There has been criticism of Corrosion by some members of NACE that this journal’s content is disproportionally biased towards papers in the area of stress corrosion. Corrosion does contain many articles on stress corrosion, but this is readily explained by the fact that more money and effort is spent on research and development on stress corrosion than all other forms of corrosion combined. Many claim that this is the major corrosion problem facing this country today. Your editors are not biased and welcome papers in all areas of corrosion. No paper has been rejected because it concerned a particular area of corrosion.
The main purpose of this editorial is to solicit papers in order to obtain coverage in all fields or areas of corrosion. This includes review or state of science or engineering papers as well as particular investigations. Fundamental and engineering aspects are desired as opposed to simply the results of corrosion tests. In other words, information that improves our understanding of phenomena and problems as opposed to evaluation tests. Engineering research is as important (or more important) as scientific research.
Papers are needed on nonmetallics such as carbon, plastics, rubber, ceramics and wood. Also on cathodic protection, erosion corrosion, two-metal corrosion and particularly on coatings. We need papers from industries, other than the chemical process industries, such as automotive (i.e., emission control systems), building, and oil and gas production and refining. The editors are personally soliciting papers from persons working in some of these areas, including cathodic protection and corrosion by soils.
Most present work in corrosion is based on information that previously appeared in the literature. In other words, we draw interest on the principal banked in the past. Therefore, we all owe the literature and should contribute to the fund of knowledge or principal. All important fundamental work should be published (except for proprietary reasons–which often are not really proprietary). Some of the complaints come from people working in a specific field of corrosion in which they themselves have restrictive publication policies and do not publish.
This is not to say that we will accept any and all papers. Papers rejected by other journals are not particularly desirable. Papers must be good enough for acceptance by our Review Committee. In addition to subject matter, the paper should be reasonably well written. Inexperienced (and some experienced) authors should obtain a copy of Guides to Authors from NACE or other societies. Comments by co-workers in the same company or organization are often helpful. Company progress reports with merely a new title page are usually not acceptable. The less the editing and rewriting required, the more prompt the publication.
Criticism of journals by readers is not uncommon. It is impossible to completely satisfy every reader. For example, the following is an excerpt from an editorial in the August 1972 Journal of Metals:
“We bathe in the compliments and wince at the grievances. Fortunately the compliments outweigh the complaints. This does not mean the complaints are ignored, although many of them cancel each other out. For example, the four most common complaints that fall into this category are: (1) Too many process metallurical articles, (2) Not enough iron and steel process articles, (3) Too many academic type papers, and (4) Not enough research type papers.
If the Journal responded positively to these complaints, our editorial content would fluctuate widely between the extremes. This does not appear to be an optimum course. Hence, we attempt to walk the line we hope is somewhere in the middle of The Metallurgical Society, or, to paraphrase Abe Lincoln, we try to please most of the members most of the time.”
If you know of any classic papers from past literature which should be published, your suggestions would be welcomed.
Reader’s comments are invited.
