I’m normally excited to reach out to you readers in my Editorials, but this one I write with mixed feelings. The reason is that it will be my very last one, since I have decided to resign due to other duties. It was not an easy decision, since my four years with IJFE have been both very interesting and rewarding, and with a good progress in the journal’s development. But now it is time for me to hand over the leadership. Indeed, I am happy to welcome Charlie Blinn, University of Minnesota, as the new Editor-in-Chief. I wish you the best of luck Charlie!
Since we published the history of IJFE in the 25-years’ celebration paper in IJFE 25:2, so I do not need to repeat what has happened during my period as Editor-in-Chief. The journal is now well equipped in terms of professional submission and production systems through the cooperation with Taylor and Francis. And the quality is assured through a renewed Editorial board and two Associate editors.
The last, but also the major step of IJFE development remains – to get indexed appropriately. An application to get indexed by SCOPUS was submitted in the spring, and we’re confident that it will be approved within short. The next step is to get also impact factor. Or to use the correct term: to be included in Thompson Reuter’s Science Citation Index. To publish on time is one of the requirements, so we are now qualified in that aspect. However, the next key feature is trickier – and something that will require engagement from the whole scientific forest engineering community. New journals are only accepted if they are being highly cited by journals that already have an impact factor. And it is mainly citations of articles published the last two years that counts. So what we all need to do is to publish articles that are citable in IJFE, and also to strongly promote citations of fresh IJFE material.
So when you publish a paper in, for instance year 2016, make sure to cite IJFE articles that were published in 2014 and 2015! IJFE papers from other years are not counted in the impact factor calculation!
Please notice that every citation is utterly important. IJFE publishes ca 25 papers per year. So it is only 25 citations of articles published the two preceding years that are needed to get an impact factor of 1.00! And there can naturally be several IJFE citations in every article you publish – but the IJFE articles cited have to be from the two preceding years! It cannot be repeated too many times…
So please be careful (and rather innovative!) both when you publish, when you review manuscripts and when you communicate with colleagues. After all, all forest engineer scholars will benefit from IJFE having an impact factor since bibliometrics are getting increasingly important and there are not very many alternatives for publishing our kind of research.
In order to be updated on the newest articles, I recommend you to sign up to the “Alert function” on the IJFE webpage (www.tandfonline.com/tife). By doing so, you’ll be notified every time there is a new issue published (April, September and November). And the very freshest research you’ll find under “Latest articles” which is where the backlog of articles are located.
Naturally, IJFE is also dependent on a good flow of good manuscripts. The inflow has been low lately, so I also encourage you to submit to IJFE as soon as possible. Low inflow means short turn-around time and, thus, fast publication!
Talking about good and interesting articles, I am sure you will find some interesting articles to read – and to cite – in this issue. Enjoy, and I wish you all, the IJFE and Charlie Blinn the best for the future!
Ola Lindroos
Editor-in-Chief