Rheologica Acta - Important Changes for Rheologica Acta
by Editor-in-Chief Giovanni Ianniruberto
Department of Chemical, Materials, and Production Engineering
Federico II University
Piazzale Tecchio 80, Naples 80125 (Italy)
Email: iannirub@unina.it
The first important piece of news is the change of one of the two Editors-In-Chief (EIC). Philippe Coussot, who has been EIC of Rheologica Acta since 2019, recently resigned. Philippe has started to be considerably involved in other tasks and he felt might no longer be fully able to bear the editorial work for Rheologica Acta. On behalf of the whole rheological community, I wish to express my gratitude to Philippe for all he has done for the journal in the past years. I also want to thank him personally for all the time he dedicated to train me at the beginning of my EIC adventure: he taught me, in a very friendly way, all the required technical skills but also his rigorous and enthusiastic approach to this important service to the rheological community. Philippe will still serve the journal, now as a member of the Editorial Board.
I have the great pleasure to announce that the new EIC will be Simon Rogers. Simon is Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA). His research activity is deeply and firmly in the field of rheology and rheo-physics. He obtained several awards, among others the NSF Career Award in 2019 and the Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award from the Society of Rheology in 2022. He was the chair of the successful Society of Rheology Annual Meeting in Chicago held in 2022, and the co-organizer (with Randy Ewoldt) of the 9th Viscoplastic Fluids workshop in 2023. Simon has also been the guest editor of the Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics for two special issues associated with the Viscoplastic Fluids meetings.
Simon, welcome on board. The journal will no doubt benefit of the fact that our expertise is somehow complimentary. Although Rheologica Acta is the official journal of the European Society of Rheology, it is also very important to have again a non-European EIC. That will certainly help the journal to fully keep its independence and its international vocation in terms of scientific publications.
The second important change relates to the timing of the manuscript handling process. To speed things up, reviewers are now being asked to return their thoughts on newly submitted manuscripts in 14 days (rather than 30), and on revised versions in 7 days (rather than 30). Authors too are being asked to act faster: we now ask for revised manuscripts after 21 days (down from 60) in cases of minor revisions, and for major revisions to be completed in 42 days (down from 90). The streamlining of the process will also involve the EIC’s who will make decisions faster, for example when selecting reviewers, and Springer Nature for checking manuscripts and preparing proofs.
Finally, we will be renewing and revising our Editorial Board. With the help of both old and new Editorial Board members we will promote new special issues, feature articles, and collections, encouraging authors to submit challenging projects to the Editorial Board.
These changes mark an exciting period in the evolution of Rheologica Acta and reaffirm our commitment to advancing the science of rheology by publishing high quality peer reviewed articles. We look forward to seeing your submissions soon.