oa South African Journal of Chemical Engineering - Foreword - the next chapter ... : editorial

Abstract

It is with much pride that I am able to write the foreword to our first issue of the South African Journal of Chemical Engineering (SAJCE) published by Elsevier. The Journal was originally published by the South African Institution of Chemical Engineers. I remember receiving copies of the journal by post in the late 1990s as an undergraduate student. However, the 90s ushered in the age of turbulence, and as we all know, engineers seemed to get busier, and needed to work harder to compete in this globally competitive environment. In particular for South Africa, this was a real challenge as our markets opened following the end of Apartheid and the end of the cold war. Our chemical industries changed, and the nature of our work changed too. During that period, we saw a decline of the contribution of mining to the SA GDP despite the longest commodity boom in history. Conversely, we saw some of our chemical engineer employing companies, such as South African Breweries, Anglo American and Sasol become world leaders. But, this world of expansion also led to a decline in our ability to publish our own journal. We had access to international journals and less time for reviewing papers for our own journal. In 2003 we published the last journal for 8 years.