As professional water engineers, it is important that we are aware of the cutting edge research activities in our field. However, the digital age creates not only new opportunities, but also new challenges for us to keep our knowledge up-to-date. Nowadays it is quite easy to be inundated by the information ocean and many of us could feel the gradual detachment from the latest research publications. Here I share some of my experiences and thoughts in keeping abreast with the information advancement.
TO BE INFORMED ABOUT THE LATEST PUBLICATIONS
At the moment, it has been estimated that there are 130 000 scientific journals published in the world (according to Google) and the number is increasing everyday. Therefore we have to be selective in choosing the right journals to read. Although the relative number of water related journals is small, it could still run into a huge figure. You may have a few favourite journals in your mind already (such as Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Water Management), but there are many other titles that could also interest you as well. Dr. Kumar from Indian National Institute of Hydrology has set up a useful website with a list of water related journals (www.angelfire.com/nh/cpkumar/hydrology.html). The Web of Science (wos.mimas.ac.uk) also provides a list of 57 water related journals. At the start, you may select a wide range of journals and then gradually prune the list to suit your interest and time. Next, you can register for email alerts for the journals you are interested in. Whenever these journals are published, the alert system will send the paper titles to you. It only takes one or two minutes to quickly scan through the titles and decide if any topics need some further reading. By clicking the links embedded in the alert email, you can easily get the abstracts for the interested titles. If you want to read beyond the abstracts, you can get the full papers through the abstract links. Here are some of the popular alert systems and they are all free of charge: ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com) with Journal of Hydrology, Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere, Water Research, and Water Science and Technology; Wiley Journals alert (www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/home) with Hydrological Processes; Elsevier Contents Direct (www.elsevier.com) with Advances in Water Resources, Agricultural Water Management, and Urban Water; AGU (www.agu.org/e_alert/) with Water Resources Research, etc. Instead of registering your interests with all of these individual sites, there is a summary site, called Zetoc Journal Alert list (zetoc.mimas.ac.uk), that covers 20 000 current journals and 16 000 conference proceedings published per year and stored by the British Library. Zetoc is free to use for members of JISC-sponsored UK higher and further education institutions. Consulting firms should approach Zetoc directly about the access of this service (there could be a charge involved). I use Zetoc to alert me about Proceedings of ICE, Water Management and many other professional journals.
TO SEARCH THE RELEVANT INFORMATION IN THE LITERATURE
The internet has revolutionised our way in searching for information. Currently, the three popular approaches are: (1) Google scholar (scholar.google.com); (2) Microsoft windows live academic search (academic.live.com); and (3) the Web of Science (wos.mimas.ac.uk). The first two search systems cover many disciplines and sources in peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organisations. They are from two competing firms and the usage of the services is free. The Web of Science is a commercial site (by subscription) provided by the Thomson Corporation which covers the leading journals (about six thousand at the moment, including Proceedings of ICE, Water Management) and conference proceedings. You should read the help files in order to learn how to narrow down your selections, otherwise you could be inundated by the information provided.
TO PUBLISH YOUR WORK
To publish your work is another way to learn new things and keep your knowledge up-to-date. When you have achieved something that is interesting and you would like to share it with the professional community, you should record it in the form of a manuscript and send it to a journal. It is tricky to decide which journal suits your paper best. You may list a few possible journals and then check their websites for the submission details. The Web of Science provides a good list of water related journals, but it is not complete (for example, many well-known water journals are not included, such as International Journal of River Basin Management). To maximise the influence of your paper, you may look at the impact factors listed at the Web of Science (its Science Citation Index). Normally, the higher the impact factor a journal has, the larger its readership would be, and, as a result, the more selective it would be of its submissions (i.e. higher rejection rate). Research journals from the professional bodies such as ICE and ASCE may not have the top impact factors, but they have large engineering reader bases making it worthwhile to send your application-based papers to those journals. After submitting your manuscript, you would need to wait (from three months to one year) to get the feedback from the journal. The comments (usually with constructive criticisms) from the reviewers are very valuable for you to learn new things (complementary work elsewhere, missing references, further improvements needed, etc). You should amend the manuscript according to the points raised by the reviewers. Sometimes a second round of reviewing is needed. It is possible that your manuscript could be rejected which is not uncommon for most authors, even those experienced researchers (for example, Journal of Nature's rejection rate is 95%). Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis (deputy editor of Hydrological Science Journal) commented (2006) ‘Having received many rejections for my papers, I know well the feelings of an author whose paper is declined—feelings that may get stronger as one grows older. As a token of comfort to those whose papers are rejected (which I address also to myself), I can say that sometimes rejection, despite the negative sentiments it triggers, post factum may prove very useful as it results in improvement and better dissemination of a paper’. On the other hand, you should also keep in mind that the peer review system is not perfect and an excellent paper could still be rejected due to the incompetence or misunderstanding from the reviewers. In this case, send your manuscript to another journal and you may find more sympathetic reviewers.
I hope the aforementioned points would be useful to the readership of Proceedings of ICE, Water Management. Being on the panel for almost three years (this is my final year), I have witnessed the increasing success of the journal and have thoroughly enjoyed my time with the panel. There are many challenges facing the journal in the future (e.g. more competition to attract the best research work from an increasing number of water related journals, widening the reviewer base, speeding up the review and decision process, open-access for the researchers from the developing countries, etc). An advice from Prof. David Muir Wood (Dean of Engineering at Bristol University) describes well the modern age that we are in ‘In fact, everyone has had to work harder just to stand still and there are clouds ahead’. I am confident that the enthusiasm and dedication from the panel members, inspired by Dr. Emma Harris (the panel chair), will make the journal proceed from strength to strength.
