Note of Appreciation for Our Reviewers

ASCE’s Technical Council on Forensic Engineering (TCFE) is planning the Seventh Forensic Engineering Congress, to be held in New York City in the fall of 2015. Watch for further details. By the time this issue is published, the Congress website will be established, including a call for papers, final dates, and a specific venue. Forensic engineering congresses are held every 3 years. Previous congresses were in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1997); San Juan, Puerto Rico (2000); San Diego, California (2003); Cleveland, Ohio (2006); Washington, DC (2009); and San Francisco, California (2012). The ASCE Forensic Engineering Congress represents the premier U.S. opportunity for learning about advances in the forensic engineering discipline. For more information regarding the congresses, please see my Editor’s Note reviewing the 2012 Forensic Engineering Congress in the March/April 2013 issue of the Journal (Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 133–134).

The International Association of Protective Structures (IAPS) will sponsor the Third International Conference on Protective Structures (ICPS3) in Newcastle, Australia, February 3–6, 2015. Hosted by the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, the conference will focus on the protection of the engineering infrastructure against natural and human-caused explosion and impact actions. Further information can be found at http://www.icps3.c2im.org.au.

Observant readers will notice a change in the organization of the Journal, beginning with the next issue (July/August 2014). Until now, editors have been given flexibility in determining the order in which the scheduled papers appear in an issue. For example, I have generally organized each issue to present papers focused on buildings and bridges first, followed by geotechnical case histories, transportation (pavement performance) and other infrastructures, and influential case histories. The ability to logically order the papers by subject matter will not be available in the future.

The production model recently adopted by ASCE journals is to select papers for an issue based on the order in which they were published online. Each issue will be dynamically generated and will be compiled on the 15th of the month prior to the cover date. There will be no more “In this Issue” Editor’s Notes, nor will the editor be involved in determining the order of papers. Exceptions will be made, of course, for special topic issues and special sections focused on specific topics.

I welcome your comments and questions regarding potential manuscript submissions. I am also always looking for volunteers to assist with manuscript reviews. Please feel free to contact me at any time: Ken Carper, Professor Emeritus, Washington State University, e-mail: [email protected].