Stepping into the shoes of a giant: A vision statement from the new Editors-in-Chief of Transport Reviews

In 2001, David Banister formally took over the editorship of Transport Reviews from his father Michael Banister, who launched the journal in 1981. Under David’s leadership, Transport Reviews grew gradually, both in terms of quantity and quality. The Journal grew from four to six issues per year (in 2004), and gradually from around 400 to 850 pages per year. Although the numbers of articles published in Transport Reviews have doubled in the last 20 years (from around 20 to 40 articles/year), the numbers of submissions have increased more dramatically, from around 70 in 2001 to about 400 in 2020. As a result, the acceptance rate has dropped from about 30% to 40% in the 1980s and 1990s to around 20% ten years ago and 10–12% at present. Single-author papers and articles originating from the United Kingdom dominated the journal before 2000, while published papers now have on average three authors and have a far more global character. The dominance of the UK has been redressed and articles published in Transport Reviews originate now from various parts of the World (mainly Continental Europe, North America, and Australia) (Banister, 2020). Besides a growth in quantity, Transport Reviews has also grown qualitatively, becoming a leading journal in the field of transport studies. The journal impact factor increased from around 0.5 at the beginning of the twenty-first century to 6.7 in 2019 (in comparison, the average impact factors of journals in the transport field increased from 0.8 in 2003 to 3.2 in 2019). Transport Reviews is now ranked 2nd out of 37 journals in the transport field and has been in the first quartile (Q1) of transport journals since 2011. We – and surely many others in the transport field – would like to thank David for all his work over the past two decades and congratulate him on leading this journal to unprecedented heights.

From January 2021, we – Jonas De Vos (University College London) and Ahmed El-Geneidy (McGill University) – will take over the role of David Banister and become the new editors-in-chief of Transport Reviews. One of the most important tasks for us is to maintain the current level of quality of papers published in Transport Reviews. For this, we will keep the same strategy as David. We do not plan to (substantially) increase the number of papers published per year in Transport Reviews. Keeping in mind the high number of papers submitted, this means that we (partly together with associate editors) will scan all the submitted papers and desk-reject those being out of scope or of limited quality (providing authors information on why we did not accept the paper and what was missing in it). Although this is a time-consuming process (which now can be divided between two editors-in-chief instead of one), we do not want to overburden editorial board members and other transport researchers with a large number of review requests. van Wee and Banister (2016) wrote a paper on “how to write a literature review paper” helping many potential contributors to Transport Reviews to write better quality review papers. One of our goals is to write a follow-up paper indicating what we expect from a review paper published in Transport Reviews. In doing so, we hope to receive better papers within the scope of the journal. Overall, it is our goal to ensure that high-quality papers are published, that low-quality papers are rejected, that authors’ work is disseminated at the highest possible quality, and that the authors feel that we have treated their submitted paper with the necessary attention and respect.

Of course, reviewers are still an essential part of a high-quality journal such as Transport Reviews. We aim to have two to four reviewers for all papers submitted (which are not desk-rejected). Partly because of the higher numbers of papers submitted to Transport Reviews, we have decided to expand the editorial board from 24 to 30 members, welcoming the following new members: Anne Brown (University of Oregon), Maria Börjesson (VTI Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute / KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Eva Heinen (University of Leeds), Dimitris Milakis (German Aerospace Center (DLR)), Catherine Morency (Polytechnique Montréal), Jean-Paul Rodrigue (Hofstra University), Yusak Susilo (BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences), Donggen Wang (Hong Kong Baptist University), Jiaoe Wang (Chinese Academy of Sciences), and Gordon Wilmsmeier (Universidad de Los Andes). David Banister (University of Oxford) will also join the editorial board in an advisory role for the editors. We would also like to thank the following scholars leaving the board for their contribution to the journal over the past years: Rachel Aldred (University of Westminster), Richard Allsop (University College London), Andrew Goetz (University of Denver), Michel Savy (University of Paris – East), and Orlando Strambi (University of São Paulo). In the coming years, we aim to form an editorial board of around 30 to 35 members with a good balance in terms of gender, career stage, research focus, and geographical location. Since the previous board had an overrepresentation of male senior professors from English-speaking countries, we mainly tried to invite younger and female scholars, resulting in an increased share of women (from 29.2% to 36.7%) and a better balance of early-career researchers and senior professors. We do acknowledge that – in the coming years – further effort is needed for creating gender and geographical balance, both in the editorial board and among (associate) editors. Editorial board members will be asked to review around six (and maximum eight) papers per year, while we also want to involve board members in the development of the journal (e.g. on how to organise the review process, editorials and special issues), through (online or face-to-face) meetings once or twice a year.

