Minerals Engineering continues to grow

Hard at work in the Franschhoek Office

Elsevier's Executive Publishing Manager, Dean Eastbury, and I met in Franschhoek last Friday to discuss the continuing evolution of Minerals Engineering, now established as the world's number 1 mineral processing journal. It has the highest impact factor of such journals, and the special conference issues contribute highly to this, particularly those in the fields of biohydrometallurgy, flotation and environmental issues.

The number of papers submitted is increasingly annually, with over 550 in 2011, of which 63% were rejected. The rejection rate has been steadily increasing to maintain page budgets and standards. Accepted papers from Australia and South Africa continue to dominate, while submissions from North America remain disappointing. China accounts for just over a third of all submissions, but unfortunately has a relatively high rejection rate of 82%. Three years ago in Beijing, Kari Heiskanen, editor of International Journal of Mineral Processing, and I presented a workshop on preparing papers for international journals, but it would appear that most of what we suggested fell on deaf ears!

ScienceDirect usage grows rapidly year by year and in 2011 the number of downloads is predicted to be over 400,000, compared with 372,500 in 2010, staggering figures, and around double the number from IJMP. It is interesting to note that 11 of the 12 most downloaded papers are reviews. For those not subscribed to ScienceDirect, abstracts can be read free of charge, and full papers purchased in pdf format on a pay-for-view basis.

Of particular interest is author feedback (left), where authors are invited to rate a number of statements concerning their publishing experience. Authors are also asked to rate another journal to which they have recently published. The score for each area for Minerals Engineering is then compared against the average of all other titles. The average score, or benchmark, is zero on the chart. Scores above zero mean that, for that area, Minerals Engineering is rated higher than average and scores above 5 place Minerals Engineering in the top third of all journals.

The results speak for themselves. Minerals Engineering has always strived to produce a rapid, high quality refereeing and publication service and has a shorter turn-around time than the average for a typical research journal. For that I thank the professionalism of Dean and his staff at Elsevier, and to all my Editorial Board and reviewers who give up their valuable time to maintain the high standard and reputation of the journal.