Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering

In 2024, the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (JGGE) reached the significant milestone of its 150th volume. JGGE shares this achievement with 14 sister journals also published by ASCE. Getting to this point has prompted us to reflect on the significant achievement of the civil engineering and geotechnical engineering communities of curating the journal over this extended period of time and developing it into an internationally leading publication. In this joint editorial, coauthored by JGGE’s current editor in chief (C. O’Sullivan) and editor at large (M. Gabr), we reflect on the current state of the journal and its origins, and share some comments on the future. We also highlight two initiatives that were taken forward in 2024 to celebrate JGGE.

JGGE is a society journal; it is published by ASCE and sponsored by ASCE’s Geo-Institute (G-I) as the journal editorial board is one of the 21 technical committee under the auspices of G-I. While the editors and the team at ASCE publications manage the operations of the journal, the journal is overseen by the Technical Publications Committee of the G-I board. These close links to a professional engineering body distinguish JGGE from many other journals that publish papers in the area of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering. These relationships provide clear benefits to JGGE, most notably the high visibility this gives to the journal among geotechnical engineers based both in academia and practice. Many geotechnical engineers in the US, particularly those in academia, refer to JGGE simply as “the Journal.” The name of the journal has evolved over time and so here we use the journal in a general sense to encompass the various titles that have been assigned to it. Despite its strong link to ASCE, the journal is very much an international journal. The current editor in chief is based in the UK, and the 52 members of our editorial board are spread across 10 countries. In 2023, 1,023 manuscripts were submitted from 57 countries, while 205 papers from 23 countries were published. Papers are selected for publication based on their alignment with JGGE’s scope (which is clearly stated on the journal’s website) and the novelty, significance, and rigor of the contribution.

In 2024, we have chronicled the journal and the technical contributions of papers published in the journal in two ways. First, we selected 10 seminal papers to be made available without charge until December 31, 2024. Second, we organized a special session at G-I’s Geo-Congress 2024 in Vancouver in February 2024. This session was repeated as an online webinar that remains available via YouTube (ASCE 2024). This webinar included a chronicle of the history of the journal (Gabr 2024). Understanding this history may be of interest and use to future contributors to JGGE and so a summary is included here.

ASCE was founded in 1852, a time before widespread electricity, telephones, and even reliable long-distance communication. The first transatlantic telegraph cable would not be laid until the 1860s. The continental US was not fully connected by rail until 1869, and the telephone remained a futuristic notion in 1872. Within this context, visionary ASCE leaders James P. Kirkwood (1868 president) and William J. McAlpine (1869 president) championed the idea of knowledge sharing among members. They established Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers and its publication ensured that members of the society who could not attend the annual and occasional meetings would be informed of technical innovations, and future generations could build on past advancements.

The first volume of Transactions (1872) served as a repository for all civil engineering advancements, including those within the realm of soil mechanics and foundation engineering. Transactions contained technical papers that were read to society members at various meetings. Volumes 2 and 3 were published in 1874, with papers published only when their discussions were completed.

However, because a paper was only published in Transactions when discussions on it were completed, the need for quicker dissemination of current-at-the-time trends and practical applications to practicing engineers soon became evident. This led to the establishment of Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers, with Volume 1 published in 1876. Proceedings included membership information, meeting minutes, committee activities and technical news, budgets, technical papers with discussions (some of which would be deemed worthy to also be published later as is in Transactions), and activities relevant to practicing engineers.

As the civil engineering subdisciplines matured within the society, the demand for specialized publications grew. Karl Terzaghi acknowledged ASCE’s foresight in responding to such demand in his seminal 1953 paper entitled “Origin and Functions of Soil Mechanics” (Terzaghi 1953). He wrote,

The ASCE anticipated the need for the step from textbook theories to soil mechanics at an early stage. As a consequence it established in 1913 a committee to revise the data and concepts on which the design of foundations was based. In 1936 Harvard University organized the First International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering at Cambridge, Mass., which was a spectacular success. When the members of this conference conferred upon soil mechanics the rank of an independent branch of applied science, the ASCE responded at once by the organization of the Soil Mechanics and Foundations Technical Division.

