Acta Acustica united with Acustica, our European journal How to reinforce the attractiveness of acoustic journals? th

6 April 2012

Acta Acustica united with Acustica (AAA) is the journal of the European Acoustics Association (EAA), grouping around 8500 acousticians. The EAA wishes to emphasise and promote the role of AAA as the primary general acoustics journal in Europe. Despite an almost satisfactory functioning, the attractiveness of publishing in acoustics journals and the role of AAA could be reinforced. This document discusses some issues and outlines new goals. . The utility of acoustics journals Acoustics is a middle-size scientific discipline. “Over-disciplines” are physics or mechanics or engineering, while sub-disciplines are e.g. noise, ultrasound, or hearing, and cross-disciplines 1 are e.g. speech, medical imaging, etc . Why do acoustic journals exist? What is their utility? Are the objectives changing? To our mind, these questions are valid for every discipline of middle size, such as electromagnetism, optics, metal chemistry, and many others. Examining the size of acoustics in the scientific publications, it can be said that it represents approximately 0.5% to 1% of “natural sciences” (this figure is obtained by examining the number of both scientific papers and patents). Because evaluation committees of any kind like to use, or are supposed to use, numbered criteria (at either European or national level) the importance of journals is measured with what is called the “impact factor”. The journals of general acoustics have a factor around unity. Extreme (general) journals such as Nature have an impact factor of 28. The h-index is an individual indicator measuring how often an author is cited. It is not possible here to discuss in details all deviations, perverse effects, etc. of the indicators, but basically a good impact of a publication should be a goal for the authors. For acoustics, and especially for small sub-disciplines of acoustics, the h-index is generally low. These observations could lead to the conclusion that publishing in broad interest journals is “better” than publishing in middle size discipline journals. An acoustic journal is a useful tool for the creation of links between acousticians of different specialties, as well as scientific associations. The considerable increase of the number of scientists in the world requires the existence of journals of this size. Before 1934 acoustic journals did not exist; their creation (in the USA, France, etc.) was necessary because of the great increase in the number of papers in physics. Furthermore, from the seventies, similar processes can be observed from acoustic journals to journals of sub-disciplines. Our opinion is that journals of middle-size disciplines comparable to acoustics, are useful, in order to avoid the “atomization” of science. They are complementary to journal of overdisciplines as well of sub-disciplines. An acoustician should primarily publish in acoustics journals in order to find the audience that is more likely to appreciate the content of their work, but he or she should bring information on new acoustics knowledge to other fields as well in order to promote acoustics more widely. This remark can be extended to the situation of subdisciplines to acoustics. Moreover and even if it is now very easy to receive by email the Table of Contents of new issues of journals, it is a common practice that people focus

1

As well as any attempt of classification, this affirmation can be disputed in several ways, but it is a convenient way to express the questions of this paper. Precise definitions are not needed here.

their attention on a few number of journals (around 5); to publish in acoustic journal is then a mean to directly find the appropriate audience.

European journals The construction of Europe is a long and delicate task. The difficulty is similar at the level of a scientific journal. A special voluntarism is needed, in order that Europe can be comparable in particular to the United States. In principle this is achievable. The realism of this idea is reinforced by the fact that the universe of science is in expansion. Scientific journals are the main device for the dissemination of scientific information. Their renown is an important goal for both the publishers and the authors of papers. For researchers publishing in them, it is a part of the scientific attractiveness of a country, a university or a research organisation. For historical reasons, European journals supported by European societies, have been developed only recently (typically since 1970) succeeding one or several national journals of European countries. It is the main reason why in many disciplines, despite their quality, their standard is regarded as less high than e.g. American journals. Unfortunately scientists do not always publish their best papers in those European journals, and state institutions and evaluation organisations do not, in practice, encourage the publication in such journals. In some European countries, it has been observed that governments attribute less important grants to researchers publishing in European journals. This is damaging for Europe, its attractiveness, and the sense of belonging of the European scientists to Europe. Acta Acustica united with Acustica, the European acoustics journal AAA is today a well recognized journal, with a broad international origin of the authors and reviewers. It covers all fields of acoustics. As the name suggests, Acta Acustica united with Acustica has a double foundation. Acustica represents the long tradition of acoustics in Europe. This journal was founded in 1951 in Germany and hosted publications by known acousticians such as Manfred Schröder, Eberhard Zwicker, Helmut Haas. Currently the online access system of AAA includes back issues of Acustica from 19XX and all back issues will be available on 01.01.2015. Acta Acustica, founded in 1993 as the original journal of the EAA, represents the desire for European unification (the back issues of Acta Acustica 1993-1995 will soon be available, thanks to the French Acoustical Society). In 1995 both journals joined forces and carry the somewhat unusual name Acta Acustica united with Acustica since 2000. The journal is published by Hirzel Verlag and the editorial process is supported by a group of 35 volunteering editors from across Europe and the rest of the world. The most important condition for a journal to be known and cited is to be read. Then the question of access to papers is a crucial point. The online access to AAA is very recent: since 2011 all members of the national acoustics societies can get online access to all current and back issues in a very efficient way. Even if this increased the readership considerably, the dynamic should be followed up. Quality is a main concern of the editorial board, the publisher and the supporting scientific association. Yet, the journal manages to combine a strong peer review with acceptable publication times. Half of the papers published in 2011, were for example submitted less than 250 days before publication. Obviously nothing if perfect. We suggest reading the document by A. Pierce concerning the paper submission to JASA, or the document concerning editorial procedures by K. Attenborough. Therefore, in 2006 the authors and readers of AAA were asked to answer a questionnaire concerning their satisfaction and improving proposals. The concern for an efficient editorial process that popped up from this survey led to the introduction of the online editorial manager system in 2008. Authors and readers alike where slightly disappointed with the impact factor of the journal but nevertheless had the opinion that the reputation and esteem of Acta Acustica united with Acustica was very high.

