Meet the Editors | Interview with Prof. Patrick Phelan—Section Editor-in-Chief of "Energy and Buildings" in Energies

Prof. Patrick Phelan (phelan@asu.edu)

I was, of course, aware of the journal Energies from having seen and read a number of interesting articles. Then, I was pleasantly surprised when the Editorial team at Energies reached out to me one day and invited me to join their effort, specifically in the role of Section Editor-in-Chief for “Energy and Buildings”. After giving it some thought (admittedly not for very long!), I happily accepted the offer.

Energies is a journal where articles that do not fit neatly into other journals can appear. We have a very quick review process that is attractive for authors and that is, I think, not matched by any other journal in the energy field. This means that, in addition to a broad variety of articles covering all aspects of energy, we can become the "go-to" journal for rapid publication of important results. For comparison, consider the journals Applied Physics Letters or Nano Letters, both of which promote rapid publication albeit in (usually) a non-open-source publication format. Both of these have become leading, high-impact-factor journals in part because of their rapid review processes and, of course, because of the high quality of their content. The Editorial Board of Energies needs to continue to strive to maintain our rapid review process while maintaining and improving the scientific and engineering quality of our papers.

Our readers are energy researchers around the globe, including those in developing countries who may not have access to typical journals that charge readers for access. It is interesting to me that the majority of our authors appear to be outside of the USA and Western Europe. In addition to continuing to attract these authors, we need to strive towards connecting with the more traditional research centers in the USA and Western Europe. I think this is becoming more and more possible because publicly funded research is increasingly required to be published in open source journals for maximum accessibility. Readers can therefore expect not only open access papers, but also high-quality, recent research that impacts all energy sectors.