Enhancing Strategic Studies for Homeland Defense

This periodic replacement of some editorial board positions helps us to inject a healthy dose of diversity and new perspectives into the board, while preserving the wisdom of some of the most seasoned board members. However, we can
always use more review help from interested and energetic individuals.
Although we have inherited a journal in very good shape, there is always room for improvement. You will notice a few changes in the editorial process over the next few months. We will try to tighten the review cycle by enforcing review deadlines and by taking advantage of our new automated system, Manuscript Central, to follow up with reminders, prompts, and queries to reviewers. Also, in the interest of generating objective, kind, and constructive reviews, we will encourage reviewers to take ownership of their reviews by revealing their identity to the author and other reviewers.

Finally, in order to practice what we preach, we plan to solicit usability feedback on the Manuscript Central system and the editorial process and explore ways to improve the system. One of the issues that has motivated me over the last few years is human factors outreach – or lack of it. I believe that the field does a pretty poor job of marketing itself to everyone: customers, funding agencies, users, congressional representatives, and even our parents or the person in the next airplane seat. I was pleased to see that outreach is being promoted so heavily within HFES now, and I see Human Factors as a prime vehicle for pursuing this goal. How better to communicate to the public what we do than
through our journal. Oh, yes – I can hear it now – gasps, sighs, and grunts of disbelief. “It will never work,” you say. But it DOES work in other areas, such as medicine. Why not Human Factors?