The executive committee members in 1936 of the newly formed ASCE Soil Mechanics and Foundations Division [incidentally formed 11 years after the 1925 publication of Erdbaumechanik (Terzaghi 1925)] were Carlton S. Proctor (chair), J. F. Coleman, Frank A. Marston, Robert V. Labaree, William P. Crosier, and T. T. Mapper (secretary).

Recognizing the increasing complexity of the field and with the establishment of 15 technical divisions, ASCE transitioned to specialized journals in 1956. One of the 15 flagship ASCE journals, the newly formed Journal of Soil Mechanics and Foundations Division in 1956 was issued under the auspices of the Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Therefore, the first journal volume number was 82, as a continuation of the ASCE Proceedings volumes. At the time the journal was introduced, a Division Committee on Publications was created and chaired by Harry B. Seed, with Hudson L. Matlock, Joseph R. Eustis, Stanley J. Johnson, John Lowe III, W. G. Shockley, H. A. Williams, Gerald A. Leonards, and Thomas H. Thornburn serving as members. The journal began with quarterly issues, eventually transitioning to monthly publications starting with Volume 97 (1971) to meet the growing demand for knowledge dissemination. The Committee on Publications in 1971 grew to 19 members, including T. H. Wu as the chair.

The name Journal of Soil Mechanics and Foundations Division was later deemed insufficient to encompass the field’s breadth or to be inclusive of areas such as soil dynamics and rock mechanics. A change for an inclusive name was spearheaded by Roy F. Olson, who wrote in his autobiography (Olson 2014) “Jim (Mitchell) and I worked as a subcommittee of two and came up with two names, Geotechnic and Geotechnical Engineering. … After two votes, ASCE members agreed on the name Geotechnical Engineering.” Hence, the title was changed to the Journal of the Geotechnical Engineering Division in 1974. Interestingly, the term geotechnical was not prevalent in our literature at the time, but historical records suggest its usage in Sweden as early as the 1900s (Brandl 2011). At the time of the name change, the Publications Committee was chaired by Ernest T. Selig and had 32 active members.

Then, in the 1980s and 1990s, the introduction of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) [Pub. L. No. 96-510, 94 Stat. 2767 (1980)], commonly referred to as the Superfund Program, led to a heightened focus on environmental protection and site remediation. Geotechnical engineers were fundamental contributors to teams formed to address issues related to the geotechnics of subsurface soil and groundwater remediation and the development of waste disposal facilities.

Recognizing this evolving landscape, an effort led by David E. Daniel, the editor of the Journal of Geotechnical Engineering Division at the time, was launched to change the name of the journal to the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. In October 1992, the Division Executive Committee supported the name change. Daniel and McCutcheon (1993), who were respectively editor of ASCE’s Journal of Geotechnical Engineering and editor of ASCE’s Journal of Environmental Engineering, wrote a joint editorial in which they stated,

To ensure that the best interests of ASCE and society at large are addressed, the Geotechnical and Environmental Engineering Divisions must recognize the different approaches to solving problems and lead the cooperation on the geoenvironment. It is not necessary that geotechnical engineers become environmental engineers or vice versa. But it is necessary to recognize that engineering methods applied in new and different settings will be the basis for progress.

There was some disagreement regarding the name change of the journal, as noted in the editorial. Over the following years, the Geotechnical Engineering Division sponsored sessions at the ASCE Annual Convention focused on geotechnical aspects of environmental challenges. A major annual specialty conference, Geoenvironment 2000, jointly sponsored by the Geotechnical and Environmental Engineering Divisions of ASCE, was held in 1995 with David E. Daniel serving as the conference chairman (ASCE 1995). This growing emphasis on environmental considerations in geotechnical engineering made the need for a more encompassing journal title clear. Consequently, the journal’s name was updated to Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering in January 1997. At that time, the Editorial Board was reorganized to include an editor in chief (John T. Christian), four editors (Craig H. Benson, Harlod Olson, Nicholas Sitar, and James H. Withiam), an ombudsman (Raymond J. Krizek), and over 50 Editorial Board members—a governance structure that was unique among the ASCE journals at the time and which remains unchanged to this day.

