New editor perspectives: Song Xu

“As an editor, we have to keep an open mind and not conclude too easily that certain work is out-of-scope”

1. How did you come to your editorship? My PhD supervisor, Professor Alexander M. Korsunsky, introduced me to Materials and Design when I was in the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology as a research scientist in 2014. He was the newly appointed Editor-in-Chief at that time. I never knew exactly why he chose me, maybe because I had published in Materials and Design before and attracted some good citations. Since then, my relationship with Materials and Design has continued for more than 10 years: first as an Associate Editor, tasked with identifying and inviting suitable reviewers for the manuscripts which passed his screening. Later I became an editor with full decision rights to handle the manuscripts in the domain of metal processing. Eight years later, after his retirement, I became the new Editor-in-Chief in 2024. Therefore, I feel I am still new to the journal, as I have only been in the post for eight months.

2. How would you describe a typical working day [in terms of your editorial work]? A typical working day starts with opening up my email and seeing many inquiries. The journal is truly a global top-tier, as emails come almost every hour, non-stop. To ensure a speedy response, I normally reply to them first thing in the morning. Then I have my own time to carefully read the manuscripts assigned to me by the managing editor. This takes me at least a quarter of the day. It is an all-year-round activity with only minor up-and-down cycles, for example it is typical for our Chinese colleagues to submit articles during the Christmas season as they are still in their semester! After this, I have the time to plan some strategic moves to continuously improve the journal contents, e.g. cover images, awards, outreach and special issues, etc. It is indeed a proper (part-time) job for me!

3. What’s been the proudest achievement of your editorship so far? I am still new to the EiC role, so I feel there is still more to expect than to have already achieved. For my role as editor, I am proud that I have handled more than 10,000 articles in the past 10 years, and a lot of them become the most highly cited articles in ESI and/or the most downloaded articles in the journal. The journal has gone from strength to strength, with the Impact Factor almost tripling in the past decade.

4. How do you measure success as an editor? As an editor of a top-tier journal, I have to turn down more than 80% of the submissions. I hope that the hand-picked 20% can truly shine in the future. This reflects the capability of the editor to choose the most important results from a sea of submissions in a timely manner. A good choice is (surely) a success.

5. Is there anything you wish someone had told you on day one? I wish my predecessor had told me how different it is from being an editor and an Editor-in-Chief. While editors handle a lot of the manuscripts, the EiC has the additional role of strategic development of the journal, and this is far from empty words. A lot of work has to be done, such as how to set the targets, break down a big goal into small tangible tasks and implement them. These often turn out to be more time consuming than handling manuscripts.

6. What has surprised you most as an editor? How fast the field evolves. When I started as an editor, friction stir welding was still the main theme of the journal. Over the past 10 years, I witnessed it moving onto metal 3D-printing (additive manufacturing) and recently design for 3D-printing. As an editor, we have to keep an open mind and not conclude too easily that certain work is out-of-scope (even if the “Evaluate Manuscript” tool tells me so!), as the scope for the journal keeps – and will keep – changing.

7. What is the most important attribute for being an editor in your opinion? The ability to quickly assess a paper’s quality and originality is surely number one. Otherwise, I would never be able to finish my work! A keen understanding of the direction of future development in the field is equally important.

8. Name one item/tool/resource that you cannot do without in your role? The Find Reviewers tool in Scopus. Without it, I cannot find enough reviewers who are interested and committed to reviewing the submission in question without a conflict of interest.