Time flies. Our 25th year anniversary has just passed. As we welcome a new year with a new volume, the time has come to share the status of our Journal and some of its new features with you.
Last year was a year of celebration and transition. As the new Editor-in-Chief, I had the opportunity to work with our intelligent and hardworking authors, reviewers, and editors. It has been a truly rewarding experience for me. As a community, we made good progress in advancing our research on AI EDAM and gradually expanding our profile to accommodate new publication and communication needs. In the first issue of our anniversary volume, 10 board members enthusiastically presented their thoughts on future AI EDAM research directions. In the past year, we published 23 research articles totaling 447 pages. There were three Special Issues, covering Design Computing and Cognition, Sketching and Pen-Based Design Interaction, and Intelligent Decision Support and Modeling. We received close to 100 submissions, including papers submitted to Special Issues. Online access has been very active since a year ago. Abstract accesses on the publisher's website have more than doubled. Full text views also increased over 65%. Moreover, although impact factor is not our primary focus for the Journal, we are pleased that the impact factor of AI EDAM increased from 2010 to 2011 by 20%.
Publishing high quality papers has always been the focus of AI EDAM. Thanks to the quality work of our authors, editors, and reviewers, we have been very successful in attracting good submissions and producing well-received publications. To further our effort in serving the community, there is a need for the expansion of our Journal's profile. We need to attract more quality submissions, accelerate the review process, publish more quality papers, and generate bigger impact.
To meet this need, a number of new features will be introduced from this volume forward. We have started inviting submissions of Keynote papers from highly influential authors in the community. These papers present the retrospective reviews or prospective positions of these authors. We hope the Keynote papers will serve as valuable repositories of what has been done and indicators of what might be coming for the community. In contrast, in order to provide a venue for quick research communication, we will also introduce Technical Briefing papers and are calling for submission from authors of all AI EDAM areas. A Technical Briefing paper can be a concise description of new research findings, development, and procedures. Such a paper is usually half the length of a regular paper (about 4 printed pages) and contains relatively small but significant results. By submitting Technical Briefing papers, authors can report their intermediate results of a large ongoing research project, which can be valuable information for others who are pursuing similar work.
More quality submissions and faster turnaround of article review are the two important factors that influence the impact of a journal. To significantly improve our practice, we have moved our manuscript review management from an email-based manual process to a web-based online ScholarOne system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/aie). The ScholarOne system streamlines the process from the author's manuscript submission through final article production. Using this system, authors can always monitor the current processing status of their submissions; editors and reviewers can be seamlessly connected by the online web pages and reminder emails. Since the system was adopted in September of 2012, we have been able to reduce the turnaround time (from submission to first editorial decision) to 7 to 10 weeks.
The most important reflection of my past year's editorial experience is the strong feeling of the AI EDAM community and the productive connection with the authors, reviewers, and editors. We email each other frequently and see each other occasionally at conferences. We are all busy, but we always find time to get things done and on time. I am very grateful to all of you for your active participation and support! As we stride into a new year, I take this opportunity to call for more submissions and review participation. With the new features described above and with your support, we expect to publish more papers for this and future AI EDAM volumes.
I wish you all a happy and productive 2013!
