As many of you know, last year we had a lively debate prior to the launch of the j-club regarding the rules and regulations governing the functioning of the j-club. This continued in a more low-key fashion this year. One of the more important topics under discussion has been the selection of the future editors (which is to be done each year). I, and perhaps a few other people, had reasoned that the editor should be elected by popular vote. It was proposed that candidates will either self-nominate themselves or be nominated by other mechanicians.

In discussions with a few active and prominent members of iMechanica (who are potential candidates for next year) a number of issues came to light which have prompted me to reconsider my initial thoughts. This post is intended to open a debate on whether the J-club editor should be elected or appointed. Let us defer, for the moment, how this “appointment” will be made.  

Here are a few of the concerns with the election process that have been raised (---and I concur). It would be interesting to hear feedback on these and other issues related to this topic:

(1) Several mechanicians who would make excellent candidates for this job are reluctant to run in a public election (for various reasons). On a more personal note I realized, somewhat belatedly, that I myself would not have participated had this job required me to go through an election process. This is a serious issue since the j-club has now emerged as the public face of the iMechanica and in the words of a fellow mechanician, j-club, the first thing seen by new incoming visitor.

(2) This job should not be left to the vagaries of popular vote especially since iMechanica is a web-based medium where there is little oversight into voting modalities. Do we want an editor who is “popular” and known in the community or someone with strong technical depth, breadth and a vision to match? Popular voting process may be but is not always congruous with the latter. A good analogy is Journal of Applied Mechanics. The editor is not elected by popular vote. He or she is appointed based on technical merit and overall vision for the journal. Most journals follow this model to more or lesser degree.

What would be a suitable procedure to “appoint” the editor?  There are several ways, I suppose. We could very well follow the example of Journal of Applied Mechanics and have an “executive committee” which makes these appointments or simply have one person in charge of it (e.g. Zhigang).