Year in Review

It is hard to believe that a year has nearly passed by since I assumed the role of the editor-in-chief. I am honored to serve the Journal in this role, and it has been a privilege working with my colleagues John McCartney, Rodrigo Salgado, Timothy Stark, Joseph Wartman, Pat Fox, and John Christian, handling and processing new and revised submissions. Our editors and associate editors (AEs) are the gatekeepers of the Journal’s tradition of excellence. I thank them for their excellent effort in reviewing the papers, selecting reviewers, overseeing the review process, and making publication recommendations. Their excellent service to the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering in 2015 is a continuation of the time-honored tradition of selfless commitment to our professional community. And I know that all of us on the editorial board appreciate the work of our voluntary journal reviewers and their dedicated effort to sustain our journal as one of the leading geotechnical journals worldwide. The AEs, the editors, and I sincerely appreciate your voluntary service to the Journal.

I’m pleased to report that the state of the Journal is strong. We have received and processed a record number of 743 new submissions. This is 87 submissions more than in 2014 and a new high in the history of the Journal. The acceptance rate is at 19%, and the impact factor is the highest it has ever been (one year at 1.60 and 5 years at 1.92). The average review time for first decision is at 4 months for papers that undergo full review; this is an area where we collectively endeavor to improve. We have welcomed as new AEs Dipanjan Basu, Giovanna Biscontin, Andrei Lyamin, Scott Olson, John Rice, Marcelo Sanchez, Dimitrios Zekkos, and Adda Zekkos. We have also extended our sincere gratitude to our colleagues who retired as AEs last year: Amy Cerato, Youssef Hashash, Bill Likos, Mike Malusis, Ellen Rathjie, and Raj Siddharthan. We thank them for their contributions to maintain the quality and reputation of the Journal. Their service to our community will be recognized during the G-I annual meeting in Phoenix.

The Journal editors and I take this opportunity to congratulate Robb Moss and Armin Stuedlein for being selected to receive the “Associate Editor of the Year” award. This award was established to acknowledge the AEs’ outstanding service to the Journal and is decided by the editors. The criteria are sustained quality, quantity, and timeliness of returning the reviews to the authors. We sincerely thank Robb and Armin for the sustained outstanding service that they have provided, and continue to provide, to the Journal.

This past year, we also instituted a program for reviewer recognition. The AEs have provided the names of those reviewers who have provided outstanding reviews in a timely manner and were receptive to accepting review assignments. Several reviewers were nominated by the AEs. Those who were selected and recommended to ASCE for recognition are Shideh Dashti, Ben Leshchinsky, Dov Leshchinsky, Huabei Liu, Marina Pantazidou, Junichi Koseki, Fumio Tatsuoka, Juipin Wang, and Xiaoming Yang. The AEs, the editors, and I take this opportunity to recognize the contributions of our outstanding reviewers. Clearly the continued success of the Journal depends on the quality and timeliness of the voluntary review process.

Finally, we thank the authors who have submitted their best work to the Journal. I’m pleased to announce that our colleagues at ASCE Publications are working hard to improve the authors’ and reviewers’ experience with the Editorial Management system. Ongoing improvements include better readability for links in PDF attachments, ability of the reviewers to download PDF attachments from the “invite” e-mails, and click-through copyright transfer agreements. An additional proposed change that is still under discussion is the possibility of having volume and issue numbers known at the time of online publication.

On behalf of the editorial board and the editorial office, I thank our stakeholders for their sustained support of the Journal. We look forward to continuing to serve you well in the future and, as always, we welcome suggestions for ways to serve you better and improve this Journal.