Second Language Research is a peer-reviewed

Peer review

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

 academic journal

Academic journal

An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...

 in the field of linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, concerned foremost with second language acquisition

Second language acquisition

Second-language acquisition or second-language learning is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the name of the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process...

. It was established in 1985 and is published quarterly by SAGE Publications

SAGE Publications

SAGE is an independent academic publisher of books, journals, and electronic products in the humanities and social sciences and the scientific, technical, and medical fields. SAGE was founded in 1965 by George McCune and Sara Miller McCune. The company is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California,...

. The current editor-in-chief is John Archibald (University of Victoria

University of Victoria

The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...

).

According to the Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports

Journal Citation Reports is an annual publication by the Healthcare & Science division of Thomson Reuters. It has been integrated with the Web of Knowledge, by Thomson Reuters, and is accessed from the Web of Science to JCR Web. It provides information about academic journals in the sciences and...

, the journal's 2010 impact factor

Impact factor

The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...

 is 1.621, ranking it 27 out of 177 in the category "Education & Educational Research" and 17 out of 141 in the category "Linguistics."

Aims and scope

Second Language Research focuses primarily on the application of linguistic research and theories to second language acquisition and second-language performance

Linguistic performance

In linguistics, performance has two senses:It is also one of the two elements in Chomsky's performance-competence distinction, which relates to Language production , with an emphasis upon how this is different from Competence, or the mental knowledge of language itself...

. However, aiming at promoting interdisciplinary discourse, it als publishes contributions in related non-applied fields, such as theoretical linguistics

Theoretical linguistics

Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally considered the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics...

.

Each year, one special issue is published, devoted to some current topic. Recent themes have included:

• Selective first language influence
• The role of neuroimaging
  Neuroimaging
  Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function/pharmacology of the brain...
  
   in second language acquisition research
• Second language acquisition of grammatical aspect
  Grammatical aspect
  In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...