- Email: [email protected]
The Journal of Materials Processing Technology in year 2005 and beyond: What the authors and reviewers should know
Journal of Materials Processing Technology 176 (2006) 1–3
Editorial
The Journal of Materials Processing Technology in year 2005 and beyond: What the authors and reviewers should know
1. Introduction
2. 2006 and beyond
Since being founded in 1977 at the Journal of Mechanical Working Technology, the JMPT has flourished to become a large and popular international journal. The page allocation for the JMPT before the turn of the century was 1200 per annum. Currently, its allocation is 3600 pages per annum and it is planned to increase its allocation to 4800 pages per annum very shortly to cater for increased number of quality papers submitted by authors from all over the world. After running the journal single handedly from its establishment, Professor Travis decided in the late 1990s to appoint Regional Editors to assist him with handling the large volume of quality papers submitted. I was appointed as the first Regional Editor (for Europe) with effect from the year 2000 with the plan to appoint another Regional Editor for Hong Kong and China and a third for North America. In 2002, Professor Travis decided to call it a day and proposed to hand over the Editorship of the journal to myself. I agreed to take on the responsibility as long as he agreed to remain as the “Honorary Founding Editor” of the journal and agreed to be in charge of conference special issues for at least two more years. In 2002, Professor Lee was invited to become the Regional Editor for the Chinese region which he so kindly accepted and very soon found himself dealing with a large number of papers. In 2003, Professor Gunasekera was invited to join the editorial team as the Regional Editor for North America which he was kind enough to accept. At the same time, I myself accepted the role of the Editor-inChief of the journal and Professor Travis decided to relinquish his responsibility with the special issues by the end of 2004. The journal has continued to grow despite a long delay in getting papers published and high rejection rate. The volume of papers submitted from China increased to such a level that we felt the need to appoint Professor Li as Associate Editor based in China to facilitate initial screening of the papers submitted by the authors from mainland China.
We have chosen to implement a centralised electronic submission system in order to increase the speed at which we handle our manuscripts. The system will also keep count of how many manuscripts any one referee has reviewed within certain time period. This way the system will ensure that no referee is requested to review more than a reasonable number of papers. The system will keep the relevant Editor informed of the progress with the review process and also submit the reviewers report to help with the final decision. Once the decision is made by one of the Editors, the corresponding author will be informed by the system. If the paper is accepted then the publishing house will be notified at the same time. If the paper is rejected or requires revision, authors will be informed accordingly. The e-submission system brings other advantages too. The system should prevent simultaneous submission of the same paper to different editors or submission of papers with substantially common materials. The system was implemented in January 2006 and we hope that it will bring advantages to the authors, editors, and reviewers alike.
0924-0136/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2006.03.108
3. Format of a JMPT manuscript In preparing a good manuscript, authors should adhere to the following guidelines. In general, a manuscript will have the following headings/sections: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Title of the manuscript Author name(s) and affiliation Abstract Up to 5 Keywords Introduction Analytical/theoretical work (if any) Experimental work
2
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
Editorial / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 176 (2006) 1–3
Results and discussions Conclusions Acknowledgement(s) (if any) References Appendix (if any)
(1) The title of the manuscript needs to be short and relevant to the subject matter. (2) Author names and affiliations should be in the following format: H. Al-Fadhli1 , B.S. Yilbas2 and M.S.J. Hashmi1 1) School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Dublin City University, Rep. of Ireland, E-mail: [email protected] 2) Department of Mechanical Engineering, KFUPM, Saudi Arabia, E-mail: [email protected] (3) The abstract should be short and precise giving clear indication of what investigation has been described in the manuscript and the precise conclusion. The abstract should not contain any introductory material or details of the experimental procedures or analysis, etc. About 200 words should be sufficient. (4) The keywords should reflect the subject matter of the manuscript in the same way the title of the manuscript should. As such most of the keywords may already be present in the title. (5) The introduction section should contain brief statement of the need for the investigation, review of up to date literature and specific objectives. This section should not normally exceed four typed pages (double spaced). (6) Any theoretical and simulation work should be detailed in this section. However, only the most important equations or features should be presented here. More detailed but essential treatment may be presented in the appendix. (7) Details of the experimental programme, facilities, and materials used should be presented in this section with justification of the methods used for tests, etc. (8) Results and discussions section is the most important part of the manuscript in which critical analysis of the results obtained, their significance and novelty or nature of originality are to be argued, and discussed in unambiguous manner. Simulation results need to be validated by experimental work of the author’s own or taken from the literature with appropriate referencing. Any limitations of the results presented or techniques used in the study are to be highlighted in this section. Care should be taken to avoid any errors of logic or facts. (9) The conclusions section should contain short and precise concluding remarks arising out of the investigation which should re-inforce the originality of the work presented, only the very important points should be included in this section. (10) The acknowledgement is used to give credit to the funding authorities of the research work, collaborators or other colleagues whose names do not appear as co-authors but who made some contribution in producing the material for the manuscript.
