Hello and welcome to the new JASA Express Letters. As you may be aware, JASA Express Letters was published as a section of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA)'s flagship journal, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) from 2006 to 2020. Beginning on January 1 of this year, 2021, however, JASA Express Letters began a new incarnation as a wholly separate and independent gold open-access journal. I previously wrote about this transition in Acoustics Today,1 and I am reiterating much of that article here with a few new items.
Naturally JASA Express Letters is one of the ASA's family of journals and so remains dedicated to supporting the mission of the Society, “To generate, disseminate, and promote the knowledge and practical applications of acoustics,” and to do so as rapidly as possible (averaging 38 days from submission to first decision and 75 days to acceptance).
Perhaps the most immediately noticeable of the many changes involved in this transition is that the official title of the journal is now JASA Express Letters, and we are moving away from using “JASA-EL” as the journal abbreviation. We're doing this to help remind everyone (especially ourselves!) of the many new and exciting features that are available now as well as those that will be coming in the future. Some of these will be discussed below, but if you think we ought to add some other new and potentially useful features, please let us know, and we will consider them.
Several changes have been made that we think might be especially attractive to our authors. With the move to gold-open access for JASA Express Letters, authors of papers appearing in JASA Express Letters retain the copyright for their article and also grant a Creative Commons copyright license denoted by “CC BY” (though we will consider alternative licensing on a case-by-case basis if required by authors or their sponsors). The CC BY license allows for ease of sharing and reuse and means that no permission need be granted to others wishing to reuse or adapt all or any part of a paper as long as proper attribution is given to the original article (for more, see Ref. 2).
Several additional changes have been made to reflect the fact that JASA Express Letters is now independent of JASA. Perhaps most significantly, as a separate journal, articles in JASA Express Letters are no longer published in the print or online editions of JASA. JASA Express Letters articles are now only available online at its website.3 This means JASA Express Letters has more opportunities to promote authors' papers on the journal website, such as featuring papers in a special Editor's Pick section. Also, JASA Express Letters now has its own cover, and a selected article from the issue will be specially featured. Other opportunities to promote author's papers include the journal's own monthly emailed table of contents alert and social media accounts.4 Another new and exciting possibility we are considering is making video abstracts available to authors for JASA Express Letters articles. This option should be available relatively soon.
There are now additional, new (for JASA Express Letters) manuscript types. In the past, all submissions were labeled as “Letters” for obvious reasons, and this will continue to be the default for most manuscripts. Perhaps the most noteworthy “new” type will be “Erratum.” Previously, errata for articles in JASA Express Letters were submitted to JASA. This was natural because JASA Express Letters was a part of JASA, but it also could be the source of confusion for both authors and editors. In the future, all errata for papers published in JASA Express Letters journal will appear in JASA Express Letters. In addition, Tutorials are also possible, although these must necessarily be rather brief due to the limitations imposed on the number of published pages (even though this increased from 6 to 7) and size (the single-column format) that continues as in the past. A tutorial involving the description of new software or an explanation of the best methods for its use may be well suited to this category. Another new article type is Perspective, which is analogous to the “Letters to the Editor” found in the editorial section of newspapers, and may express opinions, advocate actions, or share anecdotes or historical facts. Special issues will also be accommodated, and although each article must be short, such a collection may be used to help rapidly advance a new area of research.
Each paper accepted for JASA Express Letters will continue to appear online as soon as the editorial and production process is complete, and these will be compiled into issues on a monthly basis using the classification system found in JASA. All current ASA technical committees will be included (obviously!), as will work in education and new technical specialty groups, e.g., computational acoustics.
The increase in the page limit and the use of the Creative Commons CC BY licensing has come with some increase in the required article processing charge (APC). This will increase to 900 USD for ASA members and 1200 USD for non-members. However, for the first year, the APC will be discounted to 750 USD for ASA members and 900 USD for non-members. These promotional rates will apply to any manuscript published in 2021 and will be based on the membership status of the corresponding author. It is worth noting that the cost of membership in the ASA is equal to or less than the difference between the APC's for members and non-members, making membership a bargain! For more on ASA membership, please visit the ASA's website.5
Please note that the ASA is dedicated to ensuring that all authors are capable of publishing in JASA Express Letters regardless of economic status, and, therefore, we offer full and partial waivers of the APC to corresponding authors residing in countries identified by Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI). In addition, if the corresponding author of a manuscript does not reside in an eligible country and truly cannot afford the APC, we will consider a request for a waiver or discount; please note determination of whether to grant such requests is at our discretion. For more on the current waivers and discount policy for JASA Express Letters, please visit the journal website.3
The best thing about this transition is the exciting future. Both researchers and the general public want to see more open-access scientific journals, and the ASA has responded positively by creating the new JASA Express Letters. We intend to continue to be a leader in scientific publishing in meeting our readers' and authors' needs, and this is one way to do so. We also would like to ask for your help with this new venture. In particular, we need direct feedback from ASA members, journal readers, and journal authors. We hope you will offer us your suggestions, your advice, or whatever is on your mind. We encourage you to email us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!
