Volume 43, N. 3

Special Issue: 70 years of ABMS (Invited Editor: Waldemar Hachich), July-September, 2020

A message from the Editorial Board

Editorial

Volume 43, N. 3, Special Issue: 70 years of ABMS (Invited Editor: Waldemar Hachich), July-September, 2020 | DOWNLOAD PDF (15 downloads)

Abstract

Soils and Rocks is going through significant changes in 2020. The Editorial Board has been renewed and our new Advisory Committee is now being selected and invited. We have a team of board members that is actively engaged and motivated, contributing to our plans for the journal. We have set several goals, based on feedback received from the technical and scientific community. In terms of editorial peer-review procedures, we are significantly reducing the time between paper submission and final decision. This has been achieved thanks to the assistance of our expert reviewers, who diligently observe our rigorous deadlines. We are implementing a revamped guide for authors, to help with the preparation of manuscripts that strictly adhere to the formatting rules of the journal. We are also establishing an author´s checklist, to ensure that submissions fulfill the journal´s requirements. Another important new goal for 2020 was to increase the quantity of published papers and to decrease the time between article acceptance and its availability online. To achieve that target, we have changed the number of annual issues, from three to four. This goal is also closely related to the demand for the more frequent publications of special issues, offering opportunities to have sets of manuscripts on domain-specific fields within Geotechnical Engineering. The journal currently has special issues planned for 2021 and 2022, aimed to present expanded papers and lectures to be given in the next Luso-Brazilian Geotechnical Conference and in the Third Pan-American Conference on Unsaturated Soils. We know that paper visibility influences the number and quality of submissions. Therefore, the Editorial Board is constantly working on improving and expanding the indexation of the journal. Soils and Rocks is currently indexed by Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, among other major citation databases. While our present citation metrics are lower than our set goals, we have an encouraging positive trend that we intend to maintain, gradually reaching a wider international recognition and interest. We are pleased to announce that the current issue of Soils and Rocks introduces a new paper format. This format was designed to offer a fresh look, to include a machine-readable Creative Commons licensing information, to adopt a more streamlined method of identification of authors and corresponding affiliations, among several other modifications. This change is accompanied by a new and modern website. Finally, it is important to emphasize that the changes and advancements that Soils and Rocks started to experience in 2020 wouldn´t be possible without the steadfast support from the Brazilian Association for Soils Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering and from the Portuguese Geotechnical Society, for which we are deeply grateful.