We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Joshua M. Pearce has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of Designs (ISSN: 2411-9660).

Prof. Dr. Joshua Pearce is the John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation at the Thompson Centre for Engineering Leadership & Innovation. He holds appointments at the Ivey Business School and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Western University in Canada. He runs the Free Appropriate Sustainability Technology research group. His research concentrates on the use of open-source, appropriate technology (OSAT) to find collaborative solutions to problems in sustainability and to reduce poverty. His research spans areas of engineering including solar photovoltaic technology, open hardware design, and distributed recycling and additive manufacturing (DRAM) using RepRap 3-D printing, but also includes policy and economics. His research is regularly covered by the international and national press. According to Elsevier’s citation metrics, last year, he was in the top 0.06% most cited scientists globally and is continually ranked in the top 0.1% for his accessible research on Academia.edu. He is the author of the Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs, Feeding Everyone No Matter What, Create, Share, and Save Money Using Open-Source Projects, and To Catch the Sun, an open-source book on solar energy.

The following is a short Q&A with Prof. Dr. Pearce, who shared his vision for the journal with us, as well as his views on the research area and open-access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as the Editor-in-Chief?
Designs satisfies a deep need for a unifying research framework for a wide range of engineering designs from different disciplines and industrial applications. As an ever-increasing list of tasks is automated, the really interesting work of engineers is design, and I think Designs is particularly well placed to explore this academic area.

2. What is your vision for the journal?
As a strong proponent of open source in general and open access in particular, I think open-source designs are clearly the way of the future. My own research interest is in open-source design applied to hardware, which is a young, but rapidly growing field.  Free and open-source technologies are technologies whose design is made publicly available so anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design, software, or hardware based on that design. The tech’s source, the design from which it is made, is available to modify and comes with a license that demands sharing of improvements based on the design. Open-source technology gives people the freedom to control their technology while sharing knowledge and encouraging commerce through the open exchange of designs. Open design is also stellar for STEM education as it cuts costs and makes learning fun again. Because of these reasons, all of my own work is open and free for everyone to use.

Open source is also a flagrantly superior method of tech development, as we all easily build on one another’s work, which is why the majority of big companies are now contributing to open-source projects; it is clearly a major current trend, with 90% of the Fortune Global 500 using it. All supercomputers, 90% of cloud servers, 82% of smartphones, and 62% of embedded systems run on open-source operating systems. More than 70% of “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices also use open-source software. Digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printers have now made open source a reality in the physical world. My own work in free, and open-source hardware indicates it is roughly 15 years behind its software counterpart and growing exponentially. I hope that this meta field can be broadened to cover all the traditional engineering fields (e.g., mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, automation, civil engineering, mechatronics, aerospace engineering, bioengineering, energy engineering, industrial engineering, and manufacturing systems), and we hope to cover this explosion in design innovations in the Designs journal.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?
I think we are going to see a lot more computer-supported designs of all kinds, including parametric and customizable designs and AI driven designs, which will provide novelty that none of us can predict. It is an exciting time to be in the innovation design field.

4. What do you think of the development of open access in the publishing field?
Even a cursory glance at the statistics and growth in open-access journals shows that it is taking over—although the form that journals will take in the future is still very much up for debate. Most academics understand that when they publish open access, their work is more likely to be read, used, and cited. Frankly, open access speeds scientific progress because of people simply being able to read it. We all know the frustration of finding a paper that has some critical piece of data for our scientific progress which is stalled if we lack access to it. The challenge, of course, is many open-access journals charge article processing charges (APCs), which create a barrier to entry for many scientists, particularly those in the Global South. Even well-funded scientists sometimes need to decide between APCs and hiring another research student. With Designs, we will attempt to keep the APCs as low as possible to help on this front. The reality is that it still costs money to publish a journal, particularly with respect to typesetting. What MDPI does with templates is a good start towards controlling these costs. That said, I think there is some good design work to make open-source templates that cannot be broken that could cut this cost and thus APCs for everyone. I would be interested in publishing an article about that technology! In addition, authors can earn credit towards APCs by reviewing.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Joshua M. Pearce in his new role as Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to him leading Designs to many more milestones.