(11) The list of references must contain full details of each reference cited in the manuscript. The citation details must include the initials and surnames of each author, the full title of the article, and the full citation details, i.e. title of the journal, volume/issue number, inclusive pages, year of publication. For conference papers, the title of the conference, venue, inclusive pages, and the year of the conference need to be given. (12) Any appendices need to be of similar presentation quality of the manuscript itself. Appendices provide opportunities to present additional materials which are inappropriate for inclusion in the main body of the manuscript. However, the length must not be excessive. 4. Preparing the manuscript The manuscript should be written using third person English, i.e. without using the words ‘I’, ‘We’, ‘Our’, etc. Authors must ensure that the text of the manuscript is free from errors of English. If in doubt authors should get their manuscript checked and copy edited (proof read) by some one with better command of written English. This could be a colleague or an external language checking service. For details of language polishing services, authors are encouraged to contact [email protected]. The total length of the manuscript should not exceed 15 pages of text typed on plain paper, double spaced, single column mode including tables. The number of figures should not exceed 10. After preparing the manuscript, authors must check that all the references cited in the text are listed in the list of references and that the list of references does not contain any reference which has not been cited in the text. The second important check is to ensure that all the figures discussed/mentioned in the text have been supplied with the manuscript. Also no figure should be enclosed which has not been mentioned or discussed in the text. When the manuscript is ready authors should forward it to one journal only. Forwarding the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time is unethical and unacceptable. In future, the Editorial team of the JMPT will require the authors to submit a written declaration that they have not submitted the manuscript to any other journal. Another very important item that from now on the Editorial team of the JMPT would be looking for a short statement to indicate on what basis the authors claim that their paper is contributing to the body of knowledge. They must identify the relevant section in the text of their paper in which such novelty has been outlined. 5. Reviewing manuscripts for the JMPT Many colleagues from around the world have already assisted us by reviewing manuscripts for the JMPT and the following points may only be appropriate for other colleagues who may be requested to review manuscripts for the JMPT at a future date. In general, the review process comprises of three main stages. The preliminary stage involves examining the title and the
Editorial / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 176 (2006) 1–3
abstract of the manuscript to assess whether the subject matter is within the scope of the journal and is likely to be of interest to the readership of the journal. If the answer is yes then the second and most important phase comes into play. The reviewer needs to establish after thorough examination of the manuscript whether • the work contributes to the body of knowledge, and • the manuscript is free of any errors of fact or logic. If the answers to these two points are negative then the manuscript is to be rejected. If the answers are affirmative then the manuscript is acceptable. At this stage, the reviewers need their expert knowledge of the state of the art of the subject matter and their experience to make sound judgement. If in doubt some times it helps if searching methods like Science Direct and Scopus are accessible to the reviewer. In rejecting the manuscript the reviewer needs to give a valid reason that can be passed on to the authors. At this stage if the paper is acceptable, then the final stage of review is undertaken as follows, in order to either approve the manuscript for publication as it stands or with essential revision or preferred revision which may include adding more up to date literature review if the reviewer is aware of other published materials which should have been referenced by this authors. • The reviewer is aware of some relevant literature which the author should have referenced. • It is too large in size and can easily be reduced. • It has some non-essential figures. • It has some non-essential tables. • The quality of figures is of journal standard.
