MJMS@10

Today, we had a small celebration for the 10th anniversary of the Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences. The first issue of the first volume of this journal was published in January 2007 and presently we have just put out the first issue of Volume 10. When the first volume was published, I had just joined the institute and thus I was not there during its planning. I can't also precisely remember when did I join the editorial committee but it was almost automatic once one is a member of the institute's management. By the second volume, the journal started to receive international contributors and the number begins to grow thereafter. Initially the journal published only two issues per year but as the number of submitted articles increased, the journal has now increased the frequency to three per volume (year). I'm happy to say my little visible contribution to MJMS is in suggesting the LaTeX format of the journal. With the help of my previous postdoc, Saeid, together with Bakri, we have now a LaTeX template for MJMS. Note that LaTeX is the publishing typesetting standard for most mathematical journals. In some circles, researchers will frown on the mention of the use of non-TeX commercial word-processing software for publishing documents.

Today's celebration had the Director cum Chief Editor of MJMS giving a speech, together with a cake with the journal's cover on it and then lunch. Here are some pics:

It so happened that the event also include the occasion of transferring the duty of chief editor to my little self, which is effective in January 2nd for the period of three years. Had the letter of appointment given earlier on the day of my birthday (some birthday present!) but I did not realise it until about a week later. Was asked to give a speech. Thought I had some points in my head but things get muddled up once I start to open my mouth (always that is the case - should have a prepared text).

The main things that I have said is more or less the following:

• Honoured to be given the trust by the university press and the MJMS committee though the duty is a heavy responsibility to shoulder.
• Will continue with what has been carried out so far for MJMS.
• Realising the plan to have an online submission using ScholarOne system, hopefully to be implemented within this year.
• To increase the visibility of the journal comparable to the more established Bulletin of Malaysian Mathematical Sciences Society.

The third point is essentially part of our strategy to be included in the Science Citation Index. MJMS has already been Scopus-cited and currently is listed in Thomson-Reuters Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). The last point being simply to benchmark against a comparable journal ranked above 'us'. MJMS are currrently being ranked by MyCite as number 12 in the Science category while the Bulletin is number 2. If I were asked to elaborate how can this be done, I would probably mention the idea of establishing a particular identity for the journal and building a community surrounding it. As in many established journals, they are known to publish articles from certain sectors of (mathematical) sciences and community from within these sciences will often flock to such journals. Such identity and community building around a journal will certainly take a long journey but it is journey we should be planning from now. A good place to monitor how the journal fare so far is here.

Having said all this, I still have fear taking up this duty and I just pray that I can perform as well as the previous chief editor.