Contributions in the journal have formally charted the development of soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering. When ASCE provided us with the opportunity to highlight some seminal papers, all members of JGGE’s editorial board were invited to contribute to the selection process. We converged on 10 papers through this selection process. These 10 papers included contributions on the fundamentals of material behavior (Cho et al. 2006; Mayne and Kulwahy 1982; Mitchell 1986; Vucetic and Dobry 1991), geotechnical earthquake engineering (Liao et al. 1988; Seed et al. 1985; Vucetic and Dobry 1991), geotechnical design analysis (Duncan 1993; Ladd and Foot 1974), geoenvironmental engineering (Rowe 2020), and novel approaches to ground engineering (DeJong et al. 2006). A list such as this will inevitably be subjective, and only a limited number of papers could be selected; however, many other impactful and significant papers have been published in the journal. The journal has also published papers that have had significant impact in areas of geotechnical engineering including numerical modeling (e.g., Griffiths and Fenton 2004), rock mechanics (Hoek and Brown 1980), and site investigation (e.g., Vanmarcke 1977; Marchetti 1981). A more comprehensive reflection on the contributions to the journal can be found in the online seminar (ASCE 2024) in which there is a consideration of contributions to foundation engineering (Salgado 2024), geotechnical earthquake engineering (Travasarou 2024), geoenvironmental engineering (Bonaparte 2024), and soil behavior and characterization (Puppala 2024). While these presentations give the personal perspectives of each of the authors, they each tell an engaging story of how various aspects of geotechnical engineering have evolved through reference to papers published in JGGE.

More than a century after Terzaghi’s principle of effective stress was published (Terzaghi 1923), our discipline has significantly matured. A recent evaluation of published papers in geotechnical engineering using topic modeling (a statistical approach to language processing) revealed that while there is still significant research interest in soil properties and soil behavior, the geotechnical engineering research areas that are growing most rapidly are data science, sensing and monitoring techniques, and geohazards, risk, and reliability (Patino-Ramirez and O’Sullivan 2024). It is axiomatic that technical contributions in the journal have consistently addressed critical challenges facing the built environment and continue to do so. Today’s global challenges will undoubtedly influence future geotechnical research. Geotechnical engineers have a key role to play in mitigating the impact of climate change (e.g., The Economist 2024) and in facilitating the transition to low-carbon energy (Santamarina et al. 2022). This will be reflected in future papers in JGGE.

The nature of scientific publication is evolving. Over the past 25 years, we have witnessed the transition from mostly reading JGGE papers in print to accessing publications online. Many research funders require publications to be published in openly accessible forums. This will have an impact on the way geotechnical engineers disseminate their work and lead to further transformations in academic publishing. We remain fully committed to JGGE’s publication model. It is clear to us that the peer review process provides an opportunity for in-depth evaluation and critical feedback on research that is not readily attained in any other forum.

Over the past 50 years, 16 colleagues have served as editors or editors in chief of the journal (Gabr 2024 and Table 1). Their dedication to novelty, innovation, and excellence has sustained the foundation for JGGE’s enduring success.

To close, today, JGGE remains a vital resource for researchers, practitioners, and students worldwide. The manuscripts authors submit are the cornerstone of the journal, and we thank everyone who sends their work to us. We could not operate without the continued support of our reviewers and our associate editors. The nature of the peer review process means that their contributions remain anonymous; but as editors, we see daily the thought and consideration put into insightful reviews and syntheses of reviews. We take this opportunity to thank this large international team of volunteers for their continued commitment and the support they give to their colleagues. With your contributions as authors, reviewers, and editors, we are confident that JGGE will continue to publish groundbreaking advancements and provide impact and leadership in the geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering realm for years to come.

The special session at the Geo-Institute’s Geo-Congress 2024 was developed in consultation with Brad Keelor, Matt Evans, Katerina Ziotopoulou, and Mahdi Taiebat, as well as the four editors of JGGE: Ed Kavazanjian, Robb Moss, Monica Prezzi, and Armin Stuedlein. The online recorded version of this session was facilitated by Brad Keelor and Matthew Roberts of ASCE and is available on the Geo-Institute’s YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/@GeoInstituteASCE.