3
Based on the answers to the above points the reviewer compiles a list of points for revising the manuscript before it can be accepted or re-submitted for further review. At this stage, if the manuscript is acceptable with or without revision and it is written using correct English then it can be sent to the publishing house. However, if it contains serious errors in English the manuscript is not to be rejected and the reviewer should make no attempt to correct the manuscript (except for a page or two) but make a definite point for mandatory correction or copy editing at the revision stage of the manuscript. The above guidelines are indicative only and there may be other aspects which the reviewer may take into account to suggest that the manuscript may be accepted in a much reduced form as a technical note only. On behalf of the Editorial team, I hope that the authors and reviewers alike will find the above basic guidelines helpful. On behalf of my co-editors I would like to take this opportunity to express my most sincere gratitude to both these groups of very important contributors to the JMPT. Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to the Founding Editor of the JMPT, Professor Frank William Travis in celebrating the year of his 70th birthday in the year 2005. Editor-in-Chief Saleem Hashmi (Prof.) ∗ School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin-9, Republic of Ireland ∗ Fax:
+353 1 836 0830. E-mail address: [email protected]
Editorial
The Journal of Materials Processing Technology in year 2005 and beyond: What the authors and reviewers should know
1. Introduction
2. 2006 and beyond
Since being founded in 1977 at the Journal of Mechanical Working Technology, the JMPT has flourished to become a large and popular international journal. The page allocation for the JMPT before the turn of the century was 1200 per annum. Currently, its allocation is 3600 pages per annum and it is planned to increase its allocation to 4800 pages per annum very shortly to cater for increased number of quality papers submitted by authors from all over the world. After running the journal single handedly from its establishment, Professor Travis decided in the late 1990s to appoint Regional Editors to assist him with handling the large volume of quality papers submitted. I was appointed as the first Regional Editor (for Europe) with effect from the year 2000 with the plan to appoint another Regional Editor for Hong Kong and China and a third for North America. In 2002, Professor Travis decided to call it a day and proposed to hand over the Editorship of the journal to myself. I agreed to take on the responsibility as long as he agreed to remain as the “Honorary Founding Editor” of the journal and agreed to be in charge of conference special issues for at least two more years. In 2002, Professor Lee was invited to become the Regional Editor for the Chinese region which he so kindly accepted and very soon found himself dealing with a large number of papers. In 2003, Professor Gunasekera was invited to join the editorial team as the Regional Editor for North America which he was kind enough to accept. At the same time, I myself accepted the role of the Editor-inChief of the journal and Professor Travis decided to relinquish his responsibility with the special issues by the end of 2004. The journal has continued to grow despite a long delay in getting papers published and high rejection rate. The volume of papers submitted from China increased to such a level that we felt the need to appoint Professor Li as Associate Editor based in China to facilitate initial screening of the papers submitted by the authors from mainland China.
We have chosen to implement a centralised electronic submission system in order to increase the speed at which we handle our manuscripts. The system will also keep count of how many manuscripts any one referee has reviewed within certain time period. This way the system will ensure that no referee is requested to review more than a reasonable number of papers. The system will keep the relevant Editor informed of the progress with the review process and also submit the reviewers report to help with the final decision. Once the decision is made by one of the Editors, the corresponding author will be informed by the system. If the paper is accepted then the publishing house will be notified at the same time. If the paper is rejected or requires revision, authors will be informed accordingly. The e-submission system brings other advantages too. The system should prevent simultaneous submission of the same paper to different editors or submission of papers with substantially common materials. The system was implemented in January 2006 and we hope that it will bring advantages to the authors, editors, and reviewers alike.
0924-0136/$ – see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2006.03.108
3. Format of a JMPT manuscript In preparing a good manuscript, authors should adhere to the following guidelines. In general, a manuscript will have the following headings/sections: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Title of the manuscript Author name(s) and affiliation Abstract Up to 5 Keywords Introduction Analytical/theoretical work (if any) Experimental work
2
8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
Editorial / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 176 (2006) 1–3
Results and discussions Conclusions Acknowledgement(s) (if any) References Appendix (if any)
(1) The title of the manuscript needs to be short and relevant to the subject matter. (2) Author names and affiliations should be in the following format: H. Al-Fadhli1 , B.S. Yilbas2 and M.S.J. Hashmi1 1) School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Dublin City University, Rep. of Ireland, E-mail: [email protected] 2) Department of Mechanical Engineering, KFUPM, Saudi Arabia, E-mail: [email protected] (3) The abstract should be short and precise giving clear indication of what investigation has been described in the manuscript and the precise conclusion. The abstract should not contain any introductory material or details of the experimental procedures or analysis, etc. About 200 words should be sufficient. (4) The keywords should reflect the subject matter of the manuscript in the same way the title of the manuscript should. As such most of the keywords may already be present in the title. (5) The introduction section should contain brief statement of the need for the investigation, review of up to date literature and specific objectives. This section should not normally exceed four typed pages (double spaced). (6) Any theoretical and simulation work should be detailed in this section. However, only the most important equations or features should be presented here. More detailed but essential treatment may be presented in the appendix. (7) Details of the experimental programme, facilities, and materials used should be presented in this section with justification of the methods used for tests, etc. (8) Results and discussions section is the most important part of the manuscript in which critical analysis of the results obtained, their significance and novelty or nature of originality are to be argued, and discussed in unambiguous manner. Simulation results need to be validated by experimental work of the author’s own or taken from the literature with appropriate referencing. Any limitations of the results presented or techniques used in the study are to be highlighted in this section. Care should be taken to avoid any errors of logic or facts. (9) The conclusions section should contain short and precise concluding remarks arising out of the investigation which should re-inforce the originality of the work presented, only the very important points should be included in this section. (10) The acknowledgement is used to give credit to the funding authorities of the research work, collaborators or other colleagues whose names do not appear as co-authors but who made some contribution in producing the material for the manuscript.