To improve the attractiveness of acoustics journals and AAA: some proposals European acousticians and European member societies of EAA can participate to the building of a virtuous circle, combining voluntarism and realism. i)

Concerning AAA

Acousticians and European acousticians in particular are encouraged to regularly submit their best manuscripts to AAA. This is absolutely not in contradiction with the possibility to publish in journals of neither larger nor smaller disciplines, or in other acoustics journals. In contrast to some other journals, AAA does not force authors to cite recent publications in AAA since we believe this could hamper novelty and originality. Yet we would appreciate that authors review recent literature in AAA before finalizing their manuscript. Acousticians should pay attention to the renown of AAA: when submitting a paper in any journal, they should check that useful papers published in AAA are not forgotten in the cited references. Please note to use the full name of the journal “Acta Acustica united with Acustica” in the reference list. The EAA periodically organizes two conferences: Forum Acusticum and Euronoise. Since the EAA already holds copyright on the proceedings of these conferences, authors can include (part of) their conference paper, including graphs and drawings, in a later submission to Acta Acustica united with Acustica. As with all journals, it is nevertheless not allowed to submit an exact copy of the conference proceeding paper.European acousticians coordinating projects funded by European research money could encourage the participants to publish in the journal of the EAA. Moreover, they could propose to EAA the publication of a special issue on the topic of the project. This idea is judged to be interesting by European Commission officers contacted by the EAA, and this objective should be announced in the proposal. Every European acoustician and acoustical society can suggest special issues on a hot topic in acoustics for AAA. In particular, session chairmen of European conferences can invite author to publish in AAA and propose a special issue. The special issues are referred and organized exactly in the same way as other issues, except that the starting point is the invitation to authors. To initiate a special issue, send a suggested topic and two or three editors to the email address of Acta Acustica united with Acustica. After approval by the editorial board, the suggested editors will be granted temporary editor privileges and can start inviting potential authors.

ii)

Concerning acoustics journal in general

Concerning the evaluation of project proposals (for example ERC grants), the referees may be informed that in the domain, the impact factor of the journals is low. The candidates can also 2 give information about the typical value of the h-index of acousticians . This can limit the drawbacks of the situation of acoustics in general. Discussions with the European Commission showed that this kind of ideas is positively received. More precisely, EAA can provide a document stating the reference h-index as a function of years after PhD that can be used as a supplement to submissions to national and international grant applications. Experts of referee panels should avoid making use of quantitative indicators without proper judgment. At the national level, acoustical societies can contact the authorities in charge of evaluation in order to increase their awareness of the situation of disciplines such as acoustics, and of journals published by European societies. This idea was presented to European officers of the European Commission, and they were interested. Although the above mentioned increasing awareness can help to correctly judge the specificity of indicator values in acoustic fields, acousticians can also have a significant impact on

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In acoustics, high h-indexes are 10 for a scientist 10 years after PhD, 15 for a scientist 20 years after PhD, 20 for a scientist 30 years after PhD. Obviously this figures depend of the sub-discipline.

number of citations, impact factors and h-index by simply citing their peers more often. Indeed, it is easy to understand that the typical number of references per paper in a certain field is linearly proportional to these indicators: cite and be cited. Therefore, acousticians should be aware that they have to cite to be cited: a. because more citations in acoustics as a whole increase impact factors and number of citations b. because today, a lot of services allow to find a paper also because they cite a paper or because they cite the same set of references. Dick Botteldooren, AAA Editor-in-Chief, Jean Kergomard, EAA President, Peter Svensson, EAA Vice-president

Appendix A Comparison between AAA and JASA for the period 2008-2011; some observations

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In what follows, we compare AAA mainly with JASA: these two journals are international journals, covering all fields of acoustics, edited by a big scientific acoustical society. This comparison allows some analyses, but the aim of them is absolutely not to direct the present paper neither at JASA, a great journal of high quality standard, nor at any other journal. Moreover, AAA and JASA share some common problems, as explained above. During the period 2008-2011, AAA published 432 papers, while JASA published 3181 papers (the estimation of the total number of papers on acoustics during the same period is 16000). 40% of the JASA papers have European authors, while 9% of the AAA papers have authors from North America. European scientists published 4 times more papers in JASA than in AAA, while North American authors published 44 times more papers in JASA than in AAA. Notice that both journals are international: one fourth of the AAA papers come from non European countries, and 51% of the JASA papers come from non North American countries. More detailed figures are given below. The impact factor of JASA is about 2 times this of AAA, exhibiting a better renown. This factor is the average number of citations of the papers published in a given journal during the latter 3 or 5 years. Actually, as discussed hereafter, it is generally recognized that the IF is mainly a measure of the importance of disciplines, and secondary a measure of the renown of a journal within a discipline Total 432 3181

AAA JASA

AAA JASA

France 105 317

Germany 63 135

Italy 10 60

Poland 14 22

Russia 6 38

Spain 31 57

UK 27 332

Total 387 1485

Australia

Canada

China

India

Japan

Korea

USA

AAA

1

11

32

7

12

10

31

JASA

107

213

137

24

101

51

1646

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The figures are rather approximate; a confidence of 90% can be estimated (for several reasons). For instance, papers can be the result of scientific cooperation between different countries. The origin is the Web of Science, published by Thomson Reuters.