Mission

Share your experiences, thoughts and opinions on language, teaching, and learning! Where? A good place is right here at Outside the Box: A Multi-Lingual Forum, a research journal dedicated to providing a venue for publishing research on language in its many guises, and we welcome contributions from both students and teachers, young and old, inside and outside the university community.

As as the title suggests, we welcome submissions in the language of your choice. The OTB Forum is published periodically with submissions accepted throughout the year. Papers are first screened by the editor to ensure that submissions guidelines have been met and to determine whether the paper merits further independent review. Most importantly, submissions must meet the remit of the OTB Forum, which, as an applied research journal, is to link theory to practice. The OTB Forum places great importance on anonymous double-blind peer review. If a submission passes the screening process, the paper is assigned to Editorial Advisory Board members and additional readers with specialization in the area of the submission. The OTB Forum publishes both quantitative and qualitative research. Authors hoping to publish research in the OTB Forum may submit in any language. Submitting authors should ensure that manuscripts:

  • ✓meet the remit of the OTB Forum;
  • ✓are written to the standard of good final copy with appropriate register, formatting, and referencing;
  • ✓follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.); and
  • ✓include an abstract in English.

For more detailed information, please refer to the Submission Guidelines.

The OTB Forum is dedicated to ethical behavior in fulfilling its mission. Please refer to the OTB Forum Ethics Policy.

Note that the OTB Forum publishes articles in various languages. To date we have published in English, German, Spanish, French, and Chinese, and we certainly welcome submissions in any language.

 Topics Covered 

During its existence, the OTB Forum has published on a wide variety of topics, including but not limited to the following:

  • ✓Cross-cultural works
  • ✓Translation studies
  • ✓Corpus linguistics
  • ✓Geopolitics
  • ✓Pronunciation
  • ✓Learning experiences

Note that the OTB Forum generally consists of several general sections, which vary by issue but usually include the following:

  • Articles (formerly Theory and Other Dangerous Things)
  • Language Learning and Teaching
  • Around the World
  • The Techno-Tip
  • Creative Writing
  • Reviews

 Editorial Board 

  • James A. Elwood, Meiji University, Japan
  • Jeroen Bode, Ibaraki University, Japan
  • George Robert MacLean, University of the Ryūkyūs, Japan
  • Shinichi Nagata, Tsukuba University, Japan

 Contact 

To contact the OTB Forum, e-mail us at:

editor(at)otbforum.net

URL: www.otbforum.net

Date last updated: August 22, 2023 * Copyright 2023 by the OTB Forum Editorial Board.