I am proud to say that I have been associated with the Editorial Board of the Magazine of Concrete Research (MCR) for 32 years, and have served as its Chairman for the past 25. As such, I have witnessed many changes both within the journal and the (academic and industrial) concrete sector.
To mark the journal's sixtieth year, I wrote an Editorial (Hewlett, 2009) outlining how MCR has developed over that period of time. It is fair to say that the rate of change has only increased, with a growing emphasis on efficiency whilst maintaining quality of both presentation and content.
E-based communication across all activities has raised expectations of speed from submission to hard copy publication, and widespread online access has brought that opportunity to a much larger audience. Whilst it is good for many submissions to be received they have to be dealt with both thoroughly and promptly.
The Editorial Board is very conscious of this trend and significant reductions in the time from first submission to publication have been achieved. Some 20 years ago it could take up to two years for acceptance of a new paper; now it is on average six months. Each paper is peer reviewed by two Board members − this process is rigorous and so maintains peer review as the ‘gold standard' of learned publishing. To maintain this level of response, as well as the quality and rigour, requires prompt responses from authors following review comments.
In parallel with monitoring lead times, 2012 sees the introduction of ahead of print (AoP) publication for the journal. Accepted papers waiting for a printed issue to become available will appear on the journal homepage (follow the link on www.concrete-research.com). These papers are fully citable using the digital object identifier (DOI) system. Papers published AoP are the definitive versions: they will not be amended before appearing in print and using the DOI they can be referenced as soon as they appear on the website.
As an international publication, it is important that the papers we publish represent trends and emerging technologies in the field of concrete. There has been a recognised shift in sources of research and development to, notably, India, Malaysia, Korea and Japan. The publisher has recently entered into an expanded agreement to take MCR for free to over 300 research institutions in the growing sector of Brazil. To this end, I would like to encourage readers to contact the journal office to a) offer their services as a contact in Brazil to make full use of this excellent initiative, and b) propose state-of-the-art review papers on key topics. This latter item will serve to reinforce MCR as a reference point for international best practice.
So, after more than 60 years, MCR remains a vibrant journal, providing excellence to researchers and those leading progressive change in the fields of concrete materials and application.
