​It is my great pleasure to announce the recipients of two categories of 2018 Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD) reviewer awards.  Serving as a reviewer for the journal is a critical service necessary to maintain the high quality of our publication and to provide authors with valuable peer review of their work. Together with the Editorial Board of the Journal of Mechanical Design, I would like to recognize the outstanding service of JMD reviewers in the following two categories.
 
2018 ASME “Reviewers of the Year” Award
 
The ASME Reviewers of the Year Award is given to reviewers who have made an outstanding contribution to the journal in terms of the quantity, quality, and turnaround time of reviews completed during the past year. The prize includes a wall plaque, 50 free downloads from the ASME Digital Collection, and a one-year free subscription to the journal. Winners are announced in the journal, posted on the ASME website and on the JMD companion website (http://www.asmejmd.org/). The 2018 winners of this award are: 

• Katherine Fu, Georgia Tech, USA 
• Haobo Qiu, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China 

2018 JMD “Reviewers with Distinction” Award
 
This JMD Reviewers with Distinction Award is given to reviewers who have made a meritorious contribution to the journal in terms of the number, quality, and turnaround time of reviews completed during the past year. The prize includes the choice of either a wall plaque or pdf award certificate. Winners are announced in the journal, posted on the ASME website and on the JMD companion website (http://www.asmejmd.org/). The 2018 winners of this award are:

• Marco Carricato, University of Bologna, Italy
• Mark Fuge, University of Maryland, USA
• Zhen Jiang, Ford Motor Company, USA
• Chia-Chang Liu, Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
• Christopher McComb, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
• Katja Holtta-Otto, Aalto University, Finland
• Haobo Qiu, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
• Carolyn Seepersad, University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Timothy Simpson, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
• Eun Suk Suh, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
• Jie Zhang, University of Texas at Dallas, USA 

 
I would like to congratulate all the award recipients and look forward to continuing to work with the entire ASME community of editors, authors, reviewers, and staff to bring JMD to the next level of excellence.   
 
Wei Chen
Technical Editor

By Wei Chen, Technical Editor, Journal of Mechanical Design

Starting with papers published in 2014, and continuing with papers published in 2015, and 2016, for the last three years the Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD) has awarded an annual Editors’ Choice Paper Award. As stated in Shapour Azarm’s 2014 Editorial, the selection criteria for the award include (i) fundamental value of the contribution, (ii) expectation of archival value (e.g., expected number of citations), (iii) practical relevance to mechanical design, and (iv) quality of presentation.

For the 2017 Editors’ Choice Award selection, after compiling a list of high quality papers (all published in 2017) nominated by the Associate Editors (AEs) and Guest Editors, I formed a three-member ad-hoc committee representing different topic areas of JMD. In addition to the nominated papers, I asked the committee to consider papers that were chosen as 2017 Featured Articles (posted on www.asmejmd.org). After carefully considering all of these papers, I am pleased to announce that the committee’s final selections for the 2017 Editors' Choice Paper Award and three Honorable Mentions are:

2017 Editors' Choice Paper Award:

Joran Booth, Jeffrey Alperovich, Pratik Chawla, Jiayan Ma, Tahira Reid, and Karthik Ramani, “The Design for Additive Manufacturing Worksheet,” J. Mech. Des., 139(10):100904-100904-9 (2017).

2017 Editors’ Choice Paper Award Honorable Mentions (in no specific order):

Dipanjan Ghosh, Andrew Olewnik, Kemper Lewis, Junghan Kim, and Arun Laksmanan, “Cyber-Empathic Design: A Data-Driven Framework For Product Design,” J. Mech. Des., 139(9):091401-091401-12 (2017).

Toumadher Barhoumi and Dongsuk Kum, “Automatic Enumeration of Feasible Kinematic Diagrams for Split Hybrid Configurations With a Single Planetary Gear,” J. Mech. Des., 139(8):083301-083301-11 (2017).

