I am honored to serve our manufacturing community as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering (JMSE). JMSE is a historical journal and is thriving. In July 2022, JMSE has the highest impact factor (3.95) among all ASME Technical Journals (excluding Applied Mechanics Reviews), thanks to many of you and, in part, to quicker review times and our successful Manufacturing Engineering Division (MED) Centennial Special Issue last year. On behalf of the Editorial team, I want to express our immense gratitude to Professor Larry Yao for his 10 years of wholehearted service that helped make JMSE what it is today. Larry has elevated JMSE to a new height by assembling an outstanding editorial team, maintaining high quality in the review process, building an excellent reputation for the journal, and reducing the time from submission to publication. Our manufacturing community is indebted to him for his great service to JMSE.
Our current Editorial Board consists of 23 members, including the Editor-in-Chief. We are excited to welcome six new Associate Editors since Fall 2021: Sara Behdad (University of Florida), Wayne Li (Boeing), Cheryl Xu (North Carolina State University), Arif Malik (University of Texas at Dallas), Yong Chen (University of Southern California), and Andreas Klink (RWTH Aachen). Both Arif and Yong served as the Chair of the Technical Committee (TC) of the ASME MED. They have led the organizing symposia and paper submissions ASME Manufacturing Science and Engineering (MSEC) and demonstrated a record of service excellence. Andreas can help to recruit papers from European colleagues. In 2023, Barbara Linke (UC Davis), Cindy Chang (University of Virginia), and Christopher Saldaña (GaTech) will join the editorial team as Associate Editors, pending ASME approval. We want to acknowledge the service of three outgoing Associate Editors, Steve Schmid (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), Karl Haapala (Oregon State University), and Satish Bukkapatnam (Texas A&M University). They have completed their AE terms. We greatly appreciate their service to JMSE and our manufacturing community.
Partnering closely with MED is one of the key goals of JMSE. We have worked with the MED Executive Committee and TC to recommend potential Associate Editors with a track record of excellent service in MED TC. We also partnered with MED to create an annual MSEC Special Issue in JMSE. In January 2023, JMSE will publish the MSEC 2022 Special Issue, which is composed of 15 top papers submitted to and presented in MSEC. These papers were reviewed by JMSE under the journal paper standard and published in JMSE as the MSEC 2022 Special Issue with the TC Chair, Professor Yong Chen, as the Guest Editor. Starting from MSEC 2023, we are beginning the selection and review period of quality MSEC papers earlier (from April to June 2023).
Another initiative with MED is to invite authors whose papers have been accepted by JMSE to present their research findings in MSEC or ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exhibition (IMECE). Starting in 2023, authors of accepted JMSE papers can present and disseminate research results from their JMSE papers in MSEC or IMECE without submitting a manuscript to the conference.
Special Issues are a way to build a team of manufacturing researchers on a frontier research topic. JMSE plans to have four Special Issues on the following topics:
Human-Robot Collaboration for Futuristic Human-Centric Smart Manufacturing (due Jan 31, 2023). This special issue is aimed at connecting robotics and human-centric smart manufacturing and chaired by Professor Pai Zheng (Hong Kong Polytechnical University).
State-of-the-Art in European Manufacturing Research (due February 28, 2023). JMSE is seeking submissions from colleagues in the European manufacturing community. The purpose of this Special Issue is to introduce JMSE to manufacturing colleagues in Europe and solicit their submissions. Papers accepted in this Special Issue will be able to present at the 2023 MSEC at Rutgers University, which is convenient for Europeans to travel to. This Special Issue is chaired by Associate Editor Professor Vincent Wagner (École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Tarbes, France).
Semiconductor Manufacturing (due April 28, 2023). Semiconductor manufacturing technology is a national priority in the United States, Europe, China, and many countries around the world. Personally, I am learning semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan and found the technology has advanced rapidly and needs fundamental research. This Special Issue will start being led by a small group of researchers in semiconductor manufacturing and expand to attract more manufacturing colleagues to join this frontier of semiconductor manufacturing research. This Special Issue is led by Professor ChaBum Lee (Texas A&M University), Gregory Vogl (National Institute of Standards and Technology), and other colleagues.
Sustainability. This Special Issue is in partnership with the Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD) and will be led by Associate Editor Professor Sara Behdad (University of Florida) who also serves as the Associate Editor of JMD. Papers on the intersection of design and manufacturing related to sustainability, an important topic for manufacturing, are welcome in this Special Issue.
JMSE has three main challenges, which I reflected on and summarized after discussions with several manufacturing colleagues closely linked with JMSE.
One is on the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) of the editorial board and journal operations. DEI is the core value and guiding principle of the JMSE operation. We have worked steadily to improve the diversity in the editorial board and are partnering with MED on recruiting new AEs. Cheryl Xu and Chinedum Okwudire will serve as the Diversity Advocates for JMSE. They will analyze the current JMSE operations and provide their input to me on how to improve the DEI in JMSE.
The second challenge is to continue improving JMSE’s impact factor. Compared to peer manufacturing journals, such as Additive Manufacturing, Journal of Manufacturing Processes, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, CIRP Annals, International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture, Journal of Material Processing Technology, and CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology (all published by Elsevier), we have room for improvement in both impact factor and paper review process.
The third challenge is to recruit more manufacturing colleagues, particularly those in the United States, to submit their top research papers to JMSE. Among 244 JMSE manuscripts submitted from July to October this year, 79 (32%) are from China, 62 (25%) are from the United States, and 46 (19%) are from India. We would love to see more submissions from the United States and want to partner with MED to promote and increase the submission rates of manufacturing research papers to JMSE.
In closing, I want to thank the authors, peer reviewers, AEs, and MED leaders for your continued support of JMSE. JMSE is changing. I invite and strongly encourage you to participate in the process of strengthening JMSE by providing your ideas to me and submitting your top research papers to our manufacturing journal.
