1 From Open Access to Diamond Open Access

The journal of the European Acoustics Association (EAA), founded in 1993, has been fully Open Access (OA) since 2020 under the name Acta Acustica, published by EDP Sciences. From 1 January 2025, the journal will be free to readers and authors will not have to pay article processing charges to publish in the journal.

Acta Acustica aims to broaden participation in acoustics research, especially for underfunded researchers and institutions, and to promote a more diverse and equitable academic landscape by eliminating Article Processing Charges (APCs), transforming financial support that was previously limited to certain authors, and removing the authentication step for eligibility under negotiated financial agreements.

The transition is supported by a collaborative funding model that is an example of European cooperation and success. The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), the French Society of Acoustics (SFA) and the EAA have provided the financial basis for the journal’s transition to Diamond OA over an initial three-year period 2025-2027 (for details see here).

This initiative also aligns with growing political and institutional support for Diamond Open Access, as exemplified by the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access, a collaborative framework endorsed by key players including the European University Association (EUA), cOAlition S, Science Europe, as well as CNRS and TIB, both signatories to the plan. The plan aims to strengthen and sustain the Diamond OA ecosystem by promoting equitable access and inclusivity in scholarly publishing. Diamond Open Access not only ensures free access to scientific knowledge but also reinforces our commitment to inclusivity and quality in acoustics research. We are excited to lead the way in demonstrating how society-owned journals can adopt sustainable and equitable publishing models.

Although funding for 2025 is guaranteed, additional contributions are essential to maintain the Diamond OA model in 2026 and 2027. It is also important that funding is equitably distributed across the institutions and countries that publish in the journal and access its content. Without further support, the journal may face challenges in continuing to provide free access and publication without APCs. Potential funders are invited to join this transformative effort to ensure the future of equitable publishing in acoustics.

The Acta Acustica team welcomes partnerships with institutions, organisations and individuals committed to the promotion of open science. Supporting this initiative will not only benefit the global acoustics community by ensuring equitable access to high quality research, but will also demonstrate a commitment to sustainable and inclusive publishing practices.

2 Latest Achievements and Activities

As a Diamond OA journal, the journal fully embraces the practice of preprints in repositories such as arXiv, and authors are encouraged to upload supplementary datasets related to their research to an appropriate public data repository. Acta Acustica is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Acta Acustica is indexed in all the major indexing databases. The journal impact factor for 2023 was 1.0 and the 5 years impact factor 1.1 by Clarivate Web of Science. It has a CiteScore of 2.8 for 2023 and the CiteScoreTracker for 2024 is 3.4 in Scopus, Elsevier. A great success is that for the category Music, we have entered Q1.

This year we witnessed a steady increase in the readership of the journal with 155,573 articles downloaded throughout the year, almost double the previous year downloads. It is worth mentioning the success of the special issue (Auditory models), that draw particular attention with 3 out of 10 of the most downloaded articles in 2024, published as part of this issue. Currently, two topical issues are open to submission:

• Development of European Acoustics in 20th Century

• Spatial and binaural hearing: From neural processes to applications.

One of the strength of Acta Acustica is the presence of its authors on social media: X @ActaAcustica and LinkedIn posts. The editorial team uses such network to advertise the newly published articles, linking them to the authors or laboratories accounts whenever possible, and to promote the different Topical Issues organised. The impact and emphasis of sharing articles with the scientific community on social media make the authors the best ambassadors of the journal. We believe that an Open Access journal and advertisement of the published work can foster exchanges between researchers and improve the overall outreach of the journal.

3 Statistics

In the following, we provide an overview of the number of submissions, number of articles published, decisions made by the editors, rejection rate, and submissions distributed over sections. Figure 1 displays the total number of submissions for the years 2020 to 2024. The submissions are subdivided into regular submissions and those part of a Topical Issue, which significantly contributes (for details, see Fig. 2).

Figure 1. Number of regular submissions (in blue) and submissions to a Topical Issue (red).

Figure 2. Regular submissions (in blue) and submissions to Topical Issue (in red) by quarter.

The number of submissions is increasing, especially from 2023 to 2024. The trend can also be seen in the number of articles published and the total number of pages, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Number of printed articles and overall pages form the years 2021 to 2024

Figure 4 shows the decision of the editors, subdivided into direct rejection, which means that the scientific quality is insufficient or the topic does not fit Acta Acustica, rejection, minor revision, major revision and acceptance. The elapsed time for a first decision by an editor is shown in Figure 5a, which also includes the elapsed time for inviting reviewers. We are proud that the time between submission and first decision by an editor is decreasing. At the same time, it is important that the time to first decision is as short as possible, while ensuring the quality of the reviews. Next, Figue 5b shows the rejection rate over the last five years, which averages about 45%. Figure 6 shows the number of submissions by category from Animal Bioacoustics to Hearing, Audiology and Psychoacoustics. Most categories receive a good number of submissions. The three most popular categories are Hearing, Audiology and Psychoacoustics, Environmental Noise, and Musical Acoustics. The number of submissions by countries is presented in Figure 7.

Figure 4. Decisions of editors by quarter.

Figure 5. Time between submission to first decision (in days), and rejection rate. (a) Time to reviewers invitation and first decision. (b) Rejection rate.

Figure 6. Submissions received by section of the journal (years 2020–2023).

Figure 7. Submissions to the journal by countries for the year 2024.

4 Conclusion and Outlook

In 2025, we will continue to develop the journal in terms of both size and impact. We will focus on creating a high quality and high integrity journal, in a context of increasing threats to research integrity worldwide, as well as increasing availability of intelligent tools for publishing. Finally, we will encourage organisations around the world to support Acta Acustica financially to maintain Diamond OA in the long term.

© The Author(s), Published by EDP Sciences, 2025

All Figures

	Figure 1. Number of regular submissions (in blue) and submissions to a Topical Issue (red).
In the text

	Figure 2. Regular submissions (in blue) and submissions to Topical Issue (in red) by quarter.
In the text

	Figure 3. Number of printed articles and overall pages form the years 2021 to 2024
In the text

	Figure 4. Decisions of editors by quarter.
In the text

	Figure 5. Time between submission to first decision (in days), and rejection rate. (a) Time to reviewers invitation and first decision. (b) Rejection rate.
In the text

	Figure 6. Submissions received by section of the journal (years 2020–2023).
In the text

	Figure 7. Submissions to the journal by countries for the year 2024.
In the text