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Editorial

Energies—A Trans-Disciplinary Journal

Editor-in-Chief of Energies, Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Sapienza – Università di Roma, Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy
Energies 2009, 2(4), 1007-1008; https://doi.org/10.3390/en20401007
Submission received: 26 October 2009 / Published: 5 November 2009
It is customary for a new Editor to address the audience of the Journal he is called to contribute to, to define or redefine its aims and scope and to state or restate its scientific and strategic priorities. In my case, this task is made much easier by the excellent relationship that has been established, in the two months since my nomination, with the Editorial Staff and with the Editorial Board of Energies.
It is an honour for me to have been offered this position, and before accepting I had the occasion of exchanging views with both the Publisher and the Editorial Staff and receiving some advice from the former Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Edwin Kessler. First of all, let me thus thank them all for the extraordinarily cooperative “atmosphere” in which I am allowed to work: I sincerely hope I can live up to their expectations and continue to expand the Journal coverage niche, and also to maintain the high level of proficiency and professionality of my predecessor, Dr. Kessler, to whom I think we all are strongly indebted for the success of Energies.
Each of us, especially in the academia, has his/her own fields of interest, his/her peculiar working habits, his/her own view of the scientific universe: my personal background is in Thermal Sciences, and more specifically in Applied Fluid-Thermodynamics and Energetics, and thus I am naturally biased towards these specific fields. I want to reassure though the readers of Energies that these personal biases will not limit my choices and decisions as Editor-in-Chief. Here below I will try to explain my strategic views in few lines.
I believe, most of all, in multi-disciplinarity. Modern science is far too complex to allow us to continue working in isolated groups, each one plowing and harvesting their own specific field. Large projects and innovative enterprises demand for multi-disciplinarity (or better yet, to use a neologism I like in particular, trans-disciplinarity), and this in turn requires an adjustment that my generation found at times difficult to make: we need flexibility, tolerance to other people’s ideas, creativity, open-mindedness towards even apparently “weird” theories or procedures, because innovation is by definition “disruptive” of the previous state of the art. This attitude of course must be exercised within an absolutely “scientific” approach: not all novelties (or proposed as such) are acceptable, and Karl Popper’s “falsificability” sieve must be applied consistently. Naturally, an additional high degree of rigor is required to avoid that “beliefs” and “personal opinions” are applied to privilege—or discourage—a particular approach, a specific theory, a suggested development.
Modern Energy Engineering borders into areas that cover or imply Mathematics, Economics, Biology, Physics, Material Sciences, Social Sciences and much more: it is my firm intention to encourage “contamination” in these border areas, by extending the coverage of Energies into the fields (to name a few) of Thermo-Economics, Entropy Analysis, Bio-Engineering, Micro-Technologies, Innovative Energy Conversion Systems, Sustainable Development and the like. In my opinion, shared by the Publisher and by the Editorial Staff, such an “open strategy” will not only contribute to enhance the diffusion of our journal, but also to further raise the quality of its contents: our stated goal is to reach SCI listing (we already are included in the Elsevier Scopus citation system). At the risk of appearing rhetorical, this is a strategic goal that neither the Publisher, nor the Staff, nor the Editor-in-Chief can attain by themselves: we really need the active cooperation of readers, reviewers, Institutions and Agencies, and we shall sincerely and aggressively seek for such a cooperation.
We are a good journal in a scientific area that is—in an editorial sense—rather crowded: to use a metaphor taken from the world of sports, we know how to play, we know our strengths and weaknesses and think we can assess those of our competition. We will just get on the field and play our game the best we can: we cannot lose!
Best wishes to our Authors, reviewers and readers, from which I solicit suggestions, remarks, critiques. I can be reached through the Editorial Office ([email protected]), at my personal address ([email protected]) or website (http://www.turbomachinery.it).

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MDPI and ACS Style

Sciubba, E. Energies—A Trans-Disciplinary Journal. Energies 2009, 2, 1007-1008. https://doi.org/10.3390/en20401007

AMA Style

Sciubba E. Energies—A Trans-Disciplinary Journal. Energies. 2009; 2(4):1007-1008. https://doi.org/10.3390/en20401007

Chicago/Turabian Style

Sciubba, Enrico. 2009. "Energies—A Trans-Disciplinary Journal" Energies 2, no. 4: 1007-1008. https://doi.org/10.3390/en20401007

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