The IJA editorship and location of the IJA editorial office has changed! With this volume De Wet Swanepoel has assumed the leadership role of the journal as the Editor-in-Chief, and Marianne Van Zyl has been appointed as the Processing Editor; Jackie Clark will continue as the IJA Managing Editor. In addition, Ross Roeser will continue to support the journal as the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. Of course, this means that the operations will move from Dallas, Texas to Pretoria, South Africa, a change that just 10 years ago could have had a significant impact on operations, but with today’s electronic media will be unnoticed by all. As with any significant change, this provides the opportunity to pause, to reflect and to plan. How was IJA formed? How did the journal transform into one of the leading publications in audiology/hearing science? What are thoughts about the future?
The past
How the International Journal of Audiology was formed exactly is unclear to me, but it must have been something like this: with the challenges of trying to keep each of their journals viable, the three IJA owner societies (The British Society of Audiology, The International Society of Audiology and The Nordic Audiological Society) began a dialogue on how each could benefit from forming one publication with joint ownership. They, thus, made the decision to form the International Journal of Audiology, which had its first issue in 2002. Full credit is to be given to Dr. Stig Arlinger who led the charge for the first two years.
When the journal moved to Dallas in 2004, everything was handled by postal/snail mail, but it didn’t take long for Jackie Clark and the UTDallas/Callier Center technical staff and me to build our own tracking system, which we thought was beyond fantastic–no longer would we need to use envelopes and lick stamps. We had just completed the finishing touches of our “home built” tracking system when our publisher informed us that IJA would be one of the beta tests for this new submission and tracking systems: Manuscript Central. Anyone who has been a guinea pig for the beta test of anything knows that this is something that one wishes for their worst enemy, because if anything is to go awry it will be for you. However, after a long and losing struggle to convince our publisher that the system we developed was as good as, or even better than, this new software they were trying to push on us, we reluctantly conceded. Of course, how wrong we were, and now our lives have been made incredibly easy by our friend and companion wherever we go, Manuscript Central.
Changing publishers was also something the journal home office had to “endure.” Little did we know that on multiple occasions IJA would have multiple publishers with production offices in different geographical locations. Most often we discovered the transition AFTER the transition occurred. The best analogy for changing publishers and production offices is to come home one night and find that all of the members of your family are new, with different numbers of children, with different ages, and having different personalities. Operations transitioned from Canada, to the United Kingdom, to New York, back to the United Kingdom, to Sweden, back to the United Kingdom. For the past few years our production office is in the United Kingdom and our publisher has been in Stockholm. We’re fortunate to have Therese Franzen as our Managing Editor and Rachel Andrews as our Production Editor. Both are as highly skilled and competent as one could ever ask for. I thank Taylor & Francis, for having the longest association with the journal to date.
Transforming
How has the journal faired over the past 16 years? shows submissions over the period 2004–2017. The early years were lean, with only 117 new submissions in 2004, but as authors became aware of IJA and IJA’s reputation as a quality vehicle for their work, submissions increased to now, when over 400 manuscripts are now being submitted per year.
Figure 1. Number of IJA submitted manuscripts from 2004–2017.
provides the journal impact factor from 2004–2017. Although the impact factor is not a solid metric on which to build the reputation of a scientific publication, having the progressive improvement we’ve seen over the past 14 years provides ample evidence of the importance of IJA to authors and readers.
Figure 2. IJA impact factor from 2004–2017.
The data in both figures may help to document IJA’s performance and accomplishments, but the important story lies in the people who provided their hard work, dedication and efforts to support the operations and peer review system. Operationally, Dr. Jackie Clark, who has been the Managing Editor from the very beginning, has to be THE most important player in her role of overseeing day-to-day operations and post acceptance production. Her dedication, skill, manner of dealing with people, ability to solve complex issues, etc. has been monumentally important. Without Jackie, my job as the EIC would have been far less efficient and much more complicated. I am pleased that De Wet will be bringing her on board his team.
Of course, the IJA Associate Editors who willingly volunteered their expertise and much valued and appreciated time and energy to oversee the peer review process and, make their valued recommendations, is also critical for how IJA has earned the reputation it has today. lists the Associate Editors who have been and are currently on the IJA editorial board. No words can express my appreciation for their dedication in providing the quality and sensitive review comments for the submissions they managed. De Wet and I are very pleased that the majority of the Associate Editors will continue with the journal into Volume 58 (2019) and beyond.
Table 1. IJA Associate Editors.
Transitioning and the future
As I look forward I see opportunities for continuing growth and expansion of the success IJA has seen to this point. When IJA council members asked me for a recommendation of who I thought would be a possible replacement, I immediately chose Dr. De Wet Swanepoel. He has an excellent international reputation. He has authored multiple articles, book chapters and books, and is familiar with scientific publishing. He has excellent people skills. And, more … I am pleased the IJA council heeded my advice and I look forward to working with him as an emeritus member of his editorial board.