Editor’s Note

The Technical Council on Forensic Engineering (TCFE) is planning the Sixth Forensic Engineering Congress, to be held in San Francisco, California, on November 7–10, 2012. Mark your calendar and watch for further details. The Congress website will soon be established, with a call for papers. Forensic engineering congresses are held every three years. Previous congresses were in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1997); San Juan, Puerto Rico (2000); San Diego, California (2003); Cleveland, Ohio (2006); and Washington, D.C. (2009). The ASCE Forensic Engineering Congress represents the premier opportunity in the United States for learning about advances in the forensic engineering discipline. For more information regarding the congresses, please see my “Editor’s Note” reviewing the 2009 Forensic Engineering Congress in the March/April 2010 issue of the Journal (Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 97–98).

The Journal Publications Committee is seeking new reviewers to assist in the peer reviews of submitted manuscripts. Thoughtful, constructive, and timely reviews are essential to the success of professional journals. We value our reviewers highly, knowing that their time commitment and effort represents a substantial altruistic contribution to the advance of knowledge and information dissemination. Please contact me at the address given at the end of this note if you would like to be considered for a review assignment, and I will be pleased to add you to our list of distinguished reviewers. The initial formal contact will come in the form of an invitation from our Editorial Manager software.

Should you receive an invitation to review a manuscript, please respond immediately with your decision to accept the assignment or decline the invitation. If you cannot accept the particular assignment, this will allow me to quickly select an alternate reviewer. Delaying your response holds up the review process. If the manuscript is on a subject outside your area of expertise or interest, perhaps you can recommend an alternate reviewer by indicating his/her name and e-mail address as part of your response. If you do not respond, you will receive an automatic reminder in a few days. A continued lack of response will be interpreted as lack of interest in the Journal. Reviewers who accept a review assignment and are subsequently late in completing the review also receive automatic reminder notices. A lack of response to these messages will eventually result in removal of the reviewer’s name from our list.

When you first receive an invitation, please register and complete your reviewer profile. This involves checking the boxes on the profile form that identify subject areas (classifications) in which you are willing to review manuscripts. I prepared the list of topics specifically for this journal, based on subjects discussed in papers we have published in the past. One advantage of Editorial Manager is the ability to create a unique database of topic classifications for each journal. When a new manuscript arrives, it is also given classification words from this database, making it easier for me to select appropriate reviewers by matching classifications. If you have not selected personal classifications, you will not appear in the list when I am seeking reviewers for a particular manuscript.

Please know that selecting a particular classification topic does not necessarily imply that you consider yourself to be an “academic expert” in that topic, but rather that you are interested in the topic. Although some reviewers are invited because of their specialized expertise, others are invited because they have practice experience in the topic or are seeking information in the topic for use in their engineering practice. This journal is focused on the transfer of lessons learned from forensic investigations to practitioners. We are especially interested in hearing from practitioners in the review process who can articulate whether the manuscript topic or presentation is in a form directly useful to practicing consulting, design, and construction professionals.

To submit a new manuscript, or to simply explore the software, go to the website http://www.editorialmanager.com/jrncfeng/.

Please feel free to contact me by mail: Kenneth L. Carper, Professor Emeritus, School of Architecture & Construction Management, College of Eng. & Architecture, P.O. Box 642220, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2220; by telephone at (509) 592-5374; by fax at (509) 335-6132; or by e-mail at [email protected].