Awards for the best Journal of Applied Polymer Science Referees during 2011

Abstract

Peer review is the very foundation of scientific journals, and a scientific publication is only as good as the referees that it can source through the scientific community to evaluate the papers submitted by authors from all over the world. At the Journal of Applied Polymer Science, we are very fortunate to have the ear of a community of outstanding scientists, both in academia and industry, who truly care for the advancement of the science and technology of polymers, and spend their time and effort in ensuring the quality of each and every contribution. And there are a lot of contributions: as the largest peer-reviewed publication in the field, the Journal of Applied Polymer Science screens several thousand papers a year, and of course, this would be impossible without the help of a large number of referees, as we strive to deliver at least two reports per article. Among these large numbers of great referees, there are many truly outstanding ones, and it is my pleasure to announce the start of a yearly feature of the journal: an award for the best referees of the year. All members of the Advisory Board of the Journal of Applied Polymer Science and their coworkers are excluded from this award. Of course, the criteria one could use to select such a group are as many as the referees themselves: number of papers refereed during the year, depth of feedback, help given to the editors in particularly tricky cases, such as suspected scientific fraud. We have decided to use a mix of all of these criteria and to select a group of six referees who, we feel, have gone above and beyond the call of duty, during 2011, to help the Journal of Applied Polymer Science in its mission to publish high-quality content. The six scientists nominated for this year are as follows: (1) Ramin Khajavi, of Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran; (2) Yutaka Kobayashi, of Advanced Composites, Inc., Sidney, OH; (3) Ning Luo, formerly at BioBased Technologies, Fayetteville, AR; (4) Long Yu, of CSIRO, Melbourne, Australia; (5) Yuan Yang, of the Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO; (6) Claudio Migliaresi, of the University of Trento, Trento, Italy It is our pleasure to award these six referees a certificate that they will receive by mail. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to exchange comments every day with such impressive and attentive scientists. Congratulations to all the winners for this year, as well as to all our other truly excellent referees for upholding the quality of scientific research in the field, as well as helping other scientists improve their work, so that it can be more interesting, more complete, and more accessible.