Reflections from the Editor-in-Chief: confronting emerging challenges with important and interesting research in Construction Management and Economics

Abstract

When I took on the role of Editor-in-Chief for Construction Management and Economics in January 2020, I argued in the opening editorial that there is room for the journal to feature studies that tackle important and interesting questions surrounding the grand societal challenges of our time (Chan 2020). Thus, it gives me great pleasure to share my final editorial reflections at the back of the special issue of “Transforming Construction”, one of several special issues commissioned during my tenure as Editor-in-Chief that focus on some of the key ongoing challenges confronting researchers and practitioners in construction management and economics. The other issues included “Construction Defects, Danger, Disruption and Disputes” (Volume 39, Issue 12, 2021); “Sustainable Building Renovation” (Volume 40, Issue 3, 2022), and the Festschrift issue in honour of Dr. Glenn Ballard and his contribution to the field of lean construction (Volume 40, Issues 7–8, 2022). Still in the pipeline is the special issue on grand challenges facing our cities, as well as one based on the lessons learnt from the Covid-19 global pandemic. When thinking about grand societal challenges at the time of writing the opening editorial, I could not have imagined the onset of the Covid-19 global pandemic and its impacts on academic life. While analyses of the impacts of the global pandemic are still ongoing and will likely continue for some time, the Editorial Team has nevertheless experienced impacts of delays to the editorial process. Our average turnaround time for making editorial decisions over the past three years has crept up slightly to just over 33 days, indicating perhaps the challenges arising from increased workload and time pressures in academic life. At the same time, the Editorial Team also made decisions on 1,760 manuscripts over the same period with an acceptance rate of 13.3%, representing an increase in submissions to the journal and a slightly lower acceptance rate than the previous three years. In any case, there is a silver lining in the horizon where the turnaround time for an editorial decision is concerned; this appears to have reduced to just under 27 days on average over the past 11 months in 2022, which is in line with pre-pandemic levels. The Editorial Team is therefore grateful for the support given by the peerreviewers, a list of which is appended at the end of this issue. Forty years of Construction Management and Economics: a moment to celebrate, commemorate and reflect for the continuity of the journal