I take great pleasure in announcing that beginning with the first issue of volume 16 the Asia Pacific Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing (APJSLH) will be published under a new title: Speech, Language and Hearing (SLH). The new title is designed to broaden the international scope of the journal. As of 2013, SLH will be published by Maney Publishing, a leading publisher of over one hundred academic journals in the health and life sciences. Maney Publishing works closely with numerous professional societies and this is the case with the launch of SLH. Maney has partnered with three societies who have chosen to adopt SLH as their official publication: the Asia Pacific Society for the Study of Speech, Language and Hearing, the Hong Kong Association of Speech Therapists, and the New Zealand Speech-Language Therapists' Association. I am confident that the partnership between SLH and these professional societies will be mutually beneficial in expanding visibility on the web, at conferences, and in libraries. The relationship with Maney Publishing will also ensure a sustainable future for SLH.
Maney Publishing will be providing access to all previous volumes of APJSLH, as well as current issues of SLH to its subscribers. A world class team of Associate Editors and Board members has been assembled for SLH, including representatives from each of the professional societies. These members will be involved in the peer reviewing of manuscripts submitted for publication. SLH has a user-friendly online manuscript submission and peer review system to ensure rapid processing of manuscripts. The journal now will be published in an A4 format that will allow for an increased number of papers to be considered for publication in each issue. In subsequent issues, we anticipate offering Special Issues covering cutting-edge topics.
The six papers presented in this issue provide excellent examples of the international contributions that have been a hallmark feature of the journal. Manchaiah and Stephens from the UK examined the life consequences and positive experiences associated with having a hearing loss and its impact on communication partners. McNeill and Gillon from New Zealand report the results of a phonological awareness program examining morphosyntactic development in three children with apraxia of speech. Barwood et al. from Australia report intriguing results regarding the motor cortex activity in people who stutter through the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation. Hemanth and Manjula from India performed an electrophysiological study of speech perception in normally hearing adults using a measure known as the Acoustic Change Complex. The last two papers come from researchers in the USA and both focus on features of the Mandarin language. Chen and colleagues report the results of a Mandarin translation of the Computerized Token Test, a well-known test of aphasia. Lee and Bond examined the ability of native and non-native speakers of Mandarin to perceive various tonal features of the language.
I hope you will find this collection of papers to be of interest and that they prompt you to consider submitting your own research to SLH. By doing so, you will be contributing to a peer-reviewed journal with a tradition of publishing original high-quality research. Without question, the journal has been enormously successful in showcasing research emanating from the Asia Pacific region of the world. With the launch of SLH we remain committed to disseminating important research in the areas of speech, language, and hearing and to establish a journal of worldwide readership and appeal.