An Interview with the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Organizational and End User Computing

Prof. Sang-Bing Tsai: In my opinion, the most important thing for a journal to be defined as an excellent journal is that the external objective indicators should be of high level, such as the impact factor of Web of Science and the CiteScore of Scopus, and the internal evaluation reputation in the research field should be excellent. We have been working hard on these two aspects for several years, and now our journals are ranked very high in Web of Science and Scopus, and our journals have good reputation in international famous business journal list such as ABDC and Academic Journal Guide, which will make more researchers pay more attention to our journals, cite our literature and contribute excellent papers in our journals.

Prof. Sang-Bing Tsai: I would say that it is pointless and unsustainable to talk about increasing the number of citations from a technical point of view. It is more important to ensure that the papers published by the journal in recent years are of high quality and contribute, and that the topics discussed are cutting-edge and popular enough to attract more peer scholars to discover our journal’s papers and cite them. My editorial team and I are currently working on improving the quality of papers and calling for cutting-edge topics through special issues, and we have had some good results so far!

Prof. Sang-Bing Tsai: First of all, I have a strong editorial team of associate editors who are experts with senior scientific experience and who can ensure that manuscripts submitted directly to our journal are subjected to a rigorous scientific quality review. In addition, I carefully select the teams of appropriate guest editors to review manuscripts submitted to the special issue for their expertise in particular topics. The managing editor and I control both aspects of the manuscript submission process to ensure that every accepted manuscript is of a certain quality.

Prof. Sang-Bing Tsai: First, they should learn and develop certain research skills, which can help them master broader topics of discussion, quickly judge the quality of a manuscript and give professional decisions. Second, editors should have good communication skills, as they may have to deal with many questions and requests from authors, and many aspects of the manuscript processing process need to be coordinated with the editor-in-chief and the publisher. It is important to remember that all editors of a journal are a team and need to communicate and cooperate more. Furthermore, time management is also important. The vast majority of editors are full-time university researchers, who need to advance their research projects and lecture assignments during working hours, so they need to adapt to efficiently handle the editorial work of the journal. I have always believed that a journal that has a quick editorial response and a smooth progress in the manuscript submission process is easy to gain the goodwill of potential authors, which is a particularly important part of a journal’s reputation.

Prof. Sang-Bing Tsai: Yes, I have repeatedly stressed in the questions above the importance of encouraging some cutting-edge and trending research topics for journal citation and quality improvement. However, given my current academic role in the journal, I think it would be inappropriate and unfair for me to explicitly express a preference for certain areas of research. I suggest that researchers and potential authors pay attention to the descriptions in the Description, Mission, Scope & Coverage section of our journal, which is the most accurate indication of the areas of research that the journal has identified as being encouraged for submission. I also strongly recommend that researchers and potential authors pay more attention to our special issue information, which reflects the most current and specific areas of encouraged research in the journal.