Syntactic Theory and Research (STAR) publishes a wide range of articles on the syntax of natural languages and closely related fields. The journal promotes work on formal syntactic theory and theoretically-oriented descriptive work on particular languages and comparative grammar.

STAR also publishes research on the interfaces between syntax and related fields such as semantics, morphology, and phonology, as well as theoretical and experimental studies in sentence processing, language acquisition, and other areas of psycholinguistics that bear on syntactic theories.

In addition to full length research articles, STAR features short articles which facilitate a fast review process.