Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 1999, 38, 4139
4139
Commentary: A New Type of Paper With this issue we inaugurate a new kind of paper called a Commentary. We hope to publish a few of these per year, written by the experts in the field and submitted by invitation only. Our first paper of this type, written by Professor Octave Levenspiel, appears in this issue. Octave gives his philosophical perspective on the continuing development of the field of chemical reaction engineering. Before saying more about this paper, it would be useful to explain the origin and intent of this new type of paper. The concept was proposed by a member of our Advisory Board, Professor John M. Prausnitz, and was enthusiastically endorsed by other members of the Advisory Board and the Editors. The idea was motivated by the fact that professionals in our field are increasingly overloaded with information. There is an excessive diet of facts without discrimination concerning the importance or ability to digest the many papers we see or read; some guidance as to what information truly matters is needed. The conventional response is to publish review articles, but all too often these are addressed to the expert and not to the interested technically trained nonexpert. They tend to be too long and often are not critical enough. The alternative suggested here is to have people of great stature, in areas of broad interest, give their views on what they believe are the key issues, what significant progress has been made in recent years, what crucial problems need to be solved for significant further progress, and what techniques are promising for obtaining the required solutions. A Commentary is meant to be critical and selective because it is based on a broad prospective that is both historical and cautiously prophetic. The article should not be long; it should be addressed to a broad audience of readers who are not experts; it should carefully define every term and avoid jargon; it should provide only key references. The message should be conveyed in words and pictures using a minimum of mathematics. A Commentary is not meant to be exhaustive; on the contrary, it is highly selective, a product of the author’s judgment. Manuscripts submitted for the Commentary category will not be peer-reviewed in the conventional way. We ask the invited author to show a semifinished but preliminary draft to qualified colleagues and ask for their constructive criticism and suggestions concerning items that may have been overlooked or insufficiently stressed. These people are to be more like coauthors rather than reviewers, and their help should be acknowledged in the paper. Generally, the process is intended to achieve balance. An article prepared by an academician might be shown to someone in industry, or vice versa. We believe these papers will provide a muchappreciated professional service and will be welcomed by managers of research in industry and by academic researchers who wish to solve truly important problems, i.e., significant problems that need to be solved as opposed to peripheral problems that can be solved. We have invited several highly respected individuals in our field to prepare such papers relating to their area of expertise, and the one by Octave Levenspiel appearing in this issue was the first to be received. Our invitation to prepare a Commentary included no more instructions about its nature than what appears above. Therefore, we should expect a wide array of contents, styles, and approaches. We want everyone to understand that this first Commentary is not meant to be a template for those that follow. Each contributor should use their own perspective about what they feel would be useful for the reader and what they want to communicate. As stated at the outset, Commentary papers are to be submitted by invitation only. However, we do encourage our readers to suggest topics (and appropriate authors) for Commentary papers. The Editors, with the advice of our Advisory Board, will issue invitations to the appropriate authors. We view this as an experiment that we hope will be useful for our readers. As an inducement to get busy authors to help us make this succeed, we are offering a small honorarium for preparing a Commentary paper. We look forward to receiving comments and suggestions from our readers.
Donald R. Paul Editor October 1999 IE9904908 10.1021/ie9904908 CCC: $18.00 © 1999 American Chemical Society Published on Web 09/03/1999
