It is the end of an era. As of July 1, 2026, Johan Rooryck will step down as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Glossa, having served two consecutive terms as Editor-in-Chief. In line with Glossa’s Constitution, this planned transition is grounded in the idea that rotating editorial roles are part of good publishing practices.

Johan has been Editor-in-Chief at Glossa since its inception 10 years ago, having previously served as the Executive Editor of the Elsevier-owned journal Lingua from 1999 until 2015. In 2015, with a vision to being able to publish under conditions of Fair Open Access, the editorial team and editorial board of Lingua parted ways with Elsevier to create a new, open access journal. Under the stewardship of Johan (alongside Guido Vanden Wyngaerd and Waltraud Paul), the editorial team and board went on to found the Diamond Open Access journal Glossa: a journal of general linguistics – a journal owned and controlled by the linguistics scholarly community, with no financial barriers to publishing for authors. The transition from Lingua to Glossa made waves within and beyond the field of linguistics, and has since inspired other scholarly journals to “flip” to Open Access models of publishing. Johan has continued to play an integral role in various Open Access initiatives and organizations, working tirelessly to make the vision of equitable, scholar-owned, community-driven, publicly accessible research the standard, and not a mere aspiration.

The members of the editorial team are deeply grateful to Johan for his immeasurable contributions to Glossa. Under Johan’s stewardship, the journal has become one of the leading journals in general linguistics, with over 1100 articles published in only 10 years. Johan’s tireless work ethic, his wit and humor, and his leadership and guidance have made working with Glossa an honor and a privilege. We are ecstatic that Johan has decided to stay involved with Glossa in his new role as Production Editor, a role also carried out by Fernanda Ferreira at our sister journal Glossa Psycholinguistics.

Moving forward, Lyn Tieu will continue to serve as Co-Editor-in-Chief, and Gabriel Martínez Vera, currently one of Glossa’s Associate Editors, will take on the role of Co-Editor-in-Chief alongside Lyn. Together with the other eight members of the Editorial Team and 31 members of the Editorial Board, we will continue to ensure that Glossa remains a premier outlet for research in linguistics, maintaining high scientific quality and scholarly standing. We continue to welcome research in general linguistics with theoretical implications that shed light on the nature of language and the language faculty.