Professor Colm-cille Caulfield discusses his first year as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (JFM). Colm discusses his expectations of being Editor of the journal, what helped him prepare to take on the role and what policies he is personally proud to be a part of steering.

Speaking about the treatment of appendices, publishing strategies in JFM such as JFM Notebooks, JFM Rapids, JFM Perspectives and Focus on Fluids article types as well as his hope for inclusivity and continued dedication to high-quality peer-review, scientific achievement, and commitment to the Fluid Dynamics community.

Full Blog Text Filmed and Produced by Tom Crawford an Early-Career Teaching and Outreach Fellow in Mathematics at St Edmund Hall and Social Media Editor for JFM.

“JFM papers are really focused on being not only the cutting edge of fluid mechanics but being very clear and valuable resources to be able to read.”

Transcript:

My name is Colm-cille Caulfield. I’m a professor of environmental and industrial fluid dynamics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), The University of Cambridge. And I’m also the Editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

It’s been very interesting to become the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, I’ve had various roles in the journal so and for the year before I was editor, I was lucky enough to be one of the deputy editors of the journal. So I was able to watch and kind of learn from Grae Worster, who was the previous and long standing Editor of the journal, and begin to appreciate the issues that the senior editors of the journal have to consider. Not just maintaining the standards of the quality of the papers, the quality of review, and, like you do when you’re an associate editor, handling various papers. But also thinking more about more strategy and policy issues, dealing with appeals, but also dealing with decisions.

That’s the interesting thing. When you end up as the editor, you’re asked your view: ‘What do you think of this new design?’; ‘What do you think of these new ideas?’; and ‘How would you like to handle this issue or that issue?’

For example: Questions about ‘What do you think about the treatment of appendices?’ which is an important aspect to think about in publishing. JFM papers are really focused on being not only the cutting edge of fluid mechanics but being very clear and valuable resources to be able to read and so understanding the balance between what should be in the main text, what should be an appendix, what’s appropriate to be supplementary material, these decisions have to be made by the editors in collaboration with the publishers who work for Cambridge University Press and Assessment and are responsible for the publication of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. So I’ve realized that what I have to do is to think about not only about the future, about how the journal will change, evolve and keep at the forefront of academic publishing and fluid mechanics, but also how to deal with all the day to day queries that come up about policy, about presentation, and to deal with decisions about whether the review processes worked appropriately for a particular article, as well as maintaining the highest levels of academic integrity, clarity and transparency in the processes and the handling of the editorial activity for the journal. There’s also an aspect of forward looking strategy ideas. We were discussing, for example, the positioning of the ‘Rapids‘ format of papers. Really stressing more that they are timely papers with the potential for high impact in the field. While noting why the community would like them to be published rapidly, and how the papers will set the research agenda in their area. Also, we had discussions about how we will reflect the changing structure of the research community in fluid mechanics. Still wanting to publish the highest quality research associated with classical areas like turbulence or Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, but also being aware about emerging fields that have new, exciting results whilst making sure that the editorial board reflects the diversity of the community in terms of subject area; in terms of background; in terms of geographical location. You know, this is very important: JFM must be a location for the global research community in fluid mechanics to be able to publish their best work.

So, we also are always thinking about that, the strategy of things. It should also be mentioned: the publication the publishing world is changing. When I wrote thanking Grae for his service: we have, under his watch, various new formats of papers in the journal like the Fast Track which then became ‘JFM Rapids’ the ‘Focus on Fluids’, which I was fortunate enough to be involved in launching, short articles to really look at the new, something that’s interesting that’s come out in the Journal recently. Then ‘JFM Perspectives’: these wonderful, long articles are perspectives from a particular world expert, telling us about why their area is interesting and why there’s been exciting breakthroughs in that field of research. And then, more recently in terms of changes in format: going online only.

And now, really recently driven forward by the one of the deputy editors, Charles Meneveau, the ‘JFM Notebooks’ format. The way you actually can interact with the data, ‘dive into the data’, you can look at a figure and access the Jupyter Notebook, turn the image round, change the isosurface or re-plot a curve so that you can actually see whether the arguments of the authors are actually backed up by the data. Then ask other questions of the data, as Charles said, it really is reflecting the changing way that academics now work. When I talk to my collaborators, or my PhD students, there’s always a laptop open. You’re always changing and modifying the figure. And yet, in publishing, we are only just on the cusp of being able to do that. The paper of record is defined by what’s published, but with this format you can now ask new questions.

And also, of course, there’s the Open Access revolution. The business of the publishing model is changing. It’s about how papers are actually published, and how they are disseminated so that the whole community can read them, without necessarily having a subscription at the point of, reading the paper. Well, this is very interesting, and we must deal with these changes. The editorial board is thinking hard about that, while still being laser focused on publishing papers of highest quality. Papers that are really clear, that have real fluid dynamical interest for our research community out there across the globe.

I think the most important goal that I have going forwards is to maintain the quality of the publications and commitment from the community to both send their best work and also produce the highest quality peer reviews, while still appreciating and embracing the change of the subject areas that are being considered, the geographical distribution of our community, all aspects of the breadth of our and diversity that is in our community. So that everybody who’s thinking about fluid mechanics, wherever they are, are welcome. That was a guiding principle of George Batchelor when he founded the journal and also when he founded the European Mechanics Society. To appreciate that scientific endeavour is an international, global activity, and we really should bring everybody together to work and consider the problems of interest.

One year in I think the thing that I am personally proud of is to have the small involvement with JFM Notebooks. I just think that their potential is so high. The editorial that Charles and I wrote is just testing the waters, showing the potential for having this next stage of openness in our research, that you’re able to get direct access to the data that has been used to produce the figures and to modify those figures. I think that’s really something I’m very pleased about.

I’m also pleased about the way we’ve extended our editorial board to involve two new board members from China. And we are very much focused on continuing to broaden our editorial board to reflect all the great academic research that’s going on across the world.

I think I think another thing that is very exciting to me is to continue to see that the journal is still proving to be a go-to place, that people are wanting to submit their papers. Not, in any way saying that, that is something to be complacent about, but I think it is something that’s really clear from the exciting flow of high-quality research that’s coming through the journal. So, looking forward, that something we want to continue to maintain.

And we’re looking at different ways of publishing and engaging the research community, as I discussed the JFM Rapids, for example, promoting that model to really stress that they are for exciting, timely papers. And we’re also thinking about other ways to reflect how important it is to have the community reading the papers, reviewing the papers, submitting the papers to our journal.

Find out more about the Article types mentioned by Colm-cille

JFM Rapids: www.cambridge.org/jfmrapids

JFM Notebooks: www.cambridge.org/jfmnotebooks

JFM Perspectives: www.cambridge.org/jfmperspectives

Focus on Fluids: www.cambridge.org/jfmfocus

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