A record high impact factor for Minerals Engineering and a new face on the team

Great to hear this month of the huge rise in the journal's impact factor. The 2016 impact factor is 2.286, a 40% increase on the 2015 figure. This cements Minerals Engineering's reputation as the leading mineral processing journal, and it is also good to see that the impact factor gap between Minerals Engineering and Elsevier's specialised Hydrometallurgy journal is narrowing.

For the past seven years these two journals, as well as International Journal of Mineral Processing, which will be incorporated into Minerals Engineering at the end of the year, have been overseen by Executive Publishing Manager Dean Eastbury, who has become a familiar figure at MEI Conferences.

Today Dean officially retires from Elsevier, and will soon be moving from Oxford to Cornwall with his partner Sharlene. We wish them both the very best, and I look forward to joining them for hikes on the South-West coastal path.

Dean's position with the journals will be taken by Laney Priestley, who I met for the first time at Computational Modelling '17 earlier this month. Laney will also become a familiar face in our field, and will be with us in Cape Town in November for Flotation '17.

Laney and Dean at Computational Modelling '17

Laney is Executive Publisher at Elsevier, currently overseeing a list of mechanics journals, as well as several publications in chemical engineering. She has been with Elsevier for 10 years and her previous roles in the company include Management Trainee and Head of Content Development for Special Issues and Conferences. She studied medicine in Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and holds a Master’s Degree in public health from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

I, and the rest of the MEI team, look forward very much to working with Laney and to furthering the reputation of Minerals Engineering as it enters a new era.

Twitter @barrywills