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6 years of Mechatronics
Mechatronics 35 (2016) A1–A2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Mechatronics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mechatronics
Editorial
6 years of Mechatronics
The year 2016 will start with a new Editor-in-Chief for Mechatronics: Prof Reza Moheimani will start January 1st. I have served the journal with great pleasure for six years, and it is a good moment to reflect on the changes in the field of Mechatronics, and on the state of health of our journal. However, let me first thank the great editorial board, the special issue guest editors, the reviewers, as well as the Elsevier people supporting our editorial work: thank you all for your help, support, and your responsiveness to my sometimes short emails.
Mechatronics on the move The research field of mechatronics is no longer only about controlled motion of (electro)mechanical systems, but is influenced by developments in medical applications, high tech systems, physics, computer science, robotics, networked control systems, automotive etc. As a journal is it not easy to keep some focus, while leaving room for new directions. Nevertheless, as an Editor-in-Chief I often recommended submissions to be sent to other journals, allowing Mechatronics to keep focus on the mechatronics field, with preference on (electro-)mechanics, dynamics, control, and design included. While physics and computer science is fundamentally needed, the core of the papers published in Mechatronics has been applications which are typically seen as mechatronics, otherwise the focus will be lost, and there would not be a clear direction as to what Mechatronics is about.
KPI: Quality and Speed! The success of a journal needs not only high quality content, but a rapid review process as well. This ensures the key findings of researchers gets disseminated rapidly to the community to facilitate rapid advancement of the field. These key performance indicators (KPI) of quality and speed will be addressed subsequently. KPI 1: Quality. In order to provide high quality articles, the most important component is to get more good papers as submissions. However, to get more submissions, the impact factor should be high, because that will motivate researchers to submit. But this is a chicken and egg problem. One way out, which I actively supported, is to publish special issues. With special issues the quest editors actively find well respected authors to submit high quality manuscripts. In the past six years this worked really well. We had timely special issues on highly relevant topics, ranging from a special issue on RoboCup to motion control of high precision systems. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0957-4158(16)30022-8 0957-4158
While some journals use a second way of increasing the impact factor (as a rough measure for quality) which is to ask authors to make use of more references towards our own journal, this approach was not used by Mechatronics. In my opinion this method is unethical: references should be chosen because of their value for the paper and for the readers and for no other reason. As it is a commonly held view that the Impact Factor is not a perfect metric for this and other reasons, my proposal is to publish also the impact factor without self-citations of the journal. This will then circumvent this behaviour. Finally, quality of the published papers depends also on the review process. This means that the editorial board should be aware of their important role in selecting reviewers and judging the response of them. So the selection of the editorial board is instrumental, and fortunately, the past years I have been fortunate to select and work with a good team. They have ensured quality peer-reviews that lead to highly selective process, but also reviews which contributed to the improvement of the papers published in Mechatronics. Overall, we managed to double the number of submissions (from about 200 in 2009 to almost 500 in 2015), and the impact factor is now well above one. KPI 2: Time. In order to improve the manuscript processing time, a few things need to be in place. The first evaluation should be done relatively fast: if a paper is outside the focus of our journal, the paper should be rejected near immediately after submission, with a short statement indicating the manuscript is not appropriate given the scope of the journal. Sometimes authors did not agree, leading to some discussions with various outcome. But in most cases authors did seem to understand, and were willing to send their paper to a more appropriate journal. If this is done fast, it is to the benefit of both authors who can quickly move to another publishing outlet as well as reduces the burden on reviewers in evaluating a manuscript that is ultimately not within the scope of the journal. Manuscripts which seemed suitable to undergo full peer-review were then sent by me to an appropriate associate editor (AE). The match between the paper subject and the AE is important and for this reason Mechatronics has a prestigious editorial board that reflected the various key areas of research in the field. Of course, each of the AEs sometimes have different response times, which is why regular checks would occur to ensure manuscripts did not languish in any stage of the peer review process. In the past years I have had a strategy to renew the board with diversity not only in research area, but career stage. Specifically,
A2
Editorial / Mechatronics 35 (2016) A1–A2
I ensured there were many early career researchers, for whom it helps in their career development. Typically, it is important for Assistant and for Associate Professors to put such an appointment on their CVs. My own experience from the start of my career was that being an AE gives you also a perfect means to expand your network, and to further broaden your scope of technology and research fields. The benefit to Mechatronics of this approach to asking relatively early career researchers gives intrinsically motivated editors, who are henceforth responsive, on top of things and will be the next generation of leaders in the field. In the selection process I also had a strategy to select more females to the board, in order to balance the gender issue in a better way and again ensure the board accurately represented the community. Finally, for rapid time to publication it is also important that, after acceptance, the publisher optimizes all aspects of the publishing processes. Due to this, as well as the reduced review time, I am
happy to see that the overall time to publication for our Mechatronics journal has been reduced by more than a factor two the past six years. The Next Phase of Mechatronics The field of Mechatronics is an active research field, and I foresee a healthy grow in the coming years: many moving things will be connected to internet and will need some form of control. Mechatronics is in a good state of health and I wish the new Editorin-Chief success and a lot of rewarding moments the next years: every published item is a proud moment!
