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:
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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.
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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.
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3.
Exercise fairness towards submissions in the review process.
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4.
Exercise fairness towards readers by accepting only papers that advance the state-of-the-art.
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5.
Avoid demanding that authors blindly cite papers from the journal as a condition for publication.
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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:
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An author’s first step is to approach the editor to complain about anything related to the process.
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2.
Authors may approach the publisher to complain about the editor if necessary.
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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.
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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) |
Notes
With little changing of words, these rules should equally apply to other situations such as reviewers or program managers that handle proposals or committees in charge of promotions.
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Reich, Y. Theory and practice of journal editorship: on editorial ethics. Res Eng Design 24, 93–95 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-013-0155-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-013-0155-3