From the Editors Some current aspects of publishing of Control and
Cybernetics We would
like, first of all, to apologise for the delay in publishing of the successive issues
of our quarterly, which is largely due to the jump-like increase in the number
of submissions that are uploaded in the editorial system since about a year and
a half. Actually, this increase was by close to an order of magnitude. We have
to adapt to these new conditions, but, in the meantime, we definitely were not
able to adequately cope with this abrupt challenge. Still, we plan to go on
with the issues, marked year 2023, that is – issues 3 and 4, and only
afterwards we shall switch to the proper year 2024. At the same time, we would like to emphasise the specificity of this
Journal that importantly contributes to the seriousness of the challenge. Namely,
first, we do not charge any submission nor publication fee, while we take
utmost care of the editorial quality of the published articles, especially with
regard to English language. There are numerous journals on the market, which
both charge publishing fees and publish papers, after acceptance, “as they
are”, without any language editing. Then, despite this, the articles published
in Control and Cybernetics appear in
truly open access, and are freely downloadable. Finally, given all this, we
very much care for the scientific quality of the published papers, which very
often go through two or even three rounds of corrections and amendments before
getting ultimately published – if at all, that is. In other words, we are at
the farthest possible extreme position away from the commerciality on the
market. The above statement is yet insofar amplified as we accept – primarily on
the basis of substantive quality and importance of the respective content –
even quite long, or, in fact, very long papers, if this is, additionally,
justified by the wholesome character of the presentation. Two indeed striking
examples are provided in the present issue of our Journal. In the light of the above, no wonder we entirely depend upon the good
will, reliability and honesty of the potential and actual reviewers. The
consequence is often a very long time of the reviewing process. There are
numerous cases, in which we have to address truly many potential reviewers, in
some cases even beyond ten. On the other hand, though, we are certain that the
final result of such a process has an adequate quality. A paper deserving attention We shall
now turn the attention of our Readers to a paper, published elsewhere, of which
we think that it truly deserves being widely known, and that for several
reasons. The paper, by Bun and associates (2024) is an outcome from an on-going
international cooperation, devoted to greenhouse gas (GHG) emission estimation
methods, especially given their high uncertainty. In view of the international
agreements, concerning GHG emissions, the research gains in importance, on the
international and even global scale. This cooperation has already many years of
history, but this time the concrete subject of the study we wish to indicate to
our Readers was linked with the effects of war in Ukraine. Thus, we are dealing
with a very much current subject, and that of dramatic dimensions. The cooperation mentioned involves a broad team from several countries,
including Poland (our Editor-in-Chief being one of co-authors of the study
referred to), and Ukraine, but also other countries. To a definite extent the
cooperation was carried out with participation of the International Institute
for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg near Vienna, but it actually is being
continued on a largely independent basis. The importance of the study in
question was also noted by other organisations, such as, for instance, the
Universities Space Research Association, as can be seen under Study Suggests Significant Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Linked to Ukraine Conflict (usra.edu). Reference Bun, R., Marland, G., Oda, T., See, L., Puliafito, E.,
Nahorski, Z., Jonas, M., Kovalyshyn, V., Ialongo, I., Yashchun, O., Romanchuk,
Z. (2024) Tracking unaccounted greenhouse gas emissions due to the war in
Ukraine since 2022. Sci. Total Environ.,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.169879, 2024 |
