New Role for Kevin Edgar

Congrats go out to Dr. Kevin Edgar, a professor in Department of Sustainable Biomaterials! He has recently taken on a new role for Carbohydrate Polymers which is a journal “devoted to scientific and technological aspects of industrially relevant polysaccharides.¹” Carbohydrate Polymers is based out of the United Kingdom and has been around since 1981. It has the highest impact factor (7.2) of any journal for the field of polysaccharide sciences. The journal is celebrating its 40-year anniversary during 2021. Kevin is looking forward to helping put together the celebratory edition of Carbohydrate Polymers for the event.

“The Journal Impact of an academic journal is a scientometric metric that reflects the yearly average number of citations that recent articles published in a given journal received. It is frequently used as a Metric for the relative importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher Journal Impact are often deemed to be more important than those with lower ones.²” Kevin also informed us that “over the course of the last 8-9 years the journal has grown tremendously in number of articles published as well as in its impact, as a result of the editors and publishers setting a very high standard for scientific originality, impact, and quality.”

Kevin has worked for the journal in an editing capacity since 2012, but as of January 11, 2021, he is now an Editor-in-Chief for the journal. When asked to explain what this new role means for him, Kevin replied “now I handle half the papers the journal receives (considerably more than 6K papers per year between two EICs!) and make decisions about whether and how to distribute to associate editors for handling. I help set and uphold scientific standards for the journal, including dealing with any ethical issues that arise, and generally help lead the journal to cover some of the most exciting and relevant topics in our field.”

Carbohydrate Polymers is “a major journal within the field of glycoscience, and covers the study and exploitation of polysaccharides which have current or potential application in areas such as bioenergy, bioplastics, biomaterials, biorefining, chemistry, drug delivery, food, health, nanotechnology, packaging, paper, pharmaceuticals, medicine, oil recovery, textiles, tissue engineering and wood, and other aspects of glycoscience.³” The Elsevier website goes on to explain that any article included in the journal should include “the role of the well-characterized carbohydrate polymer as the major proportion of the work reported, not a peripheral topic. At least one named carbohydrate polymer must be cited and be the main focus of the paper and its title. Research must be innovative and advance scientific knowledge.¹”

Kevin further told us about the journals topics in more laymen’s terms by explaining that “our scope is the science of the natural, renewable, and abundant materials that nature provides us by converting sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into chains of sugars (conceptually not unlike a chain of links) that we call “polysaccharides”. These materials have a vast range of natural functions (communication, reinforcing elements, lubrication, protection against disease, and many more), as well as a vast range of ways in which we use harvested natural polysaccharides to serve society (degradable plastics, flat screen displays, food, food packaging, medication delivery, and so many others).”

1.    www.journals.elsevier.com/carbohydrate-polymers

2.    https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-Factor-IF/Carbohydrate-Polymers

3.    https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=25801&tip=sid