Minerals Engineering’s Silver Jubilee Year

Volume 1 Number 1

I received my copy of Volume 40 (January 2013) of Minerals Engineering last week. Very few people will realise that this is the 25th Anniversary issue of the journal, which first appeared in print in January 1988.

These days Minerals Engineering is established as one of the leading peer-reviewed journals in our field. I have an Editorial Board of 24 high calibre scientists from around the world, and a data base of over 270 reviewers who supplement the Editorial Board and ensure smooth running of the peer-review process. Submission of papers and reviewing is all carried out in ‘the cloud’ via the Elsevier Electronic Submission (EES) system, and papers are rapidly published online, as well as in hard copy. But things were very much different a quarter of a century ago.....

In the mid-80s I was a senior lecturer at the Camborne School of Mines, and supervised a number of PhD research projects. At the time there were only two journals of high reputation for submission of mineral processing research papers, the International Journal of Mineral Processing, a long established journal run by Elsevier, and Transactions of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy Section C.

Having submitted papers to both these journals, I was frustrated at the lack of communication from the editors, who often failed to acknowledge receipt of a paper and then spent an inordinate amount of time supervising the review process. I was also dismayed that on final acceptance of a paper, there could be a delay of up to 12 months before publication, during which time the paper may have lost much of its impact. There was obviously a need for a journal with a dynamic Editorial Board, which could provide rapid publication of topical papers.

In 1978 the first edition of my book Mineral Processing Technology had been published by Pergamon Press, and by the mid-80s it was well established and in its 3rd edition. Pergamon was also a scientific journal publisher, so I approached them with the idea of setting up a new journal, Minerals Engineering, and much to my surprise they responded enthusiastically. The hard part was now ahead- instilling the same level of confidence in the mineral processing community!

The first thing to do was to set up an Editorial Board, and luckily I had been travelling around the world for a few years ‘networking’ so was able to recruit people who I had met on my travels. I managed to get together 22 enthusiastic and well known mineral processors and it is worth listing these, as many of them are still very active, some have unfortunately passed on and a few I have lost touch with:

Cyril O’Connor (South Africa), Don McKee (Australia), G. Ferrara (Italy), Gilles Barbery (Canada), Dave Osborne (Indonesia), Les Adorjan (Canada), Fernando Concha (Chile), Ronald Crozier (Chile), B. Dobias (Germany), Rob Dunne (Australia), Eric Forssberg (Sweden), Steve Hall (UK), Jeff McKay (USA), Gulhan Ozbayoglu (Turkey), Roger Parker (UK), Victor Phillips (UK), Fred Pooley (UK), S. Raghavan (USA), K. Rajamani (USA), John Ralston (Australia), Roberto Villas-Boas (Brazil) and John Watson (USA).

Once the Editorial Board had been formalised, I got the green light from Pergamon to go ahead, with 4 issues per year planned, the first one scheduled for January 1988. But if I thought it would be plain sailing from thereon, I was very wrong, as I now hit the first major obstacle. Any researcher of any note would want to submit his or her work to a journal of high repute, and for a journal to achieve such a reputation, it needs to be well established with the publication of high calibre papers. A classic “Catch-22” situation.

There was only one way I could solicit such papers, and that was to get out and about and persuade people face to face that publication in this new journal would be a good thing. Luckily the Principal at CSM at that time, Dr. Peter Hackett, was very understanding and let me have more or less free-reign in my travels. This was the start of my love affair with conferences, undoubtedly the best places to be to meet people and generally have a good time! The first conference that I organised was in Falmouth in 1986, where I met for the first time Jim Finch and Gilles Barbery, who kindly submitted articles for the first issue.

With Gilles Barbery, H. Oberndorfer and Nick Miles

With Jim Finch, Derek Ottley, Jim Watson and Wally Kop

I attended my first International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC) in Stockholm in June 1988. Quality papers were beginning to trickle into the journal, but I detected a degree of coldness in Stockholm, not only due to the climate, but also from the ‘old guard’ of International Journal of Mineral Processing (IJMP) contributors. This climaxed with an approach from a senior executive from Elsevier, who strongly advised me to abandon Minerals Engineering, as there was no place for another mineral processing journal of similar scope. I argued about ‘healthy competition’ but he was not interested. This made me even more determined that the journal should succeed. If the mighty Elsevier was worried, then we must have something special evolving here!

The launch of Minerals Engineering at the Stockholm IMPC, 1988

Although good papers were now coming in, it is hard to believe 25 years later how difficult, frustrating and archaic the peer-review process was then. Not everyone had email- including some members of the Editorial Board! The Guide for Authors requested that manuscripts be submitted to me in triplicate on “good quality white paper”, and authors were encouraged to submit their work on a 5 ¼ inch diskette as well as hard copy, recommending WordPerfect word processing software.

On receipt of papers by mail, I would then mail copies off to two members of the Editorial Board (there were no supplementary reviewers at that stage), who would then send me their reports by mail, which I would then mail to the author. A long and tedious process, but once a paper had been accepted, the tedium worsened......

Pergamon had provided me with a cheap Amstrad PC and a daisy-wheel printer. Once a paper had been accepted, if on floppy disk I had to format it for production of camera-ready copy. If no disk was provided, then Barbara would painstakingly type out the paper in the journal format. I then had to print it out on camera-ready paper. A single paper could take well over an hour to print, as the daisy wheels would have to be changed to accommodate italics, bold, underlined, and the use of mathematical and Greek symbols- an absolute nightmare. Once a set of papers had been printed, they would then be sent to Oxford via a secure courier service.

It was hard work, but we stuck at it, and slowly email became common and after a few years papers were regularly passed from authors to me, then to the Editorial Board electronically. The journal began to grow in stature, and so did the paper flow, such that in 1990 the number of issues per year was raised to 6, and then in the following year to 12, the first special conference issue (Comminution ’89) appearing in 1990 (in 2000 the number of issues increased to the present 15 per year).

The first Minerals Engineering Editorial Board meeting, Singapore 1991
Rob Dunne (Australia), Glen Dobby (Canada), BW, Prof. Wakamatsu (Japan),
Terry Veasey (UK), Cyril O'Connor (South Africa),
Dave Osborne (Indonesia) and Don Mckee (Australia)

Just when the journal was establishing a reputation we had what appeared to be an insurmountable set back. The owner and founder of Pergamon Press was Robert Maxwell, a flamboyant Czechoslovakian- born character who lived at Pergamon’s Headquarters, Headington Hill Hall in Oxford, often flying into work in his helicopter.

Barbara, and Maxwell helicopter, at Headington Hill Hall, 1991

In 1989 he had to sell successful businesses including Pergamon Press to cover some of his enormous debts, and having once attempted a hostile take over of Elsevier he now approached that company, hoping to sell Pergamon — the jewel in his publishing empire crown. The £440 million sale was finalized in 1991 and later that year Maxwell was found dead, floating in the Atlantic Ocean having apparently fallen overboard from his yacht. His death triggered the final collapse of his publishing empire as banks called in loans. His sons briefly struggled to keep the business together, but failed as the news emerged that Maxwell had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his own companies' pension funds to save the companies from bankruptcy.

So, three years after being warned off by Elsevier, the journal was now in its mighty hands and the future looked bleak- would IJMPs major competitor be immediately and ruthlessly axed?

Well, here we are, so obviously Elsevier turned out not to be the ogre that I had imagined. Much to the contrary in fact; the Elsevier journal team has been a pleasure to work with over the last 22 years. I have had a number of production managers during that time, all of whom have been efficient and professional, no more so than my present manager, Dean Eastbury, who has also become a great friend of the family.

Hiking in South Africa with Amanda, Jon and Dean Eastbury

By attending MEI Conferences and IMPCs, all of the Elsevier managers have made the effort to get to know the people in our industry and this has helped considerably in establishing the journal in its number 1 spot.

Elsevier's Michael Mabe (centre) at Minerals Engineering '94, Lake Tahoe

Elsevier's Louise Morris (2nd left) at IMPC '06, Istanbul

Elsevier's Dylan Parker (centre) at IMPC '08, Beijing

Elsevier's Dean Eastbury (right) at SRCR '11, Cornwall

The last 25 years has been a roller-coaster ride, but I would not have missed it for anything. On behalf of myself and the Elsevier team I would like to take the opportunity of thanking everyone who has contributed to the success of the journal- the many, many authors who have submitted papers, the Editorial Board, past and present, and all those who give up their valuable time to participate diligently in the all-important peer-review process. Here’s to the next 25 years!