From a professional viewpoint, 2018 is a remarkably memorable year for me. It heralds successful continuous run of four decades of the truly global-scale biennial conference series viz. the International Drying Symposium (IDS), now well known to the academic and industrial community active in drying R&D. Little did I envisage IDS to live so long. Indeed, contrary to my wildest optimistic expectations, the series has not only prospered but indeed expanded globally into numerous sister conferences on drying and was responsible for the start-up of a fledgling journal in 1982 entitled Drying Technology – An International Journal, which was published by Marcel Dekker, NY, USA.
When IDS was established at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, my goal was simply to provide a platform for industry and academia to get together for a free exchange of scientific and technical knowledge to advance drying technologies in several industrial sectors. Lack of in-depth knowledge about this key unit operation found in most industrial sectors was a shock to me as a junior academic tasked with the development and teaching of a graduate level course at McGill in 1976. A strenuous manual literature search in the library was discouraging because much of the relevant literature was not available in English. I set myself a rather difficult task in those days of getting drying experts from academia and industry from as many countries as possible together on McGill’s campus. I was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic support of the idea, which led to participants from Eastern Europe, including the former USSR, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and so on; and Western Europe, including the UK, France, Germany, and Scandinavian countries; plus Australia and New Zealand, along with the US and Canada. Single participants represented India, Brazil, Mexico, and some other countries as well. China was conspicuously absent, although now China is by far the key contributor to the drying literature.
Interestingly, over half the number of participants came from industry. Encouraged by the success of the first event, I decided we need such meetings on a regular basis. So the sequel was held again at McGill in 1980. Thereafter, a number of countries showed keen interest in hosting the series. Thus, the symposia moved around the globe with great outcomes. The event in Valencia, Spain, is the 21st Symposium in the IDS series. I am overwhelmed and deeply humbled by the response of the global community to the series.
I am grateful to all participants in the series and especially the program chairs of the various meetings and their organizing committees for their passionate effort. Although there is no connection between IDS and this journal, Drying Technology was born out of the success of the first two IDSs, which attracted the attention of the late Chairman Mau—Dr. Maurits Dekker, Chairman of the Board of Marcel Dekker. The journal was launched in 1982 at the suggestion of Dr. Dekker and the late Prof. Carl W. Hall of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) was named the founding editor-in-chief. I have been associated with the editorial effort for this journal right from Day 1. A number of then-innovative ideas were developed successfully in the early formative years of the journal. It took about a decade of hard work to put the journal on a firm foundation.
When Prof. Hall retired from NSF, I took over the editorship in 1988. It has been a challenging but pleasant and eventful, as well as memorable, journey. It is professionally rewarding to provide a peer-reviewed archival outlet for researchers from around the world. This journal has encouraged and catalyzed basic and applied research in drying, which is necessarily multi- and inter-disciplinary. It combines transport phenomena with materials science, covering hundreds of materials. Most importantly, this journal, like the IDS events, facilitated international networking, creativity, and innovation by pooling talent and scarce financial resources. I recall having used the word “globalization” in many early editorials, prefaces to proceedings of IDS, as well as my plenary and keynote talks, long before it became a buzzword. The success of IDS is due to globalization, period! No one country or group of countries ever had the critical mass needed to run such a major event successfully.
We will soon publish a detailed account of both the IDS series and this journal. It will show the modern history of Drying R&D. I am truly delighted that this journal has attracted global attention from several disciplines and industries and has contributed tangibly to enhancement of innovative drying technologies.
As always, I am grateful for the encouragement and support of my colleagues, graduate students, and researchers who proactively helped with the numerous tasks involved in managing a large-scale event, as well as in smoothly running a peer-reviewed journal servicing both academia and industry. We are of course highly appreciative of the thousands of authors and hundreds of dedicated reviewers who are the gatekeepers of quality of what we publish. I must refrain from listing all individuals I am indebted to for lack of space in this editorial and for fear of missing some key names as well.
I do believe this journal has accomplished a lot but a lot more remains to be accomplished as a number of important issues remain to be resolved. I am confident we will continue to serve the academic and industrial communities active in drying for decades to come.