Recent Changes in Journal Editorial Board

The area of transportation operations includes all aspects of highway traffic engineering and transit operational issues and in transportation planning and management, the authors include papers in the areas of planning, economics, and environmental aspects.

Abstract

part of the Journal with a significant number of submissions. The area of transportation operations includes all aspects of highway traffic engineering and transit operational issues. In transportation planning and management, we include papers in the areas of planning, economics, and environmental aspects. Many of our submitted papers are in the area of transportation design and safety. While we get a significant number of papers on geometric design, we also get submissions in the area of design of guardrails, safety devices, and sign structures, as well as papers on railroads and related fields. Even though statistical analysis can be used in all areas, there are submissions specifically focused on statistical modeling. We have added a new area editor for that purpose. The area of pipelines remains a small but significant part of the Journal. The Journal also includes book reviews and a practitioner’s forum section. Papers can be submitted by mail to the ASCE publications office. JTE has steadily grown in the past decade. During 1991‐2003, journal submissions have increased 46%. The number of papers published, however, has only increased 10%. Although I do not have data for JTE specifically, approximately 16% of all submitted ASCE journal papers in recent years originated in Europe and 25% in the Asia/India/Pacific region. For a number of years, we have had an editor for the Asia region, and, recently, we added another editor for the European region. Their responsibility is to oversee the solicitation and review of papers in Europe and Asia. The quality of the published information is of paramount importance to us. A measure of the standard used in the review process can be indicated by the acceptance rate. The average acceptance rate during 1991‐2003 in JTE was 55%, while in 2003 it was 41%. This number is significantly less than the average acceptance rate of all ASCE journals. For example, in 2003, the average acceptance rate in all ASCE journals was 56%. Another measure often used to indicate the quality of a journal is the index of impact factor. Impact factor is the average number of times articles published in a specific journal in the previous 2 years are cited in a particular year. The impact factor for JTE has steadily increased over the past several years. While several commercially published transportation journals have higher impact factors, JTE has a higher impact factor than most transportation journals published by professional societies. We will continue to improve the relevance of the papers published in our journal and enhance the importance factor associated with JTE. One area in which we feel we must make improvement is in the number of months it takes to get a paper published in the Journal. The median turn around time for papers published in JTE during 1991‐2003 was 17 months. While this number compares well with other journals in ASCE, we do not believe this is acceptable, and we must make efforts to reduce the turnaround time.