Message from the New Editor

It is with a considerable sense of commitment that I take over the editorship of the Journal of Surveying Engineering (JSE). At the outset, I should mention that I have been a member of ASCE since 1988, and from 1993 onward, I have served on the editorial board of JSE. Therefore, I am somewhat aware of the mechanics and duties required to accomplish a successful editorship, although this opportunity will be an unknown challenge for me, entailing dedication and the desire to do the job as efficiently as possible.

My tenure is intended to be an era of continuity, but also of change, while maintaining the high standards of the Journal precisely at a time of robust good health and accredited solid prestige. I will continue soliciting manuscripts consistent with the Journal’s objectives and managing the day-to-day review workload, encouraging all of you to submit to the Journal, following well-established procedures and welcoming your original scientific input. However, we should not lose track of the primary scope of JSE and the type of materials that our readers and subscribers are demanding. Although JSE broadly covers topics under the umbrella term of geomatics, the main thread of the articles should focus on the interaction of this newly expanded field with specific aspects of surveying engineering. Papers dealing exclusively with hydrography and GIS, for instance, will be returned to the authors with the suggestion that they be directed to other publications more specialized in those particular disciplines. JSE requests papers in which the connection with civil engineering–surveying applications is clear and unambiguous; in other words, we are eager to maintain and encourage the multidisciplinary nature of the Journal’s contents but with an unmistakable emphasis on subjects of relevance to the surveying engineering community. It is a primary target of the editorial staff to foster original articles emphasizing innovative concepts, modern valuable technologies, up-to-date sets of standards and specifications, and so on, without neglecting improvements to current methodologies already in use whose immediate applicability may spark the interest of our professional readership. That is why JSE is inviting, for peer review, short contributions of sound, practical alternatives that promote or clarify new approaches to old problems. These kinds of contributions could be published, without much delay, under the sections of the Journal titled “Technical Notes” or “Practitioner’s Forum.” Guest editorials pointing out issues affecting or challenging the profession are also welcomed. Additionally, we are actively encouraging more submissions from scholars and investigators of university surveying departments inside the United States, as well as government research laboratories from a distinct group of scientific institutions that participate in all varieties of surveying activities, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the U. S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Furthermore, discussions about recently formed state-administered Spatial Reference Centers planning statewide 3D active GPS densification networks that are undoubtedly impacting the surveying community and private industry also have a niche among the contents promoted by JSE.

As a direct consequence of my nomination as new editor, you will see a number of changes taking place. My first important task will be shortening considerably the time from initial submission to publication. Consequently, the review process is going to be accelerated and strictly limited to $6\text{weeks}$ . For those submissions that are not suitable for publication, we shall try to let authors know very quickly of our decision, giving them a chance to submit their manuscript to another journal if they so desire. I am fully aware that the prestige and quality of a scientific journal depends upon the altruistic participation of reviewers and the fairness and promptness with which the review process is conducted. Therefore, in the last issue of every year, a list of reviewers (if they are not members of the editorial board), will appear, crediting those who volunteered their time helping to ensure a successful review process. In this regard, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all board members for their hard work and sustained effort. However, because of the increased number of submissions and the diversity of research fields involved, we have a difficult task ahead of us requiring a more rapid tempo of review.

Consequently, at the end of 2005, I may restructure the editorial board, inviting to serve on it those reviewers who work consistently hard and respond with good reviews within stipulated deadlines.

At the same time, from now on the authors themselves should assume their own inescapable responsibilities. The editor will return immediately any manuscript that is incomprehensible to reviewers on account of substandard grammar and syntax. A combination of deficiencies such as discrepancies between text citations and the reference list, tables not labeled or lacking units, and illustrations of poor quality may also cause a manuscript to be returned without review. This simple but tedious screening is the primary obligation of the authors (often more than two or three) who often show careless disregard for the final presentation of their own work. The Journal’s editorial staff suggests that foreign authors should secure the help, if at all possible, of native English speakers working in the field to assess sentence structure in the final draft before it is sent for publication. Minimum standards of English grammar and syntax must be met. Under my tenure, reviewers will not be involved in editing unreadable manuscripts and will concentrate only on general proofreading and minor corrections to the text. Their precious time should be restricted to evaluate the technical accuracy of the draft and not on making the text comprehensible. Although I consider returning a manuscript without review a drastic measure, it is unavoidable if we are to realize our main priority: shortening the review process and encouraging potential authors to complete in advance their part of the job.

The Journal of Surveying Engineering is commonly recognized as one of the premier journals in the fields of traditional surveying, GPS surveying, geodetic positioning, geoid modeling, adjustment theory, transformations between reference frames, deformation monitoring, etc., and now seeks to become the focal point of articles on newly created GPS services such as Continuous Operated Reference Stations (CORS) and Online Positioning Users Service (OPUS). As a testimony of its success, JSE has attained inclusion in the most prestigious scientific indexes and databases, including Civil Engineering Abstracts, Current Contents∕Engineering, GeoRef, ingenta, Science Citation Index (SCI), and Scitation. Interested readers not subscribing to the Journal can also download papers—for a fee—from the Web page: http:∕∕www.pubs.asce.org∕journals∕su.html.

Finally, it is a pleasure to thank my predecessor, Prof. Robert Burtch, Ferris State University, for handling the complex obligations of editorship during his long tenure. A highlight of his term was the adoption of the new larger page size. Now, we all look forward to embarking in a journey that can take JSE on to the next plateau of excellence.