The Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance (JMEP) has announced that it will expand to nine issues in 2009 with no increase in the member subscription price. Published by ASM International, the Materials Information Society, JMEP covers various aspects of materials selection, design, processing, characterisation and evaluation.
The journal was recently approached by the leadership of the International Organization on Shape Memory and Superelastic Technologies (SMST), an ASM Affiliate Society. The request was to do a special issue of JMEP containing papers based on presentations at the annual SMST Conference. The JMEP Committee was asked to consider a process similar to what they had done for the past three years with the Journal of Thermal Spray Technology (JTST) and the International Thermal Spray Conference (ITSC). JTST prints a special double issue each year containing invited papers based on selected presentations at ITSC. This issue is then also printed in a hardcover version that is distributed to conference attendees.
For the SMST event issue, the SMST leadership will provide a group of associate editors to handle the bulk of the responsibility for reviewing the manuscripts according to the journal's established peer review process and quality standards. Many of the SMST papers are about Nitinol and its use in medical devices. As these papers are expected to be highly cited, it is expected to have a positive effect on JMEP's impact factor.
The SMST event is scheduled to occur every 18 months. During 'off' years, the extra pages will be utilised to reduce the journal's backlog of papers.
