Page 14 - Summer 2015

Acoustical Society Publications
Another interesting development that has occurred over the past few months is our transition from PeerXpress to EM as our peer-review system. This wasn’t out of dissatisfaction with PeerXpress, which has served us well over the years but with our need to have a larger software package that can offer us more features and flexibility. We have already transitioned POMA to EM, and our plans are to move JASA and JASA-EL over by the time you read this. AT is published separately and is unaffected by this change.
Improving communications with our readers, authors, re- viewers, editors, and any others concerned with our pub- lications is another issue that we are currently addressing. This article in AT is actually one piece of that work, and I might mention in passing that Arthur Popper and AT have led the way in such communication and set an example for us to follow. One new way that we now have to communicate with people is via a new “tab” on our ASA Web page, under JASA, JASA-EL, and POMA, called “News and Information.” Under this tab, our editors (Kent Gee for POMA, Charles Church for JASA-EL, and myself for JASA) have a podium from which to discuss any and all relevant new information about their journals in an informal, rapidly posted manner. This should be an improvement over the more formal, but less timely, editorials in the past. (AT already has this capa- bility, as this article shows!) I am also hoping that we will soon devise a good system for each journal to get input and suggestions from our readers, authors, etc. so that our com- munication channel is fully two-way.
A very interesting (and positive) aspect of JASA is its inter- national nature. Fully half of our papers are from foreign au- thors. From a personal point of view, as an ocean acoustician who has traveled worldwide and has published frequently with foreign authors, this is a wonderful expansion. From a journal and society point of view, publications and soci- eties have all become quite international, no matter where their home bases are. We embrace this wide view and wel- come and value our foreign authors, reviewers, and associate editors. (And we do not keep it a secret that we would very much like our both foreign and domestic authors and re- viewers to become ASA members as well. The associate edi- tors are, of course.)
One issue that comes up very often when dealing with for- eign papers is language difficulties. As someone who has co- authored a book with foreign colleagues, I am sensitive to this issue. Although it is nontrivial, it is also tractable. The
primary ingredients we want in JASA papers are technical innovation and excellence. Given these, we are willing to put in some extra effort to see a good article published, given that the English is good enough to justify a review. If the article is not up to our standards for “reviewable,” we will work to update and upgrade our English language assistance capabilities. And even after review, we do not insist on “im- peccable” writing (which even native-speaking scientists and engineers have problems with) but rather good, clear, and understandable language.
The final note I want to sound here is encouraging more participation in the journal by two groups in particular: students and early-career professionals. Students don’t tend to see much of the publication and reviewing process, and postdocs and early-career professionals really never see much of the editorial process and procedures. Some initial suggestions to help rectify this are to try a “Student Special Issue” and to develop mentoring programs to show all the levels of the reviewing and editing process. These sound like good possibilities, and we are pursuing them. Any and all other such ideas are welcome!
I conclude here by saying that although I am very happy and honored to be the new EIC of ASA publications, I also re- gard myself as only one small piece of a far larger commu- nity enterprise. It takes all of our efforts as a community to make JASA, JASA-EL, POMA, and AT the best publications they can be. I look forward to working with the ASA and the world acoustics community on this ambitious goal in the years to come.
Biosketch
James Lynch obtained his BS from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1972 and PhD from The University of Texas at Austin in 1978, both in Physics. He worked at the Applied Research Labo- ratories, The University of Texas at Aus- tin, from 1978 to 1981 and at the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1982 to present. He is a Fellow of the ASA and the IEEE, a former editor in chief of the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering and Journal of the Acoustical Society of America-Express Letters, and the cur- rent Editor in Chief of ASA publications.
12 | Acoustics Today | Summer 2015