Growing our evidence: Development, direction, and dissemination

Did you know that the first issue in the very first journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, was published almost 360 years ago in March 1665? Fast forward to 2023. In February 2023, Scopus reported a milestone – over 90 million records with 7,000 publishers in 105 countries providing content from 27,950 active peer-reviewed journals; and this continues to grow. However, in reviewing the original format of the first 1655 journal and considering its proposed functions, one can see remarkable consistencies over the centuries. Like contemporary journals, the original format included an editorial, research papers, letters, and commentaries. Regarding functions, the editor, Henry Oldenburg, aspired to address both needs of the author and the readers and provided a platform for certification via peer review to ensure proper conduct of research and the veracity of the claims, dissemination and access, and archiving to create permanent record in the public domain (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstl). These functions speak to advancing knowledge and creating evidence. As time has passed, evidence for health interventions has grown exponentially, and the constructs of evidence-based medicine (coined in 1990 by McMaster University Professor in Medicine, Gordon Guyatt; Sackett et al., 1996) and evidence-based practice have been defined, have evolved, and have emerged as the hallmark of practice and education in speech-language pathology.

2023 for International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (IJSLP) has been a celebration of how far speech pathology has come in growing evidence for our still-quite-young profession. As we should, we have seen new areas of inquiry and deeper inquiry into existing areas emerge as we evolve as a profession, driven by a deep curiosity for being able to explain why we do what we do, and how can we do it better to optimise wellbeing for our clients, their families, and our practice contexts.

The research we publish in IJSLP is making an impact on practice and policy. The release of the 2022 Impact Factors demonstrates strong performance for IJSLP with an Impact Factor (IF) of 1.8, a 5-year IF of 2.4, and a CiteScore (Scopus) of 3.7. Downloads and abstract views continue to increase year by year, with 319,730 already for 2023, an increase of 14% for the same time period in 2022 (281, 272). Rewind back just seven years with 73,388 downloads and abstract views, it is clear that IJSLP has an impressive and growing presence; we are reaching a wider and wider audience and that our papers are highly relevant and of keen interest to the profession – just what Oldenburg aspired to!

2023 saw the publication of two Special Issues which grow our evidence and extend our direction. We started the year with an absolute bang with our Communication, Swallowing and the Sustainable Development Goals issue − 36 papers addressing all 17 goals - which positions IJSLP as leading the way in speech-language pathology in promoting this incredibly important endeavour. We are so proud of this issue! The drive and commitment of the Guest Editors, Sharynne McLeod and Julie Marshall, was compelling and energising. The outcomes have been outstanding - a remarkable 40,703 downloads and a mean citation rate of 2.28, thus far, and a visible presence at national and international conferences (thank you, again, Sharynne, Julie and all the authors who have contributed to this special issue!). We truly believe that through this issue we are playing some part in keeping the momentum around SDGs and their impact on society. They are so critical to our future as is the international call for a Sustainable Development Goal 18: Communication for All (Servaes & Yusha’u, 2023). Our second Special Issue from the 2022 Speech Pathology Australia National Conference, Beyond Borders, also has had wide appeal and urges us to look beyond current political, psychological, environmental, professional, and social limits to be proactive and creative in increasing access and providing what is needed for our clients and communities. We thank our wonderful Guest Editors, Lisa Furlong and Kerry Ttofari Eecen, for their endless enthusiasm and dedication.

Getting papers-to-publication-to-print is a huge collaborative. We must extend our deepest appreciation for the care and attention of our national and international Associate Editors who continue to support the Editors in their specialist areas, including, Robyn Lowe, Edwin Maas, Anna Miles, Deborah Theodoros, Bea Staley, Stacie Attrill, Julie Morris, Liz Ward, Alison Holm, and Jennifer Oates. Nichola Shelton, our Editorial Assistant extraordinaire, deserves a medal for her extraordinary commitment and diligence. We are forever grateful for the large group of professionals who review for IJSLP – the quality of your reviews make the journal as strong as it is. Our appreciation extends also to the staff at Speech Pathology Australia and Taylor & Francis who support the pre- and post-production, and communications about each issue of the journal.

This final issue of IJSLP for 2023 shows just how much our profession seeks to create new evidence and move in new directions. For swallowing, new ground is broken for reperfusion therapies (Minchell et al., 2022) and neonates with hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy (Malan et al., 2022). We have a paper on a new treatment for trismus (Charters et al., 2022) and a psychometric study evaluating a Turkish version of a speech pathology specific questionnaire for people who have Multiple Sclerosis (Eerensoy et al., 2022). Practice-based research is showcased in this issue from early stages of ideation in mobile health technologies for dysphagia management (Davie et al., 2022), barriers to speech pathology referral in ataxia (Hilger & Dunne-Platero, 2022), factors that would likely influence implementation of a new outcome measurement protocol in paediatrics (Sherman et al., 2022) and current paediatric assessment practices in vocabulary and word learning (Jackson et al., 2022). Continuing with paediatric research, Balilah et al. (2022) investigate the performance of Arabic-speaking heritage language learners of English in knowledge and processing-dependent measures and Kwok et al. (2022) apply the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) (2001) to how speech-language pathologists conceptualise therapy goals for preschoolers with language disorders. Finally, theory-driven research is featured in our final two papers. The Controlled Semantic Cognition framework is investigated in relation to performance on semantic processing tasks in people with aphasia (Tessaro et al., 2022) and the phonological network of Vitevitch et al. (2011) is examined in relation to the speed and accuracy of word recognition before and after word training in younger and older adults (Nguyen et al., 2023).

To the future, and IJSLP remains committed to growing our evidence through the dissemination of new developments and directions. It is our duty, as a profession, to create new evidence, thoughtfully and rigourously, and to disseminate this. Only then will evidence have broader influence and impact, and IJSLP can be an important part of this process. It is an exciting time for the speech-language pathology profession. And we are confident that Henry Oldenburg would be well-pleased with us. To 2024!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.