Maarten Steinbuch
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Mechatronics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mechatronics
Editorial
6 years of Mechatronics
The year 2016 will start with a new Editor-in-Chief for Mechatronics: Prof Reza Moheimani will start January 1st. I have served the journal with great pleasure for six years, and it is a good moment to reflect on the changes in the field of Mechatronics, and on the state of health of our journal. However, let me first thank the great editorial board, the special issue guest editors, the reviewers, as well as the Elsevier people supporting our editorial work: thank you all for your help, support, and your responsiveness to my sometimes short emails.
Mechatronics on the move The research field of mechatronics is no longer only about controlled motion of (electro)mechanical systems, but is influenced by developments in medical applications, high tech systems, physics, computer science, robotics, networked control systems, automotive etc. As a journal is it not easy to keep some focus, while leaving room for new directions. Nevertheless, as an Editor-in-Chief I often recommended submissions to be sent to other journals, allowing Mechatronics to keep focus on the mechatronics field, with preference on (electro-)mechanics, dynamics, control, and design included. While physics and computer science is fundamentally needed, the core of the papers published in Mechatronics has been applications which are typically seen as mechatronics, otherwise the focus will be lost, and there would not be a clear direction as to what Mechatronics is about.
KPI: Quality and Speed! The success of a journal needs not only high quality content, but a rapid review process as well. This ensures the key findings of researchers gets disseminated rapidly to the community to facilitate rapid advancement of the field. These key performance indicators (KPI) of quality and speed will be addressed subsequently. KPI 1: Quality. In order to provide high quality articles, the most important component is to get more good papers as submissions. However, to get more submissions, the impact factor should be high, because that will motivate researchers to submit. But this is a chicken and egg problem. One way out, which I actively supported, is to publish special issues. With special issues the quest editors actively find well respected authors to submit high quality manuscripts. In the past six years this worked really well. We had timely special issues on highly relevant topics, ranging from a special issue on RoboCup to motion control of high precision systems. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0957-4158(16)30022-8 0957-4158
While some journals use a second way of increasing the impact factor (as a rough measure for quality) which is to ask authors to make use of more references towards our own journal, this approach was not used by Mechatronics. In my opinion this method is unethical: references should be chosen because of their value for the paper and for the readers and for no other reason. As it is a commonly held view that the Impact Factor is not a perfect metric for this and other reasons, my proposal is to publish also the impact factor without self-citations of the journal. This will then circumvent this behaviour. Finally, quality of the published papers depends also on the review process. This means that the editorial board should be aware of their important role in selecting reviewers and judging the response of them. So the selection of the editorial board is instrumental, and fortunately, the past years I have been fortunate to select and work with a good team. They have ensured quality peer-reviews that lead to highly selective process, but also reviews which contributed to the improvement of the papers published in Mechatronics. Overall, we managed to double the number of submissions (from about 200 in 2009 to almost 500 in 2015), and the impact factor is now well above one. KPI 2: Time. In order to improve the manuscript processing time, a few things need to be in place. The first evaluation should be done relatively fast: if a paper is outside the focus of our journal, the paper should be rejected near immediately after submission, with a short statement indicating the manuscript is not appropriate given the scope of the journal. Sometimes authors did not agree, leading to some discussions with various outcome. But in most cases authors did seem to understand, and were willing to send their paper to a more appropriate journal. If this is done fast, it is to the benefit of both authors who can quickly move to another publishing outlet as well as reduces the burden on reviewers in evaluating a manuscript that is ultimately not within the scope of the journal. Manuscripts which seemed suitable to undergo full peer-review were then sent by me to an appropriate associate editor (AE). The match between the paper subject and the AE is important and for this reason Mechatronics has a prestigious editorial board that reflected the various key areas of research in the field. Of course, each of the AEs sometimes have different response times, which is why regular checks would occur to ensure manuscripts did not languish in any stage of the peer review process. In the past years I have had a strategy to renew the board with diversity not only in research area, but career stage. Specifically,
A2
Editorial / Mechatronics 35 (2016) A1–A2
I ensured there were many early career researchers, for whom it helps in their career development. Typically, it is important for Assistant and for Associate Professors to put such an appointment on their CVs. My own experience from the start of my career was that being an AE gives you also a perfect means to expand your network, and to further broaden your scope of technology and research fields. The benefit to Mechatronics of this approach to asking relatively early career researchers gives intrinsically motivated editors, who are henceforth responsive, on top of things and will be the next generation of leaders in the field. In the selection process I also had a strategy to select more females to the board, in order to balance the gender issue in a better way and again ensure the board accurately represented the community. Finally, for rapid time to publication it is also important that, after acceptance, the publisher optimizes all aspects of the publishing processes. Due to this, as well as the reduced review time, I am
happy to see that the overall time to publication for our Mechatronics journal has been reduced by more than a factor two the past six years. The Next Phase of Mechatronics The field of Mechatronics is an active research field, and I foresee a healthy grow in the coming years: many moving things will be connected to internet and will need some form of control. Mechatronics is in a good state of health and I wish the new Editorin-Chief success and a lot of rewarding moments the next years: every published item is a proud moment!
Maarten Steinbuch