New Open Access Journal Charts Progress in Scale Modeling

Progress in Scale Modeling, a new open access interdisciplinary journal with editors based in Japan, Italy and the United States, launched in mid-August on the University of Kentucky Libraries’ UKnowledge platform to provide scholars and researchers of scale modeling with an online forum to discuss progress and challenges.

The inaugural issue of Progress in Scale Modeling features three review articles and seven research articles. They discuss scaling laws in such diverse subjects as mining, global warming, fire investigation and organizational transformation, among others. In addition to these two types of articles, the journal will also publish rapid communications, which are succinct pieces that aim to facilitate timely discussion of pertinent trending topics.

“One of the unique features of scale modeling is to seek relative changes and differences, where inductive assumption making process is emphasized rather than the traditional deductive approach,” said the journal’s editor-in-chief, Kozo Saito, who is the director of the Institute of Research for Technology Development and the Tennessee Valley Authority Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky. “In the age of high-performance computing, scale modeling offers an active thinking tool to understand the mechanism of nature by finding scaling laws, and to provide validation of numerical modeling predictions.”

“Progress in Scale Modeling fills a gap in scholarly communication by supporting a worldwide community that is comprised of researchers with distinct subject expertise,” said Yuji Nakamura, the journal’s managing editor and a mechanical engineering professor at the Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan. “I am honored to have the responsibility to manage an interdisciplinary journal that publishes outstanding studies of scaling laws in a swift manner.”

While the inaugural issue is still hot off the press, the editorial team is already making plans to publish annual special issues in order to provide opportunities for scholars to examine the impact and key issues of applying scale modeling to various disciplines.

By means of open access, Progress in Scale Modeling stands out as a barrier-free venue to disseminate peer-reviewed research for the benefit of society, scholarship and humanity. Both Saito and Nakamura point out that the founding editors of the journal believe knowledge created by research and education belongs to the public and should be shared early and widely for the greater good.

“I was excited by the potential when Dr. Saito approached me for a discussion of launching an open access journal,” said Mary Beth Thomson, senior associate dean at UK Libraries. “Partnering with faculty to advance education and scholarship is an integral role of research libraries. We are elated that this international partnership has come to fruition and look forward to the developments of the journal and the research community it cultivates.”

Progress in Scale Modeling is one of the open access journals published on UK Libraries’ UKnowledge platform. Faculty and students from the UK community are welcome to contact Adrian Ho to find out about UK Libraries’ resources and services for online journal publishing.