Update on IBE and 2014 papers of the year

Abstract

I begin this editorial by referring you to the editorial of 19(2), 2010, ‘A gate keeper of knowledge transfer’. I have now served the readers and SAGE as the editor of the journal for over six years. I was appointed as the editor in February 2009 and officially, in April 2009. I believe the journal has advanced in all aspects since I have become the editor. The journal has become more popular; the submission rate, the download rate of papers and the impact factor of the journal have all been improved. The journal is now widely accepted by most of our readers as one of the leading journals on indoor environmental quality, environmental/architectural engineering and sustainable built environment. We should all rejoice by the fact that there is now a journal of internationally recognized quality with a rapid improvement on the impact value in academic research, national and international standard developments and guidelines for design/planning applications. As I have explained in the editorial of 23(4), 2014 that the rapid rise in our impact value can be explained by the high level of global concern in the sustainable development of built environments, on social, pollution and environmental health issues in relation to urban developments, ageing communities, energy efficiency and resource management. I believe our published papers are serving this research demand pertaining to the quality of future sustainable built environments and well-being of our communities. We have established our niche area in publishing original research papers on the performance and functioning of various forms of built environments leading to developments of standards and guidelines relating to environmental quality in buildings and urban environments. However, the rapid rise in popularity of our journal has generated a surge in citation of our journal papers especially by other authors of the same journal (i.e. self-citations). This led to our suspension in the 2012 JCR (Journal Citation Report) published by Thomson Reuters. The published papers in our journal before I became the editor and during my first two years as the editor really did not receive many citations whether from internal or external sources. As the journal has been attracting loyalty and interest from authors worldwide, especially from the Far East, and also due to our unique niche subject areas, therefore our published papers are naturally attracting citations from authors who use the journal, especially from the special issue papers. I have checked and compared our journal with other journals of similar subject areas and found that the number of so-called self-citations in our journal is really less than the other comparable journals but because Indoor and Built Environment has a comparatively smaller volume, the ‘self-citation’ rate was higher. Therefore, the rapid rise in popularity of the journal has a higher impact on the ‘self-citation’ rate.