From the Editor's Desk
An Interview with Prof. Mohamed Zairi, the Founding Editor of eTQM College
Journals.
Q: Why is the eTQM College launching these journals?
The launch of the eTQM College Journals is to support a strategy for the
encouragement of growth and development of scientific thinking and publishing in
the Arab World and the Middle East region. Recent research about scientific
publishing and contribution from the region indicates that the Middle East
region falls far behind other regions in terms of scientific research and
publications and most of the scientific content comes from very few countries -
with 54% from Israel, followed by Turkey, Saudi and Iran.
The vision for the Journals is based on the following three pillars:
1) First, to act as seeds for the scientific growth and scientific publications
in the region.
- The journals will provide opportunities for young ad mature researchers alike,
to be published and thereby give them an opportunity for seeking recognition for
the valuable work that they do in their fields of interests. They are therefore
a useful outlet for valuable work which previously tended to get lost because of
unavailability of vehicles for publishing.
2) Second, the Journals will be vehicles for dissemination for researchers and
practitioners alike
- In the case of researchers, they will act as a catalyst for stimulating original
thinking and they will therefore provide the fuel for future generations of
ideas and concepts
- For the practitioner community, articles published in the Journals will act as
sound-bytes and will provide useful prompts for the implementation of new ideas
and concepts
3) Third, at an academic institutional level the journals will act as a a
reference point for identifying areas where useful, credible, impactable
research is taking place.
Q: Why is there a focus on excellence?
In order to make academic thought useful to society and in order to
dismiss the myth that research suffers from the black-box syndrome, the journals
seek to cover the richness of excellence in terms of thought & new development
and also demonstrate how new thinking can be guided to be usefully implemented.
As such, having a label called excellence means that the real purpose and ethos
of journal title does not get muddled up with futile debates and arguments and
analytical thinking, but will remain focused on rendering value to all the
stakeholders, be it researchers or practitioners alike.
Q: What is the future challenge?
It is hoped for the future that the portfolio of Journal titles will
continue to be enhanced and grown to cover all the sectors of the general
economy and also to position the eTQM Journals portal as the most valuable and
preferred hub for the repository of knowledge and original and thinking in
Excellence in so far as authors are concerned, and also to be an internationally
credible supply chain mechanism for dissemination of knowledge and best practice
applications.