Every good thing comes to an end. I have decided to step down as co-editor of the Biolinguistics journal. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people who made it possible for me and my co-editor Kleanthes to take the journal where it is today: the contributors, reviewers, task team members, and, of course, the readers. When I began to think about the possibility of starting a journal, quite a few years ago, I sought the advice of editors and friends, and I want to thank them too. From Norbert Hornstein, I got the idea of trying to make the reviewing process more efficient than what we had experienced with linguistics journals, and to take a more active role in seeking potential contributors, and in deciding what to publish or not. From S.J. Keyser I got the best piece of advice of all: Jay told me to decide right from the start what factor(s) would lead me to stop running the journal I had in mind. Jay went on to tell me that he had told himself that he'd stop running Linguistic Inquiry as soon as it got in the red. Since by then I was already leaning towards a free-for-all, and Open Access model, Jay's criterion did not strike me as the one I'd adopt. Rather, I told myself that I'd stop editing the journal when it would stop being among my top recommendations for my students to submit their works to. Back then, around 2006, biolinguistics was undergoing the beginning of a revival among linguists, and there was certainly a need for a forum where linguists would be given the possibility of building bridges with other disciplines. These attempts, modest as they are, truly deserve an official recognition, in the form of an official publication venue, for them to flourish. I feel that the Biolinguistics journal has certainly contributed to the progress we have witnessed over the past seven years. In the meantime, more publication venues have emerged, and/or opened themselves to work on the biological foundations of language, and linguists have begun to contribute to them. Moreover, open access repositories like bioRxiv now offer the possibility to make one's work rapidly available to the entire community at no cost. All of this is real progress for the field, and I think now is a good time to reflect on where to go next for the Biolinguistics journal. Doing so requires the injection on new ideas, a rethinking of the editorial board, and perhaps of the publication model as a whole, and I think that too long a tenure as editor can get in the way, hence my stepping down.
Let me close by thanking my co-editor Kleanthes K. Grohmann for all the work and energy he put into this project. I'm quite sure it's been a challenging task to work with me and accept some of the suggestions I made over the years. To all of you who have read until this line, remember to contribute to this extraordinary and exiting field in any way you can, and to promote biolinguistics in the strongest sense of the term.
---Cedric Boeckx, Barcelona, March 31, 2014.