How is it possible to write a closure to a year, in the midst of a pandemic that still dominates our life? We start with the dry facts.
Over the last year, the number of submissions to Research in Engineering Design dropped by several percent. We published 23 papers, 15% less than the year before. We definitely need to attract more quality submissions and make sure we reduce the review time to do it. One way that will help us monitor the review process better and present it transparently to authors is to incorporate new notifications to editors and authors about the progress of reviewing a paper including reviewers’ assignments, reviewers’ submission of reviews, etc.
None of this would have been possible without the extended community supporting the journal: the authors that trust the results of their research with the journal team, the area editors and the editorial board members, and the many dedicated reviewers. In a year challenged by a global pandemic, where many of us had to drastically change the way we teach and work, all of us were affected: those that conduct research and report the results of their research, those that manage the review of papers, those who review them, as well as the publisher’s team. None of the tasks we did this year was the same as in the past.
I wish all of us good health and safe journey through this time and would like, especially, to extend my deep gratitude to the numerous reviewers who contributed their efforts to maintain and improve the quality of the journal. The reviewers, outside the editorial board, who completed a review this year, are:
Ivo Adan
Saeema Ahmed-Kristensen
Janet Allen
Jan Aurich
Niccolò Becattini
Amar Kumar Behera
Eric Blanco
Matt Bohm
Jean Francois Boujut
Tyson Browning
Anaelle Camarda
Felician Campean
Raul Carlsson
Denis Cavallucci
Peter Childs
Vicente Chulvi
Edoardo Filippo Colombo
Steve Culley
Oliver de Weck
Dov Dori
Chris Earl
Boris Eisenbart
Avner Engel
Scott Ferguson
Katherine Fu
Shuichi Fukuda
Jose Jorge Garcia Agis
Georgi Georgiev
Kilian Gericke
Stefan Goetz
Paul Grogan
Peihua Gu
Claus Hansen
Pauline Herder
Katja Holtta-Otto
Christopher Hoyle
Ola Isaksson
Santosh Jagtap
Yan Jin
Nitin Joglekar
Shraddha Joshi
Udo Kannengiesser
Konstantinos Katsikopoulos
Sonal Keshwani
Timoleon Kipouros
Edwin Koh
Ehud Kroll
Torben Lenau
Simon Li
Julie Linsey
Yan Liu
Ying-Chieh Liu
Junfeng Ma
Ivan Mactaggart
Tomi Mannisto
Tucker J. Marion
Franck Marle
Tomislav Martinec
Daniel McAdams
John McCardle
Chris McComb
Jay McCormack
Christophe Merlo
Greg Mocko
Yaniv Mordecai
Beshoy Morkos
Dimitris Mourtzis
Yukari Nagai
Alessia Napoleone
Monia Niero
Masaki Ogura
Maicon Oliveira
Kevin Otto
Massimo Panarotto
Vijitashwa Pandey
Pedro Parraguez Ruiz
Marina Proske
Karthik Ramani
BSC Ranjan
Adam Ross
Federico Rotini
Anna Rylander Eklund
Filippo Salustri
Prabir Sarkar
Carolyn Seepersad
Colleen Seifert
Yakov Shabi
Avi Shaked
Sanjiv Sharma
Murtuza Shergadwala
Miri Sitton
Chris Snider
Durward Sobek, II
Julia Sokol
Svenja Sommer
Martin Steinert
Manfred Tacker
Maxime Thomas
Christine Toh
Jakob Trauer
Cameron Turner
AMM Sharif Ullah
David Ullman
Noe Vargas Hernandez
Srinivasan Venkataraman
Pieter Vermaas
Vimal Viswanathan
Zheng Wang
Christian Weber
Kate Whitefoot
Jenny Whyte
Amos Winter
Maria Yang
Yong Zeng
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Reich, Y. 2020 closure, reviewers’ gratitude, and improved review process transparency. Res Eng Design 32, 1–2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-021-00357-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-021-00357-w