring to present a paper at ACAL 52 to be current on dues payment. [Sharon Rose reported that no one so far has requested a refund of dues due to ACAL 51’s cancellation. We decided that if anyone objects to paying dues without the opportunity to present at Rutgers, this will be handled on a case-by-case basis, with financial hardship being taken into account.]
4. Language Science Press issues
It was pointed out that local university editors of ACAL proceedings do not always have all the information they need (e.g. it is possible to publish one or a few papers at a time, and not wait for the full volume, and there have been issues with the BibTex references format). A better system is needed to pass on publication information.
There are still many issues with the format of submissions. The LaTeX Committee (established at ACAL 50) could help with this. We need a “How To…” document to help authors in formatting submissions, to be posted on the ACAL association web site and also communicated to authors by the sponsoring university. Action – Franich to communicate this to Michael Dierks, LaTeX Committee head. Cahill to post this document on the ACAL association web site.
5. ACAL50 Proceedings
The current members of the ACAL EC have assumed responsibility for publishing ACAL 50 Proceedings. Getting reviewers for the submissions has been sometimes difficult. Also, submissions have arrived in a variety of formats, from LaTeX to Word to PDF, in spite of instructions to the contrary. For those submissions that are accepted, it will be required that the authors submit in either the Word Stylesheet or the LaTeX format. ACTION: all EC members, keep processing these.
6. Abstracts Accepted by Rutgers and Florida
About 110 oral papers and 25 posters were accepted by Rutgers (with external reviewers). It was decided that any of these presenters who would like to present the same paper at Florida can submit these to Florida, and they will be automatically accepted. ACTION: Akinlabi to send a list of these presenters to James, so their acceptance at Rutgers can be confirmed.
The next Proceedings volume will be labeled Proceedings of ACAL 51-52. If the Rutgers-accepted presenters would like to submit their papers for publication in this volume without presenting them in person at Florida, they can submit them (to Florida) at any time. However, they will be warned that decisions on acceptance will not be made until after ACAL 52, when all submissions will be processed. Rutgers and Florida will share responsibility for co-editing this volume.
The normal practice of a presenter being limited to one solo and one shared presentation will be followed at Florida, and this would include presentations previously accepted at Rutgers.
7. Possible resource sharing with Florida
Since ACAL 51 will not be at Rutgers, their university funding will not be available. Rutgers has spent money already, including buying conference bags, which if possible, would be good to re-purpose for ACAL 52. ACTION: Akinlabi will check the cost of these, send to Assegbey, who will ask about Florida buying these. Presumably registration fees and other funding would cover the cost. Our usual ACAL association practice is to donate $1000 to the hosting university, and we will do that for both Rutgers and Florida. ACTION: Rose will send this money. ]
Sharon Rose reported that we have approximately $9000 in the ACAL association account at present – a healthy balance.
Respectfully submitted,
Michael Cahill, ACAL Secretary