5/1/2014 Author: Shapour Azarm
Volume: 136(5) – May, 2014
[Please note that since this article was published, the award has been renamed the “Editors’ Choice Award”.]
Last year, I appointed an Ad-hoc committee that consisted of Professor Jon Cagan (CMU), Professor Panos Papalambros (University of Michigan), Professor Jim Schmiedeler (University of Notre Dame), and Professor Janis Terpenny (Iowa State University). Professor Papalambros, the last Editor of Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD), served as the chair of the committee. The charge to the committee was to devise guidelines for the selection of the JMD’s Annual Best Paper Award. The goal of the award is to promote JMD submissions that are of the highest quality and impact.
The committee submitted its report in November 2013. I would like to take this opportunity and thank the committee members for their dedicated service. Their report is the basis for the guidelines presented in this Editorial. A copy of the report was forwarded to the JMD’s Editorial Board, the Design Engineering Division’s (DED’s) Executive Committee, other Editors of the DED sponsored journals, and ASME’s publication committee with a request for their input.
With this editorial, I would like to announce the guidelines that will be used for the selection of the best paper award. The guidelines will set the purpose, criteria for selection, and the selection process for the annual JMD Best Paper Award.
Purpose
The purpose of the award is to promote high quality research contributions in mechanical design through the recognition of outstanding papers that appear in the JMD. The best paper award will be given annually to one paper appearing in an issue of JMD during that calendar year. The selection process will consider papers from the broad diversity of design engineering fields represented by all the ASME technical committees that contribute to JMD.
Criteria for Selection
There are four criteria which will be used for selection of the annual best paper. These are: (1) fundamental value of the contribution, (2) expectation of archival value (e.g., expected number of citations), (3) practical relevance to mechanical design, and (4) quality of presentation.
Selection Process
(1) Each year the Technical Editor (TE) will appoint a Best Paper Award Committee drawn from the JMD community.
(2) Throughout the year, Associate Editors (AEs) and Guest Editors (GEs) are encouraged to nominate papers to the TE.
(3) At the closeout of the December issue, the TE will collect all nominated papers, divide the papers into groups and assign them to corresponding AE/GE groups. Each AE/GE will vote for one outstanding paper (preferably, or at most two) in his/her assigned group. At the TE’s discretion, additional papers may be added to the final set if the representation of topics/technical areas is not sufficiently diverse. The total number of papers sent to the Awards Committee should be no more than ten.
(4) The TE will give the final set of nominated papers to the Awards Committee who will then vote for the best paper. In case of tie, the TE will break the tie.
I plan to implement the Annual Best Paper Award for papers published in JMD in 2014 and announce the result for the first best paper award in 2015. The best paper award will be selected every year thereafter as well! Finally, while we will proceed with these guidelines for the best paper selection from the 2014 papers, I expect that with experience we will find ways to improve the process. In this regard, I will continue to seek and welcome your suggestions in the coming years.
Shapour Azarm
Editor
Journal of Mechanical Design
