Editorial: Views on JARO 2023

When I took the realm for JARO as Editor-in-Chief in May 2022, JARO had witnessed many changes within the journal with new teams in Springer managing the editorial management system and the production. Despite these changes, the number of submissions remained at levels similar to previous years, even increasing in 2023. I would like to express my gratitude to all authors who have chosen JARO as a journal for their publications, as well as to all the dedicated members of the editorial board and our peer reviewers.

In March 2023, ARO renewed its contract with Springer. I would like to thank Springer for their trust in our collective efforts and their continued collaboration, allowing JARO to remain the publishing platform for ARO’s scientific work.

While many journals have seen their impact factor (IF) raising during the COVID pandemic, primarily due to the publication of research related to the Sars-CoV2 virus, JARO’s impact factor remained stable in 2021 (IF = 3.26, Table 1). However, in 2022, it declined to 2.4 due to Clarivate’s new policies for IF calculations, which now considers Early Access articles (such as Published Ahead-of-Print) in the denominator for IF scores. I believe the new impact factor estimates will soon normalize. Nevertheless, this experience shows how vulnerable are the impact factor metrics to assessing the value of our work.

Table 1.

Latest statistics of the Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology

Year	2021	2022	2023
Manuscript data
Impact factor	3.26	2.4	n/a
Submissions	175	166	209
Acceptance rate (%)	27	28	18
Time from receipt to first decision	32	22	16
Time from submission to acceptance	205	238	201
Time from acceptance to publication	51	40	37
Peer reviewer turnaround	19	17	18
Dissemination data
Social media followers (Twitter/X)	330	542	692
Proportion of OA articlesa	27%	28%	30%
Article views/downloads	160,920	205,730	253,404
Top 3 articles by Altmetric
1. Arslan et al. Assessing the Relationship Between Pitch Perception and Neural Health in Cochlear Implant Users			125
2. Bala et al. Human Auditory Detection and Discrimination Measured with the Pupil Dilation Response			115
3. Anderson et al. Rate Discrimination Training May Partially Restore Temporal Processing Abilities from Age-Related Deficits			109
Top 3 articles by Citations (2019–2022)
1. Jahn et al. Evaluating Psychophysical Polarity Sensitivity as an Indirect Estimate of Neural Status in Cochlear Implant Listeners			29
2. Encina-Llamas et al. Investigating the Effect of Cochlear Synaptopathy on Envelope Following Responses Using a Model of the Auditory Nerve			28
3. Pickett et al. Water Waves to Sound Waves: Using Zebrafish to Explore Hair Cell Biology			28

^aSource: Clarivate and Springer

While the number of submissions has increased in 2023 (> 200 submissions), the acceptance rate has decreased from 27 to 18%. This decline is not indicative of a stricter selection process but rather the doubling of submissions unrelated to JARO’s primary focus (e.g., head and neck cancers, throat surgery). The journal’s primary focus is on experimental pre-clinical and clinical research related to hearing and balance, and the name Otolaryngology has historically been a confounder.

Of note, and as many journals, JARO has become since 2022, an online-only journal and ceased to print the issues. This means that articles are published “online first” prior to their allocation to the bimonthly issues. Regardless, JARO has decided to continue the conceptualization of covers to highlight the researcher’s work, something that can now be appreciated in the new website (https://jaro-journal.org/). Some publishers have accelerated the production time, by simply publishing the word template upon acceptance. As part of Springer, JARO remains in that sense more conventional. While we had a publication format specific to JARO, I decided to convert it to the traditional Springer format and accelerate the time to publication from 51 days down to 37 days. The time from receipt to the first decision was halved, reflecting a more active engagement from the editorial board and the reviewers.

Regarding dissemination, which has become an important requirement from some funding agencies, JARO has only been active on Twitter, doubling the number of followers since 2021. However, further collaborating with ARO will enable to expand the dissemination activities on additional platforms such as Facebook and now Instagram, on the accounts of the Association. The proportion of open access (OA) articles has increased from 25 to 28% in the last 3 years. Nearly 3000 people receive the eTOCs every other month, and the views and downloads doubled in 3 years (120,481 downloads in 2020 vs 253,404 in 2023), which is quite an achievement for a specialty journal. These activities are also reflected in the Altmetric scores, which reflects the global outreach in the media. Three articles have reached above 100 in Altmetric score, which is within the top first percentile of all sources of the same age. One was a study from Arslan et al. which evaluated the relationship between pitch perception and neural health in cochlear implant users using electrically evoked compound action potential [1]—an important study given the unclear reasons behind poor outcome after implantation. Another from Bala et al. evaluated the use of pupillary dilatation as an alternative to pure-tone audiometry [2], having in mind the adaptation of this method to objectively assess hearing in pre-lingual infants who cannot necessarily follow instructions reliably. Finally, a study from Anderson et al. showed in a double-blind randomized controlled clinical trial the potential benefits of auditory training to improve temporal processing in listeners above 65 years of age [3].

Three articles topped citations to 28 and 29. The most cited one is a study from Jahn et al. which used computed tomography to determine electrode position in cochlear-implanted patients [4]. The article by Encina-Llamas et al. combined the use of experimental data with computational modeling to investigate the envelope following response in the evaluation of cochlear synaptopathy [5]. A review by Pickett and Raible on the recent advances that the zebrafish model (Dario dario) has brought to the understanding of hearing function has also attracted a lot of attention [6].

In accordance with my aims set in December 2022 [7], JARO has also expanded the types of articles to include systematic reviews and meta-analyses, as well as genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Among the first ones, a systematic review on the risk factors on tinnitus from Biswas et al. [8], published in November 2022, has already acquired 12 citations. Here, I would like to emphasize that the quality of a systematic review that follows the Prisma guidelines can be strongly enhanced with a pre-registration in, e.g., PROSPERO, to ensure minimal bias in the search criteria. The first GWAS published under these new refinements is that of Clifford et al. performing among the first analyses on dizziness, which is quite a challenge for such heterogeneous conditions [9]. JARO has also integrated Commentaries, as well as Journal Clubs (a scholar version of the Commentaries, open to PhD students and post-docs, in the presence of the mentoring of a Principal Investigator but without its co-authorship). These, however, require a more active engagement of the ARO members to promote such activities. JARO also includes now Perspectives and Opinion papers, to expand the range of scientific contributions by the community. It may take time for such changes to become visible in the overall activity from the journal, but I am positive that a reinforced collaboration with ARO will solidify the purpose of the journal to serve as a platform for the exchanges of scientific knowledge in our field.

In this regard, I strive to provide a better visibility of the journal’s activity through a new website (https://jaro-journal.org/), which then links to the articles hosted by Springer. The website also possesses additional information for authors not accessible on the Springer website and conveys the journal’s philosophy beyond the general information and guidelines established by Springer.

I would like to thank the former journal editorial assistants (Jamaica Bihasa) and Parthenon coworkers (Ally Jevens) who have helped me during the EiC transition and give my greatest acknowledgements for new staff members at Springer (Christian James Raguin, Matthew Callan, Annette Triner, Annette Albrecht, and Rebecca Shreeve) and Parthenon (Rhiannon McNeely and Kristin Gordy). I also warmly thank Prof. Paul M. Manis, former EiC of JARO for a smooth transition and continued support. I would like to invite you to sign up to the electronic Table of Contents (eTOCs) alert to receive news on the recent issues and follow JARO on Twitter/X @JARO_News and @CederrothCR, join the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (https://aro.org/), and follow them on Facebook and Instagram. ARO has recently launched an online Seminar Series that provide a fantastic view on the research performed by ARO members.