The importance of our families

The families of researchers and academics are integral to our wellbeing as well as to the quality and quantity of our work. Today, my PhD student Ben welcomed her family to Australia. They have come from Vietnam to live in Bathurst for 4 years while Ben completes her PhD. Welcome to Australia and welcome to our research family.

Ben's family in Australia

Suzanne's family (and colleagues) in Sweden (at a conference)

Sharynne's family in New Zealand (on holiday)

Data analysis is going well

Two of my PhD students, Sarah Masso and Sarah Verdon, are deep into data analysis at the moment.

• Sarah Masso has had a productive few weeks analysing data from the Polysyllable Preschool Test (Baker, 2013). She is undertaking a quantitative analysis of the number of consonants, vowels, and syllables that are correct, as well as undertaking an analysis of the types of errors that the children are making when they say words such as butterfly, kangaroo, animals, Vegemite, hippopotamus, and vegetables.
• Sarah Verdon has also had a productive few weeks analysing data from her fieldwork that involved visiting14 sites across five continents. She is undertaking a qualitative analysis using Cultural Historical Activity Theory using categories such as instruments, rules, community, division of labour, and outcomes.

Although there are vast differences between their data analysis techniques, both Sarahs are focused on making a difference in the lives of children with speech difficulties. It is a pleasure to work with them and their co-supervisors (Dr Sandie Wong, Dr Elise Baker, and Dr Jane McCormack).

Charles Sturt University Public Lecture

I have been invited to present a Charles Sturt University Public Lecture on Wednesday 20th August. The lecture is a part of the Explorations series. The title is Speaking my languages: Celebrating multilingual children

Children are amazing! They master most of their speech and language skills in their first five to six years of life. Many children around the world become competent communicators in more than one language. However, some children have difficulty with speech and language, regardless of the number of languages they speak. Communication is a basic human right, and it is important to facilitate children’s communicative capacity. This presentation will offer a world tour of the research undertaken during Professor McLeod’s four-year Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. Insights will be provided about supporting children’s communication based on her work with Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, as well as with children from Vietnam, Fiji, Turkey, Zambia, Hong Kong, Germany, US, Iceland and many other countries. Audience members are encouraged to bring their smart phones, tablets, or laptop computers to access online resources during the presentation.

Here is the media release

Ethics approval gained from Fiji Ministry of Education, National Heritage, Culture and Arts

Suzanne Hopf, is undertaking her PhD at CSU via distance education from Fiji. Her PhD topic is "Supporting Fijian children's speech, language, and literacy" and she is co-supervised by Dr Sarah McDonagh and myself. Suzanne has just achieved an important milestone: she has received official approval to conduct research in Fiji from the Fiji Ministry of Education, National Heritage, Culture and Arts. She now has to finalise ethical approval from Charles Sturt University, then she will be ready to begin data collection.  In addition, she has just completed writing a journal article titled "World Englishes: A phonological profile of two dialects of Fiji English". This will be submitted to a journal in the next week. Congratulations Suzanne.

Professors' forum

Three times per year the Charles Sturt University professors meet. Of the 940 academic staff and 1264 general staff (CSU pocket statistics, 2013), only about 70 are professors. Last week, approximately 25 professors met in Bathurst from 30 July - 1 August. Topics included the CSU academic, professional education and pedagogies, promotions policy, industry connections, publication in open access journals, and research impact. We had discussions with the Vice Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), and Academic Senate representatives. There was also a session where selected professors showcased their current research. Dinner with University Council members and the retiring Chancellor was a highlight. These meetings are a productive time of networking and provision of input into the direction of the university.

Predatory scholarly open-access publishers

Every day I receive emails from journals inviting me to submit articles and serve on editorial boards. Some of these journals also ask for payment on submission of journal articles! Beall's list is a continually updated list of "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" available here: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/. Jeffrey Beall recommends that people review the list and decide whether or not they wish to publish in these journals. Most of the emails I receive go straight into the trash.

Web of Science impact factors released for 2013

Overnight the Web of Science 2013  impact factors have been released.
Here are the the impact factors for speech pathology journals listed under the Rehabilitation and Linguistics categories

Rehabilitation Rank /64	Linguistics Rank /166	Journal	Impact Factor
8	8	J SPEECH LANG HEAR R	1.926
18	14	AM J SPEECH-LANG PAT	1.644
21	19	J COMMUN DISORD	1.520
24	24	INT J SPEECH-LANG PA	1.412
25	25	INT J LANG COMM DIS	1.392
29	28	LANG SPEECH HEAR SER	1.247
34	36	J FLUENCY DISORD	1.082
49	63	CLIN LINGUIST PHONET	0.780
54	70	TOP LANG DISORD	0.683
-	79	CHILD LANG TEACH THE	0.571
59	-	FOLIA PHONIATR LOGO	0.550
61	-	COMMUN DISORD Q	0.367

The impact factor for IJSLP has continued to rise: 1.412 (2013), 1.176 (2012), 1.000 (2011), 1.120 (2010)