SUMMARY
“The SAJIE journal provides not only a general ongoing stimulus for local graduate students, but also good training for international success. It compares well with some of the best international journals in the field of industrial engineering. It is the only journal in Africa that is included in the list of top journals in this field.” Committee on Scholarly Publishing in South Africa: Report on Grouped Peer Review of Scholarly Journals in Architecture, Built Environment and Engineering ASSAf, March 2018The journal experienced again a very successful year. We introduced the special edition 2 years ago, and we continued with this tradition in 2018, selecting the best contributions from related conferences and publishing it in a special edition. As initiated the end of 2017, it is now customary to evaluate how the journal is performing. Scopus (www.scopus.com) measures impact with a “CiteScore” and the graph (extracted from Scopus on 6 December) shows the progress made over the last few years. The CiteScore for a year is calculated as Citation Count for the year / number of documents the previous 3 years. When a journal thus extends the number of editions, it has a short-term negative impact on the journal’s impact factor. Since we now publish more articles per year and with the special edition, also with a more local content, one can thus expect the CiteScore to flatten and even reduce – we had seen a similar trend in 2012 – 2014 when we moved from 2 to 3 editions per year in 2012. We thus see the same impact in 2017. The interim CiteScore for 2018, as updated on 12 November, is currently at 0.54, which is a fraction lower than 2017 (0.55), but it may well exceed 2017, once the remainder of 2018 is also included in the calculation. The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) issued a report on a Grouped Peer Review of Scholarly Journals in Architecture, Built Environment and Engineering earlier this year. (The quote at the top is from this report.) 15 journals were reviewed. The following was concluded wrt quality: The quality of the articles that are published is high, and the journal attracts submissions from international academics. It publishes an impressive three issues per year and an average of 50 articles per year. The journal aims to cover most of the relevant and pertinent topics in the broad field of industrial engineering. The SAJIE publishes a good sample of the best research work in the industrial engineering discipline in not only South Africa, but in the developing world.” I am thus very pleased with the standing of SAJIE based on the ASSAf report and our international ranking. This edition has a total of 19 articles, with 14 from authors with South African connections and the balance from international authors. If you have suggestions on how we can take this journal forward, please let me know. Corne Schutte Editor