Editorial and welcome to a new ERA

Abstract

With this first issue of Volume 13 (2015), while we are celebrating our 12th anniversary, we will be implementing some major changes for BEE. We are going to start publishing on a monthly basis with 12 issues per year and introduce eight new Associate Editors. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the eight Associate Editors who will be sharing the Editorial responsibilities. It has been an exciting and inspiring twelve years. This would not have been possible without the contributions of the distinguished BEE Editorial Board Members, distinguished authors of the published manuscripts and the competent, dedicated reviewers. I would like to express my utmost gratitude and thanks to the retiring Editorial Board Members and to all those who made this possible. Furthermore, I would like to expressmy and our gratitude and thanks to Springer, specially to Petra D. van Steenbergen, Senior Publishing Editor of Earth Sciences, to Stefan van Dijl, Desk Editor, and to Cynthia Clement, JEO Assistant from the Journals Editorial Office for their continuous contributions, interest, and support. During these past twelve years, approximately 1,500 manuscripts were submitted to BEE. The number of submitted manuscripts has increased continuously from 26 in 2003 to 305 in 2013. With respect to published articles: the first BEE volume in 2003 included 16 articles. The number of published articles increased to 133 in volume 12 in 2014. We started with an impact factor of 1.125 for 2007 which was the second highest among the five earthquake engineering journals (Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering, Earthquake Spectra, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Journal of Earthquake Engineering) at that time. Our impact factor increased continuously over the following years to 1.701 for 2010. Most likely due to the increasing number of published articles, our impact factor first dropped to 1.559 for 2011, 1.560 for 2012 and 1.368 for 2013. However, like in the previous years also in 2013, we ranked again as the second highest amongst the six SCI earthquake engineering journals (Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Vibration was added to the previous list).