| 1/1/2007 Author: McCarthy, J.M., Technical Editor Volume: 129(1) – January, 2007 It is a new year and the first of the monthly issues of the Journal of Mechanical Design. A little over two years ago, the Journal published around 100 papers in four issues, and now we will publish over 150 papers in 12 issues. Please welcome the new sleek JMD issue with 12–15 articles filling about 120 pages. This opening issue is devoted to research on what might be one of the oldest research areas in mechanical design, if you consider stone-age grinding tools and the hand axe to be examples of direct-contact mechanisms. I am pleased to acknowledge the outstanding work of our special editors David Dooner and Teik Lim, who organized this issue. Our journal serves a large audience so it may happen that there are no papers in your particular area of interest in this smaller format issue. May I ask that you reserve judgment until the next monthly issue arrives and consider the two issues together to be a bimonthly publication, or three combined issues to be a quarterly that merges the papers of your area of interest into a context of mechanical design research. The challenge to the Journal of Mechanical Design is to effectively serve communities that range from the elements of machines and mechanisms through system design optimization to product realization. It is my belief that the entire community benefits from the integration of this spectrum of research within the single venue that is JMD. Every day I am honored to see this broad array of mechanical design research arrive from around the world. |
