Editorial: transition time - Engineering Management ... - IEEE Xplore

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Management field would grow and prosper as a visible, recog- nized discipline. ... Board of Governors, the staff at the IEEE headquarters, and my assistant, Ann ...
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 48, NO. 2, MAY 2001

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Editorial: Transition Time

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had been asked by the Executive Committee of the IEEE Engineering Management Society (EMS) to be the Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT when Al Rubenstein decided to turn the editorial responsibilities to a successor after serving 25 years in that position. Al was, and continues to be, a legend in his lifetime, and he had brought this TRANSACTIONS to a high level of recognition. I agreed to take on the responsibility, but promised to myself that I would do it for no more than five years. Well that was May 1984, 17 years ago. My son was one-year old at that time. He is starting college now. Upon accepting the editorship, I formed the department structure and invited key people in each area to head the editorial departments. We immediately started to work as a team in setting our goals and developing the strategies to achieve them. Our objective, from day one, was to provide leadership at the highest level of quality to assure that the Engineering and Technology Management field would grow and prosper as a visible, recognized discipline. Our strategies were designed for a pro-active leadership in that direction. We kept the standards very high and left no room for compromise. The first issue of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT under my editorship was the February 1986 issue. The one you are reading now is the 63rd. I have had the honor and pleasure of meeting and working with the leaders and emerging leaders in the forefront of Engineering and Technology management during this time period. The department editors and I collectively evaluated more than 2000 papers submitted by authors from virtually every country in the world. We witnessed an unprecedented growth in the field, and observed the emergence of Engineering and Technology Management as a recognized, respected discipline. There are many things of which we are proud. I would not even attempt to list them all, but a few examples are in order. We are proud to observe that the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT is now listed at the top layer of the prestigious journals in this field in virtually every study conducted by researchers studying the research trends and publication qualities. Published by IEEE, the largest engineering society in the world, our TRANSACTIONS is well recognized in engineering schools for its high quality. However, until recently, it did not have the same visibility in business schools. Considering that about half of our authors are from business schools, it was important for us to achieve the recognition in business schools so that the authors can be appropriately evaluated for the value of their publications for promotion and tenure

decisions. We are proud to see that almost every major business school in the United States now has the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT included in its list of top-tier journals for evaluation of faculty’s research publications. We are also proud that the TRANSACTIONS is receiving 2.5 times as many submissions as it did in 1985; and it is almost three times the size as it was in 1985, with 576 pages budgeted for this year. Having achieved the goals we set for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT 17 years ago, seeing that the TRANSACTIONS has reached the top levels of recognition and prestige among the very best journals in the world, and observing that our pro-active strategies for leadership in expanding and accelerating the growth of the Engineering and Technology Management discipline have become successful, I decided to transfer the editorship to another colleague to take the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT to even higher levels of success. We are in the process of forming a search committee to conduct an international search for the next editor-in-chief. The committee is chaired by Gus Gaynor, Vice President of Publications of the Engineering Management Society. The other members of the committee are myself, Dr. Wade Shaw, President of the EMS, and Dr. Burton Dean, with whom I have had the pleasure of working at the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT since I first took the editorial responsibilities. Nominations can be sent to the members or chair of the search committee. I am hoping that we will complete the transfer of the TRANSACTIONS by July 1, 2002. This is ample time for transition assuring the normal operation of our TRANSACTIONS without any discontinuity. You will not have a lame-duck editor in this transition. The department editors and I will do the work without any changes. As soon as we identify my successor, I will work closely with the new editor-in-chief to guarantee a smooth transition to a new and continually better future for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT. Even though I will continue for more than a year as the editor-in-chief, I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to the outstanding colleagues with whom I was fortunate to work. We all share the same enthusiasm and same goals to make the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT as successful as it is. They are the department editors, the authors, the reviewers, the members of the EMS Board of Governors, the staff at the IEEE headquarters, and my assistant, Ann White. DUNDAR F. KOCAOGLU, Editor-In-Chief Portland State University Portland, OR 97207-0751 USA

Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9391(01)05449-6.

0018–9391/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE