Minerals Engineering Special Issues

One of the primary aims of MEI Conferences is to produce state-of-the-art special issues of the peer-reviewed journal Minerals Engineering.

The initial peer-review of a paper takes place at the conference during its presentation and discussion, so I am hoping that authors from last week’s Flotation ’09 are now hard at work preparing their final papers for submission to the Elsevier site. Profs. Dee Bradshaw and J-P Franzidis will be advising me on appropriate referees to supplement the 140 reviewers held in my journal database. Already I have had delegates from the conference kindly offering their services to review specific papers.

I must remind all authors that good conference papers are not necessarily good journal papers and before submission they must ask whether the paper is innovative and of generic interest i.e. it must provide information that is of use to workers outside the particular mine, ore-body or other operation described.

When the papers are submitted, they are initially scrutinised by Elsevier to check formatting, standard of English etc. It is essential that papers are written according to the guidelines laid out in the Guide for Authors. If satisfactory, the papers are passed on to me and I assign suitable referees, specialists in the subject matter, to review the papers.

The process of reviewing, revision, further refereeing etc can be lengthy, but this is the basis of science publication and, although not infallible, ensures that standards are maintained at a high level.

We are hoping that the special Flotation issue of Minerals Engineering will be published in mid-2010.