Himalayan Linguistics is a refereed web journal and archive of grammars, dictionaries, and text collections specializing in the languages of the Himalayan region. The term "Himalayan" is used in its broad sense to include north-western and north-eastern India, where languages of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, and Austro-Asiatic linguistic stocks are spoken; the languages of Nepal, Bhutan and the Tibetan Plateau; the languages of northern Burma and Sichuan; and the languages of Nuristan, Baltistan and the Burushaski speaking area in the west.

The editors have decided that access to Himalayan Linguistics will be free; that is, there will be no subscription fee.  The primary reason for this — and, indeed, for using the web journal as opposed to the printed paper format — is to make the information contained in the journal accessible to scholars in developing countries, in particular the countries of the Himalayan region.  Web access is steadily increasing in these areas, and this technology allows fast and affordable access to current research.  It is our hope that scholars from the Himalayan region will not only be able to access Himalayan Linguistics, but will also be active contributors to it.

Each article and archived document published by Himalayan Linguistics will constitute a separate issue. Issues will be numbered sequentially. There are two numbering systems, one for journal articles and the other for archived grammars, dictionaries, and text collections. Journal articles will be numbered beginning Himalayan Linguistics: Journal No. 1; archived documents will be numbered beginning Himalayan Linguistics Archive No. 1. This mode of numbering will also serve as the mode of citation. Each issue of the journal and archive will be uploaded to the website as soon as the final version has been accepted for publication. Issues of both the journal and the archive will therefore appear with variable frequency.

The abstracts of papers and archived documents will be screen-readable and will also be available for download in Adobe Acrobat format; papers and archived documents will be downloadable in Adobe Acrobat format. Papers will remain downloadable as long as HL continues in existence. In addition, there is a simple search engine which will allow readers to search the published papers and archived documents by language, topic, author, and citation.

Himalayan Linguistics is published by the General Editor, Professor Carol Genetti of the University of California, Santa Barbara, together with the Associate Editors, Professors Michael Noonan of the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin and Dr. David Waters of SIL International, and the Review Editor, Professor Anju Saxena of Uppsala University.

Each issue of Himalayan Linguistics is protected under copyright, with copyright held jointly by the editors..

Financial support for Himalayan Linguistics has been provided by the College of Letters and Science, the Graduate School, and the Department of Linguistics of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Thanks also to the University of California, Santa Barbara/Letters & Science Information Technology for providing the webspace for the journal.