DATE:   September 21, 2002

 

TO:       Board of Editors, iNEER Special Volume for 2003: 

Michael Hoffmann, Ulm, Germany, michael.hoffmann@e-technik.uni-ulm.de

Ng Wun Jern, Singapore, engdean@nus.edu.sg

Robin King, Adelaide, Australia, robin.king@unisa.edu.au

Luis Manuel Sanchez Ruis, Valencia, Spain, lmsr@mat.upv.es

 

FROM:  Win Aung, iNEER/NSF, waung@ineer.org; waung@nsf.gov

 

Thank you for agreeing to serve on the Board of Editors of the iNEER Special Volume for 2003, to be titled: “ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND RESEARCH – 2002: A Chronicle of Worldwide Innovations”.  As editors, we will have some work, but hopefully it will be fun work and we will be doing a great service for the worldwide engineering education and research community.

 

The purposes of the hard-cover book, which will be published by iNEER annually, are to:

 

(a)     highlight the benefits of and disseminate the results of international collaboration;

(b)     serve as a voice for the iNEER community; and

(c)     further the ideals of international partnership in engineering education.

 

With its focus on international cooperation, the series is intended to complement the existing archival publications in engineering education. The worldwide iNEER community is now over 6,000 members strong and growing.  Their joint efforts will surely make a difference in the annals of engineering education.

 

This will be the 2nd special volume published by iNEER and will be distributed as a part of the registration package next year at ICEE-2003. The first one was issued in August this year and distributed at ICEE-2002. It has received many good comments. The volume is now available for sale to the general public.  Though on the market for only a few days, we have received several orders from individuals and libraries, including many from well-known campuses (Purdue; Iowa State; etc.) and professional (IEE) and industrial organizations (Microsoft Library). 

 

For more information on the 2002 book, please connect to the following link and click on the last 4 buttons: http://www.ineer.org/iNEERPapers/Welcome.htm. The 7 buttons located at the top on that page pertain to the new iNEER book that we are editing. As you can see, we started the preliminary work on this back on June 26, 2002 with an invitation to the community to submit papers. Since then, over 80 papers have come in. At this time we will review only those papers that satisfy the guidelines or are expected to do so in the next few days. I expect a few more papers to be added to our review list in the days to come.  

 

Now, here is the work part of the editorship. I have discussed some of the following items with some of you, but not all of the items with all of you. In part this is because the number of papers received made it necessary for us to expand the membership of the Board of Editors, but I was able to make contact with you only recently. I apologize for this delay.

 

(1) Attached is an Excel tracking sheet for all of the 83 papers submitted. There are still a few papers that are not yet listed, for which we have received the copyright releases. We are trying to sort things out with the authors. There are a few papers listed for which copyright releases are not yet received, but we expect to receive them within a few days.

 

As editors, we have a fiduciary responsibility to the authors to respect the confidentiality of the contents of their papers, as well as the information on this tracking sheet. The paper assignments are given in the last column to the right. Please look over and let me know immediately if you have any problem or question.

 

(2) I have completed an initial assignment of the papers to the four of you and have sent you a CD by express mail containing the papers you are assigned to. Your job as editor is to obtain 3 written reviews per paper. This is crucial to having a high quality book. These reviews should be compiled as a word-file by paper numbers and sent to me for central coordination, in accordance with the schedule below. After editing them, I will forward them all to you and we can discuss and make decisions jointly concerning acceptances. After acceptances are decided, I will present the results to the iNEER Board to get its concurrence on the number of pages for the book and hence to pay for production. Once that is done, I will contact the authors of the accepted papers, forwarding the review comments (with reviewer identification omitted) and request responses and revisions if necessary. We plan to increase the number of papers (and hence the number of chapters in the book) from the 19 in the first book. Still, I expect that we will be unable to accept more than half of those 65 papers we are reviewing. 

 

(3) Please use the "Memo to Reviewers" listed on the 6th bullet on the above web-page to solicit reviews. This is also included in the CD sent to you.

 

(4) For those of us who can make it, we will meet in Valencia, Spain on Nov. 13 to go over the reviews. The ICEE-International Steering Committee will be meeting on Nov. 11-12 and you are all invited to attend that as well. More on this later; for now, we will need to start the process of soliciting reviews by sending out individual papers to reviewers. You all have organized and/attended numerous conferences on engineering education. In addition, you have a network of knowledgeable colleagues in your respective universities, countries and regions. Please use all of these contacts to form your reviewer pool. One important item: As much as possible, please use a broadly based reviewer pool in terms of disciplines, affiliations and national origins, so as to get a diverse set of opinions. In other word, please avoid having the same few individuals giving you reviews for all of the papers.

 

(5) SCHEDULE:

 

Though we seem to have plenty of time, we actually have a tight schedule. Thus, I would appreciate your cooperation in sticking to the following schedule as far as your role as editor is concerned. If you anticipate not being able to follow this schedule, please let me know right away so we may find an alternative. Thank you.

 

a.         October 1, 2002:            Select reviewers and send review solicitations using “Memo to

                                                Reviewers” downloaded from the above website; deadline for

                                                receipt of reviews: November 5, 2002. (All Editors)

b.         November 8:                  Compile all reviews received into a Word file, listing all papers

by paper numbers in sequence; send file to Win Aung

at waung@ineer.org. (All Editors)

c.         November 13:                Board of Editors Meeting in Valencia, Spain (All Editors;

location to be announced by Luis Manuel Sanchez Ruiz).

d.         November 25:                Second round of review solicitation sent out to reviewers

as needed; new deadline for receipt of reviews:

December 30 (All editors).

e.                   January 10, 2003:          Update Word files for reviews and forward them to Win Aung.

(All Editors)

f.                     January 20:                   Edit reviews; forward reviews to authors of individual papers for

necessary revisions. (Aung + Consultant/Contractor)

g.         February 20:                  Revised manuscripts sent to W. Aung. (All authors of accepted

papers)

h.         March 1:                       Formatting and pagination starts. (Aung + Consultant/Contractor) 

i.          March 15:                      Send formatted manuscripts to printer and binders. (Aung +

Consultant/Contractor)

j.          May 1:                          Ship completed books to Valencia, Spain.   (Aung

+ Consultant/Contractor)

 

(7) While the tracking sheet does not show me as specifically responsible for any of the papers, I can assist you if you need help, as I have quite a large reviewer pool, and I may go ahead and get one or two reviews for selected papers and forward these to you if I get them, but I cannot promise them and I hope you will not depend on getting them.  

 

(8) Please send me a one-paragraph bio-sketch of yourself for inclusion in the book. I attach one of myself as sample.

 

I plan to be out of he office from September 26 – October 10, but expect to maintain contact with e-mails. Please use the following address in all correspondences directed to me at  waung@ineer.org with cc: to waung@nsf.gov.

 

I look forward to working with you. If there is any thing I can do for you, please let me know.

 

Best regards.

 

________________________
Win Aung, Ph.D., P.E., Dr.h.c.
Secretary-General
International Network for Engineering Education and Research
http://www.ineer.org
waung@ineer.org

 

P.S.  For easy reference, this message (without the attachments) is being posted as the 7th bullet item on the above website. Please bookmark it.