Most interesting times for speech-language pathology – now and into the future

“I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times.” This sentence formed part of a letter written by Frederic R. Coudert to Sir Austen Chamberlain, an eminent British statesman, who then referred to these words during his speech at a Birmingham Unionist Association meeting in 1936. Fast forward to 2022, and most interesting times abound as we continue to face uncertainty and the need to find our new normal. However, in parallel, we have seen remarkable creativity and progress in adapting, pivoting, and ensuring that speech-language pathology research, education, and services continue, and continue through innovation and new lines of inquiry and through determining evidence for new models and approaches. Perhaps all times are most interesting in their own way as all times have their unique challenges and opportunities. But, over the last two years, no-one can deny the universality of change, and every person has experienced this in their day-to-day life.

2022 heralds change for IJSLP with farewelling Anne Whitworth after five years in her Editorial role with the journal, including the past two years as Editor-In-Chief. Anne’s leadership, wisdom, and dedication have been an asset to the journal. Elizabeth Cardell has stepped into the Editor-in-Chief role, and IJSLP is delighted to welcome Natalie Munro as IJSLP’s new Co-Editor. Together, Elizabeth and Natalie will bring their extensive editorial experience and enthusiasm to their new roles. We also welcomed Emeritus Professor Deborah Theodoros to our Associate Editor team in 2021. Deborah’s trailblazing research and her vast experience in telehealth will be invaluable for IJSLP given our most interesting times. In October 2021, we were deeply saddened by the unexpected passing of Professor James Law OBE, one of our wonderful Editorial Board members. James’ contributions to IJSLP since 2004 have helped shape the journal to be in the strong position it is, and his passion and research in children’s language development have been seminal to our profession and transformed children’s services internationally. James, you are profoundly missed.

The release of the 2020 Impact Factors has built further on IJSLP’s growth with an Impact Factor of 2.484 compared to 1.733 in 2019. Our 5 Year Impact Factor is 2.510 (2020) and IJSLP was rated Q1 (2020) Impact Factor Best Quartile, positioning us in the top 25% of journals in our area. Our 2020 Cite Score was 3.0, which has risen from 2.6 (2019). Pleasingly, our downloads have continued to increase in 2021 with 278,000 annual downloads/views in October 2021 contrasting with 149,000 article downloads in September 2020. In combination, these metrics demonstrate that we are attracting and publishing relevant and thought-provoking papers that advance theory and practice in speech-language pathology.

Along with our regular issues, 2022 will see two Special Issues. Our Speech Pathology Australia National Conference Issue for the virtual 2021 conference – Local Context Global Practice – is being overseen by Bea Staley and Karen Wylie. Later in 2022, a Special Issue on Qualitative Methods is being led by Deborah Hersch and an impressive team of qualitative research experts. As a new initiative, at our 2022 Speech Pathology Australia Conference: Beyond Borders, we plan to launch IJSLP’s Community of Practice for Reviewers to assist the development, support and engagement of reviewers and their knowledge of the publishing process, more broadly, and as a strategy to build our Editors for the future.

Turning to our first issue for 2022, we present a collection of papers which showcase diversity and innovation across our practice areas, service delivery, and countries. We start with a review of an extended scope of practice speech-language pathology service for low risk ENT outpatients (Schwarz et al., 2021). Also on the service front, we gain new and practical insights into barriers to providing texture modifications for people with dysphagia in a rural Residential Aged Care setting in Australia (Hill et al., 2021) Assessing swallowing difficulties in a standard manner also is addressed through the lens of professional training in cervical auscultation (Bergström & Cichero, 2021). Flemish speech-language pathologists management practices for children with a repaired cleft palate reveal some global themes (Alighieri et al., 2021). Assessment practices are further addressed through comparing two phonological screening tools for French-speaking children (Bérubé & MacLeod, 2021). However, treatment has not been forgotten in this issue with a pilot study investigating the effect of a clear speech intervention on intelligibility for people with Parkinson’s Disease (Shin et al., 2021), and a study describing the effects of syllable-timed speech intervention on school-age children’s conversational speech considers what matters for this type of treatment (Brown et al., 2021). A paper exploring the role of proximity for children with autism who use speech generating devices shows that proximity does matter (Baker et al., 2021). Finally, having the best outcome measures for our interventions is always a hot topic. A qualitative study of speech-language pathologists’ perspectives on the who, why, when, where, what, and how of using outcome measures in dysarthria is presented (Finch et al., 2021), and our last paper in this issue explores whether single-word picture naming assessments are a valid measure of word retrieval in connected speech for people with aphasia (Mason & Nickels, 2021). The outcomes might surprise you.

We hope you enjoy our first issue for 2022. This collection of most interesting papers during most interesting times demonstrates the vibrancy that exists in our profession and the positive direction that we all are travelling in.