History of Engineering (and Some of Its Uses)

Abstract

Before getting to this issue’s contents I would first like to toast some good news for the journal. Every year Taylor & Francis sends me a packet of statistics, surveys, pie charts and the like showingwhere the journal stands. This is good information tohave, and I encourage all authors and readers to accept the publisher’s requests to fill in surveys about the journal – wedependon that kindof feedback. This year thepacket containeda couplenice treats. In particular, our impact factor roughly quadrupled from 2017 to 2018, to a value of 0.952. We should, of course, treat such figureswith due caution – that is one of themain lessons of our field, after all. But I think the increase does show that people are engagingwith the journal’s content. That interpretation is reinforced by the figures for downloads of our articles, which havebeengrowingby ∼25%per year since2012. That is agreat long-term trend that I hope will continue. So if you have written something on the practice and culture of engineering and arewonderingwhere to send it – well, I hope these figures give you some idea that this journal is drawing attention and sparking conversation.