Submitted papers with a topic on maritime, freight transport and logistics (approximately 10–15% of all papers) will be assigned to associate editors Michael Browne and Johan Woxenius (both from the University of Gothenburg). They will decide on whether these papers will be desk-rejected, rejected based on recommendations from reviewers or accepted. All other papers (with a focus on passenger transport) will be handled by the editors-in-chief. In the coming years, we might assign one or two additional associate editors who will handle (passenger transport) papers with a certain focus on which we receive a relative large share of papers (e.g. papers on cycling or public transport), in order to decrease the load of the editors-in-chief. Ralph Buehler (Rutgers University) will continue as the book reviews editor and we will balance the number of book reviews published in each issue to be between one and two reviews of high-quality books that are of interest to the general transport community.

We expect that – in the coming decade – the transport field will continue analysing classical debates, but also examine new forms of transport. The classical studies might further investigate the roles of the built environment and attitudes on travel behaviour (and reverse effects), accessibility, logistics and freight transport, network structure, road pricing, and the effect of transport on the environment, equity and well-being. The past decade has seen an increase in the number of studies involving walking and cycling with multidisciplinary approaches incorporating aspects from other fields such as psychology and health. We expect this growth to continue, at an even faster speed. Whilst, public transport research is increasingly receiving attention due to the environmental and societal role it plays, an attention that will continue in the foreseeable future. Research involving long distance travel either with planes, trains, or cars gained importance due to the high connectivity we have been seeing with globalisation and massive increases in metropolitan regions. However, new forms of transport are emerging, such as automated vehicles (AVs), electric vehicles (EVs), Mobility as a Service (MaaS), ridehailing, and shared (micro)mobility. An increase in the number of studies focusing on these new forms – and how it can affect transport, the environment and people’s time use – can be expected. Of course, we cannot ignore how the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus has drastically changed how people live and travel in most parts of the World. The current pandemic influences our (out-of-home) activity participation, daily time use, frequency of (both local and international) travel, and travel mode choice (with public transport being hit hardest). Furthermore, long-term impacts can be expected as COVID-19 can be a catalyst for e-shopping and working from home which might in turn (negatively or positively) influence residential preferences, car ownership and the frequency and length of both commute and leisure trips.

Although review papers are constructed around a literature review, case study material from experiences at the international, country or city level can be used. Review papers can also perform a data analysis from a review standpoint, e.g. by using longitudinal data from different regions to explore historical trends. Such an approach has, for instance, been used by Buehler and Pucher (2021 – this issue) for analysing pedestrian and cyclist fatality rates between 1990 and 2018 in five different countries. The conclusions of a review paper should, however, focus on the review elements and not the case study. We also welcome short articles (no minimum word count is applied) which, however, should also take the form of a review paper, rather than just being an author’s viewpoint.

The transport research field has been growing rapidly in terms of the number of academic journals and the number of published articles per year. This growth and the unique nature of Transport Reviews represents an opportunity and a challenge. An opportunity for Transport Reviews to be the place to go to for researchers and practitioners seeking deep knowledge on a certain subject in transport. At the same time, it is a challenge as Transport Reviews should play a key role in gathering new insights in a fast-growing field with diverse topics and present these in a way that can help in guiding the future research agenda of transport. We argue that the Journal should both be an outcome of existing transport studies, but it should also be a guide for future ones. In other words, papers published in Transport Reviews should be able to make a comprehensive overview of existing studies on a certain subject, but at the same time should also be able to create new insights, theories, models, or avenues for further research. By doing so, papers in Transport Reviews can be used as inspiration and a guide for future studies. Studies published in Transport Reviews have provided a catalyst for a new research field, for example the paper by De Vos, Schwanen, Van Acker, and Witlox (2013) that has strongly influenced the emerging field of transport and well-being. By making sure that researchers can rely on Transport Reviews for state-of-the-art overviews of certain subjects, in combination with thoughtful insights fostering new research, Transport Reviews will remain a leading journal in the transport field.

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