We are pleased to present a double issue of the Journal of Specialised Translation which comprises our regular non-thematic issue 36a and very timely special issue 36b on teaching translation and interpreting in virtual environments.
Despite the next pandemic waves, which have affected many people around the globe, including TIS scholars, we observed a sharp increase in the number of submissions. In the case of the non-thematic issue, it grew from 49 in 2019 to 97 in 2020 and in the case of the special issue, it totalled 53 proposals. The acceptance rate was 8% for the former and 13% for the latter. This may be partly explained with the open access and non-commercial nature of the journal and its excellent metrics from JCR/Clarivate (IF=.792 in 2020) and Scopus (Q1 journal).
Our strong commitment to open access from the very beginnings of the journal in 2004 made us enthusiastically welcome and join a pioneering and much-needed initiative — The Council of Editors of Translation and Interpreting Studies for Open Science. The Council was established in 21-22 January 2021 by 32 founding open-access members, including JoSTrans. It was created to promote open access and related practices, such as open data, open methods and open peer reviews (tisopencouncil.eu). We plan to embrace these practices more fully in the near future.
Issue 36a comprises papers on audiovisual translation (Spiteri Miggiani) and accessibility (Jankowska; Robert et al.), translation of advertisements (Cui and Li), CAT tools (Zhang and Nunes Vieira), telephone interpreting for asylum seekers (Jiménez-Ivars) and certified translators in Uruguay (Mones et al.). It closes with a contribution on translation status written by a practitioner (Barabé) and an interview with Alexa Alfer on translaboration.
Issue 36b, guest-edited by Séverine Hubscher-Davidson and Jérôme Devaux, focuses on training in virtual environments, covering various parts of the world: Germany (Ahrens et al.), Canada (Valentine and Wong), Turkey (Şahin and Oral), China (Wang and Wang), Australasia (Gerber et al.; Wu and Wei), and Africa (Afolabi and Oyetoyan).
We hope readers will find plenty of inspiration in both issues!
Last but not least, we welcome Maria Rosario Martín Ruano from the University of Salamanca as our new reviews editor and wish to thank Kristine Bundgaard for her work in this capacity. With this change, we have also modified our reviews policy with the aim of shifting toward more critical review papers.
Łucja Biel
Editor-in-Chief