This issue of Research in Engineering Design is a special issue on Design Theory. For any discipline, theory and practice play complementary roles. We study practice, trying to understand it by forming theories, in order to improve practice. Or, we form theories, try to implement them in practice, and following such implementations/experimentations, we revise our theories. Irrespective where you start the loop, it is productive if done well.

The purpose of this editorial is not to discuss this issue or the subject of design theory that is introduced meticulously in the guest editorial followed by six high-quality papers. The purpose of this editorial is to briefly discuss the theory and practice of journal editorship using these concepts rather loosely. The “theory” consists of the journal’s review procedure outlined in a previous editorial (V21, no. 2). While there is constant effort to approach the targets set in the review procedure, we are not there yet as seen in the statistics of the process. In the professional engineering world, such a gap would not be acceptable. The journal review process—a contract between the editor, editorial board, and the authors—must be kept. However, in the academic world, where all parties volunteer, the situation transforms from a legal to a social contract governed by an ethos.

Of course there are familiar issues of ethics related to authors such as no plagiarism, no redundant publications, etc. Journals often make sure to ask authors to declare that they have not breached these rules. In contrast, journals do not usually declare the opposite side—the ethics of editors, which is therefore the subject of this editorial. This ethics is critical due to the blindness of review processes, making, the relationship between editors and authors asymmetric and prone to mistakes as well as misconduct. Only the ethical codes followed by the community ensure that the process is honest and is executed well. Editorial ethics is not a redundant topic; there have been editors of journals who did not handle papers submitted for review for years, compromising the careers of their peers; there have been editors who wrote letters to the editor using a fraudulent name to offend a colleague; others accepted papers to gain personal benefits. What then should we expect of the editor and what measures do authors have to defend their interests?

Here are some rules an editor must followFootnote 1:

  1. 1.

    Avoid conflict of interest/prejudice, e.g., do not accept papers or reject in return for some personal benefit or based on personal biases.

  2. 2.

    Maintain confidentiality of the editorial process: reviewers’ identities should be kept private and work submitted for review remains the sole property of the authors until publication. No part of any submitted paper should be used by the reviewers or editors.

  3. 3.

    Exercise fairness towards submissions in the review process.

  4. 4.

    Exercise fairness towards readers by accepting only papers that advance the state-of-the-art.

  5. 5.

    Avoid demanding that authors blindly cite papers from the journal as a condition for publication.

  6. 6.

    Adhere to published procedures.

What can authors do if they have a problem? If authors feel they have a valid complaint, here are some options they could exercise:

  1. 1.

    An author’s first step is to approach the editor to complain about anything related to the process.

  2. 2.

    Authors may approach the publisher to complain about the editor if necessary.

  3. 3.

    Authors could also approach a body such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and describe the situation and ask for help. Research in Engineering Design is a member of that committee and so is the Editor-in-Chief.

  4. 4.

    Letters could be sent to the editor to discuss papers after their publication or raise other topics of interest to journal readers. Such letters will pass through a screening mechanism to ensure relevance and value to the community.

There are issues that do not appear above and have to be addressed. They will be developed into a new code of ethics for the journal that will be posted on the journal website. If you have input to that process, you are invited to participate. As I declared in the past, a journal is a product designed, developed, and maintained by the community. As a stakeholder, you have a say!

It is hoped that the presentation of this subject will prevent us from needing to deal with any of the above issues in the future and that all our efforts will be devoted to ensure that Research in Engineering Design thrives and continues to be a leading journal in design. With that, it is time to thank all the reviewers, outside the editorial board, who actually maintain and improve the high quality of the journal by contributing their precious time to review papers and provide valuable comments to authors. The following are the reviewers who contributed their reviews in 2012:

Akin

Omer

Ali

Ahad

Alonso

Sergio

Antani

Kavit

Avigad

Gideon

Ballard

Glenn

Barthes

Jean-Paul

Ben-Arieh

David

Bettig

Bernhard

Bonnardel

Nathalie

Botta

David

Busby

Jerry

Campbell

Matthew

Cantamessa

Marco

Cardoso

Carlos

Cascini

Gaetano

Cavallucci

Denis

Chen

Wei

Chulvi

Vicente

Clarkson

John P.

Culley

Steve

D’Amelio

Valentina

Davidson

Joe

De Guio

Roland

Deb

Kalyanmoy

Dekoninck

Elies

Deng

Xiaoguang

Dong

Andy

Duan

Gui-jiang

Dym

Clive

Elsayed

Elsayed

Eris

Ozgur

Esterman

Marcos

Franssen

Maarten

Gayton

Nicolas

Grogan

Paul

Hendriks

Lex

Herder

Paulien

Heymann

Matthias

Hicks

Ben

Honda

Tomonori

Howard

Thomas

Indurkhya

Bipin

Jagtap

Santosh

Jiangxin

Jiao

Joglekar

Nitin

Katsikopoulos

Konstantinos

Kazakçi

Akin

Kerley

Warren

Kim

Harrison

Kim

Sang-Gook

Kremer

Gül

Kroll

Ehud

Le Masson

Pascal

Lee

Carman

Lee

Yu-Cheng

Legardeur

Jeremy

Lewis

Kemper

Linsey

Julie

Liu

Ying-Chieh

Lopez-Mesa

Belinda

Luo

Xinggang

Magee

Christopher

Maher

Mary Lou

Malmqvist

Johan

Marle

Franck

Matthews

Peter

Maurer

Maik

McAdams

Daniel

McAloone

Tim

Mocko

Greg

Montagna

Francesca

Nakhla

Michel

Oehmen

Josef

Olewnik

Andrew

Ostrosi

Egon

Oxman

Rivka

Paredis

Chris

Pecht

Michael

Pun

Kit Fai

Ramani

Karthik

Ramos

Ana

Rangan

Ravi

Renardel de Lavalette

Gerard

Ritzen

Sofia

Sacks

Rafael

Sarkar

Prabir

Schleidt

Bettina

Schmid

Anne-Françoise

Schmidt

Linda

Scott

Michael

Seepersad

Carolyn

Siddique

Zahed

Smulders

Frido

Sriram

Ram

Stetter

Ralf

Stone

Robert

Tang

Dunbing

Tate

Derrick

Taura

Toshiharu

Terpenny

Janis

Thompson

Graham

Tucker

Conrad

Tumer

Irem

Ullman

David

Umeda

Yasushi

van der Weth

Ruediger

van Langen

Pieter

Vargas Hernandez

Noe

Wang

G.

Weil

Benoit

Wyatt

David

Wynn

David

Yang

Maria

Yannou

Bernard

Yassine

Ali

Zanker

Winfried

Zeng

Yong

Zhang

Chris

Zhang

Linda (Lianfeng)