As the new Editor-in-Chief, let me first express my sincere gratitude to my predecessor, Erik de Graaff, for his active, thoughtful, continuous, and kind support and mentorship during our transition. I also want to recognise his outstanding service as Editor-in-Chief for a whole decade. During his editorship, the interest to publish in the journal has continually risen. The change was particularly rapid in the last three years. During 2017 there were 324 new submissions – that is almost one manuscript per day – which means that the volume has doubled since 2014.
This development is a fundamentally positive indicator both for the journal and for engineering education. It has however also made the task of running the journal more demanding. To mobilise the editorial capacity to match the present situation, I have therefore recruited two eminent Deputy Editors, Professor Jonte Bernhard and Dr Maartje van den Bogaard. They bring impressive and relevant skills, and it is a great joy to work in a tight editorial team.
Together, we have analysed the state of the journal and discussed our ambitions. We know how much it matters to authors that the editorial process is effective and transparent, from the first submission of a manuscript to the final decision, and if this is positive, to publication. Our first action is therefore to reduce the backlog of manuscripts in the pipeline. We will strive to make the review process more effective, while also providing more frequent notifications to authors. This does not imply shorter deadlines for reviewers to make reviews, nor for authors to make revisions. Instead, we aim to eliminate the unproductive time when no active work is going on.
We also want to decrease the time between online publication and placement in an issue. The output backlog was already significantly cut by the impressive December 2017 issue, which featured 943 pages. Moreover, from this issue on, the number of pages has been increased by one third. Despite these forceful measures, the expected waiting time is still slightly over one year. We will keep bringing it down, softly, over the next few years, to our new target of six months.
It is an inescapable truth that a journal can never accept more papers than it can publish. Despite raising the page count, we estimate that the threshold for accepting a paper will be higher than before, while we are reducing the internal and external backlogs. We are determined to lead the journal to a balanced steady state.
Sincerely
Kristina Edström
Kristina Edström, Editor-in-Chief
Dr Kristina Edström is Associate Professor in Engineering Education Development at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Since 1997 she leads and participates in educational development activities at KTH, in Sweden and internationally. She is a member of the international CDIO Council and served in the SEFI Administrative Council 2010-2013. In her research, she takes a critical approach to the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of engineering education development. Kristina holds a M.Sc. in Engineering from Chalmers and a PhD in Technology and Learning from KTH.
Jonte Bernhard, Deputy Editor
Professor Jonte Bernhard became Sweden’s first full professor in Engineering Education Research at Linköping University, 2012. He has an engineering background with a PhD in magnetic materials from Uppsala University, and a postdoc year in Japan. He has taught engineering physics and electrical engineering for over thirty years. Twenty years ago, he also became interested in improving student learning through educational research and the design of learning environments. Hence, he is equally at home teaching electrical engineering students in the high voltage lab, as doing interaction analysis. Jonte has served EJEE as an Associate Editor since 2009, and is a member of the international Research in Engineering Education Network (REEN) board.
Maartje van den Bogaard, Deputy Editor
Dr Maartje van den Bogaard is a Senior Researcher and Consultant in the 4TU Centre for Engineering Education at TU Delft. She holds an MSc in Education and a PhD in Engineering Education. She worked in engineering education as an administrator, teacher and researcher. Her research interests include student success issues, curriculum development and the role of data therein and effects of education policy. Maartje has a strong interest in methodology and in the nexus between research and practice.
Contact email for the editorial team: [email protected]