Yong Hoon Lee, Jonathon Schuh, Randy Ewoldt, and James Allison, “Enhancing Full-Film Lubrication Performance Via Arbitrary Surface Texture Design,” J. Mech. Des., 139(5):053401-053401-13 (2017). 

The authors of the Editors’ Choice Paper Award were presented with plaques during the August 2018 IDETC meetings in Quebec City. Authors of the honorably mentioned papers were awarded certificates.

Please join me in congratulating the authors of these four papers for their excellent work. I also would like to express my appreciation for all of the current and former AEs and GEs who participated in the nomination of the papers. In particular, I want to thank the ad hoc selection committee for their careful selection of the final awards. We look forward to more high quality publications in JMD.

All four papers are accessible for free viewing on ASME's Digital Collection homepage (https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/) 

J. Mech. Des 139(8), 080201 (2017)

I am pleased to announce the Journal of Mechanical Design's (JMD's) Editors' Choice Paper Awards for the years: 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Back in May 2014, I wrote an Editorial in JMD titled: “Announcing JMD's Annual Best Paper Award Guidelines.” In that editorial, I outlined the procedures we planned to follow to choose a yearly best paper from papers published in JMD in that year. However, after much further thought and input from the design engineering community, including many JMD Associate and Guest Editors and Editors of other ASME journals, I have decided to call this award: “Editors' Choice Paper Award.” The words “Editors' Choice” were used to refer to the Associate Editors (AEs) and Guest Editors (GEs) involvement in the nomination and selection process.

Let me review the process of selecting the editors' choice paper(s). First, the AEs and GEs involved with the journal in a particular year were asked to nominate papers from those published in JMD in that year. Next, AEs and GEs were asked to vote on the nominated papers. Finally, a three-member committee from current and/or former AEs was formed to finalize the selection. The charge to the committee was to select one or more papers from JMD papers published in each of the years 2014, 2015, and 2016 and which were nominated and voted on by AEs/GEs.

As stated in my 2014 Editorial, the selection criteria used were based on (i) fundamental value of the contribution, (ii) expectation of archival value (e.g., expected number of citations), (iii) practical relevance to mechanical design, and (iv) quality of presentation. The selection committee informed me that in addition to these criteria, it considered the following two criteria: “The breadth of interest and applicability” and “whether the paper addressed an emerging area or an area of immediate interest in the community.” With its final selection, the committee also indicated that: “while we had strong consensus around the papers that were selected, we wanted to make sure that taken as a body the three papers represented a variety of communities and interests (e.g., we did not want three optimization papers or three gear train papers).”

I am now pleased to inform you that the selection committee has finalized and informed me of their selection of Editors' Choice Paper Awards for each of the years 2014–2016, as listed below:

1. --2014 Editors' Choice Paper Award: “A Descriptor-Based Design Methodology for Developing Heterogeneous Microstructural Materials System,” Hongyi Xu, Yang Li, Catherine Brinson, and Wei Chen, J. Mech. Des., 2014, 136(5): 051007–051007-12.
2. --2015 Editors' Choice Paper Award: “Level Set Topology Optimization of Printed Active Composites,” Kurt Maute, Anton Tkachuk, Jiangtao Wu, H. Jerry Qi, Zhen Ding, and Martin L. Dunn, J. Mech. Des., 2015, 137(11): 111402–111402-13.
3. --2016 Editors' Choice Paper Award: “A Stiffness Formulation for Spline Joints,” J. Hong, D. Talbot, and A. Kahraman, J. Mech. Des., 2016, 138(4):043301–043301-8.

Each author of these papers will receive a plaque in recognition for their award. Also, all three papers can now be accessed FREE online at ASME's Digital Collection homepage.

Please join me in congratulating the authors of these papers. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the current and former AEs and GEs who participated in the nomination of the papers and voted on them. In particular, I want to thank the selection committee who had to carefully read through a large number of the papers and collectively make their final choices!

While I anticipate that there will be room for improvement in the selection process, I am hoping that the Editors' Choice Paper Award becomes a JMD tradition and an annual event.
 
Shapour Azarm, Technical Editor