(11) The list of references must contain full details of each reference cited in the manuscript. The citation details must include the initials and surnames of each author, the full title of the article, and the full citation details, i.e. title of the journal, volume/issue number, inclusive pages, year of publication. For conference papers, the title of the conference, venue, inclusive pages, and the year of the conference need to be given. (12) Any appendices need to be of similar presentation quality of the manuscript itself. Appendices provide opportunities to present additional materials which are inappropriate for inclusion in the main body of the manuscript. However, the length must not be excessive. 4. Preparing the manuscript The manuscript should be written using third person English, i.e. without using the words ‘I’, ‘We’, ‘Our’, etc. Authors must ensure that the text of the manuscript is free from errors of English. If in doubt authors should get their manuscript checked and copy edited (proof read) by some one with better command of written English. This could be a colleague or an external language checking service. For details of language polishing services, authors are encouraged to contact [email protected]. The total length of the manuscript should not exceed 15 pages of text typed on plain paper, double spaced, single column mode including tables. The number of figures should not exceed 10. After preparing the manuscript, authors must check that all the references cited in the text are listed in the list of references and that the list of references does not contain any reference which has not been cited in the text. The second important check is to ensure that all the figures discussed/mentioned in the text have been supplied with the manuscript. Also no figure should be enclosed which has not been mentioned or discussed in the text. When the manuscript is ready authors should forward it to one journal only. Forwarding the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time is unethical and unacceptable. In future, the Editorial team of the JMPT will require the authors to submit a written declaration that they have not submitted the manuscript to any other journal. Another very important item that from now on the Editorial team of the JMPT would be looking for a short statement to indicate on what basis the authors claim that their paper is contributing to the body of knowledge. They must identify the relevant section in the text of their paper in which such novelty has been outlined. 5. Reviewing manuscripts for the JMPT Many colleagues from around the world have already assisted us by reviewing manuscripts for the JMPT and the following points may only be appropriate for other colleagues who may be requested to review manuscripts for the JMPT at a future date. In general, the review process comprises of three main stages. The preliminary stage involves examining the title and the
Editorial / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 176 (2006) 1–3
abstract of the manuscript to assess whether the subject matter is within the scope of the journal and is likely to be of interest to the readership of the journal. If the answer is yes then the second and most important phase comes into play. The reviewer needs to establish after thorough examination of the manuscript whether • the work contributes to the body of knowledge, and • the manuscript is free of any errors of fact or logic. If the answers to these two points are negative then the manuscript is to be rejected. If the answers are affirmative then the manuscript is acceptable. At this stage, the reviewers need their expert knowledge of the state of the art of the subject matter and their experience to make sound judgement. If in doubt some times it helps if searching methods like Science Direct and Scopus are accessible to the reviewer. In rejecting the manuscript the reviewer needs to give a valid reason that can be passed on to the authors. At this stage if the paper is acceptable, then the final stage of review is undertaken as follows, in order to either approve the manuscript for publication as it stands or with essential revision or preferred revision which may include adding more up to date literature review if the reviewer is aware of other published materials which should have been referenced by this authors. • The reviewer is aware of some relevant literature which the author should have referenced. • It is too large in size and can easily be reduced. • It has some non-essential figures. • It has some non-essential tables. • The quality of figures is of journal standard.
3
Based on the answers to the above points the reviewer compiles a list of points for revising the manuscript before it can be accepted or re-submitted for further review. At this stage, if the manuscript is acceptable with or without revision and it is written using correct English then it can be sent to the publishing house. However, if it contains serious errors in English the manuscript is not to be rejected and the reviewer should make no attempt to correct the manuscript (except for a page or two) but make a definite point for mandatory correction or copy editing at the revision stage of the manuscript. The above guidelines are indicative only and there may be other aspects which the reviewer may take into account to suggest that the manuscript may be accepted in a much reduced form as a technical note only. On behalf of the Editorial team, I hope that the authors and reviewers alike will find the above basic guidelines helpful. On behalf of my co-editors I would like to take this opportunity to express my most sincere gratitude to both these groups of very important contributors to the JMPT. Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to the Founding Editor of the JMPT, Professor Frank William Travis in celebrating the year of his 70th birthday in the year 2005. Editor-in-Chief Saleem Hashmi (Prof.) ∗ School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin-9, Republic of Ireland ∗ Fax:
+353 1 836 0830. E-mail address: [email protected]