Dear Readers,
It is my great pleasure to introduce the latest 52(124) issue
of the Scientific Journals of the Maritime University of Szczecin. The current issue contains results of the latest research in marine engineering, sea navigation and transport engineering.
The introductory article entitled “Structural analysis for ships in arctic conditions” was prepared by Prof. Ehlers Sören – head of the Institute for Ship Structural Design and Analysis at Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) and adjunct professor at NTNU: Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is an international expert in the field of sustainable Arctic Sea transport. This article summarises regulatory aspects of ship design for ice-covered waters, focusing on structural compliance and design ice-load determination. The publication was funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland from funds for science popularising activities: grant No. 790/P-DUN/2016. I hope that this articles is informative to all readers interested in effective and safe navigation in the Arctic regions.
In the Marine Technology and Innovation section, we have included articles on the use of composite materials, computer simulations of deformations and tensions in the pipelines of hydraulic lifting systems and constraints in allocation of thrusters in DP simulator.
The Navigation section includes articles related to collision avoidance at sea and the use of logical devices to process the nautical data. In addition, this section addresses issues of planning autonomous passage of vessels, two-dimensional coordinate estimation and the analysis of the LNG tanker Al Nuaman’s speeds during its first voyage to the LNG terminal in Świnoujście (route sections Arkona–Świnoujście–Arkona).
The section devoted to Transportation Engineering includes articles on the use of graph theory in modeling transport networks and the definition of inland vessel position using a single stationary non-metric camera. Other topics included are the ability to test shipboard AIS instability and the inaccuracy on simulation devices, the radiooperator decision support system model and the helmet-mounted system of assisting a helicopter pilot during SAR operations.
In addition, the Miscellaneous section includes reviews on the achievements of component importance analysis for complex technical systems, GPS/GNSS Spoofing and a Real-Time Single-Antenna-Based Spoofing Detection System, a method for determining landslides risks using Digital Elevation Model (DEM) created by Unmanned Aerial Systems with hydrogeological data connection, and also an extended discussion on the susceptibility of the roll equation to the bifurcation phenomenon.
I would like to take this opportunity to inform our readers that the Scientific Journals of the Maritime University of Szczecin quarterly has been indexed in the Web of ScienceTM Core Collection Emerging Sources Citation Index Backfile (ESCI Backfile), which is an ESCI database archive in which our Scientific Journals were included last year (Chybowski, 2017). The ESCI Backfile archives list articles published in the period of 2005-2014. Another grand success of our quarterly is the third place in the “Top 25 Polish ESCI Journals by number of documents” rating with 727 indexed documents. It was announced in the proceedings of the November training conducted by the company Clarivate Analytics – the owner of the Web of ScienceTM platform (Kapczyński, 2017). In addition to the high and constantly upgraded quality of the journal, this success is due primarily to the accurate data structure as well as improved mechanisms used in the repository of scientific articles for online magazines developed in 2015 by the Maritime University in Szczecin. To access the online version of the current and archival issues of the journal (starting with the first issue published in 1973) please 6 Scientific Journals of the Maritime University of Szczecin 52 (124) visit our website at http://scientific-journals.eu/. The digitisation and sharing archival versions of all publications was funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland from the previously listed funds for science popularising activities.
Moreover, I would like to inform you that, in accordance with official information obtained from the Scientific Journals Assessment Unit of the Index Copernicus International dated 17 November 2017, the Scientific Journals of the Maritime University in Szczecin were assessed in terms of publication quality and received the result of 90.35 expressed by means of the ICV 2016 indicator (Index Copernicus International, 2017). For comparison, in the previous three years the ratings were respectively: in 2014 the ICV 2013 indicator = 6.16 (64.38 under the new methodology), in 2015 the ICV 2014 indicator = 7.76 (79.38 under the new methodology), in 2016 the ICV 2015 indicator = 87.49. So in the above-mentioned period the index has increased by 42.5%.
It should be emphasised at this point that the continuous improvement of the publication quality of our journal is a result of the hard work of the Editorial Board, members of the Scientific Committee and reviewers as well as the policies of the current and previous authorities of the University that have supported the development of the quarterly. I am deeply grateful to all the people involved. I strongly encourage the authors to submit their work and readers to provide us with your comments.
dr hab. inż. Leszek Chybowski,
Associate Professor, Editor-in-Chief,
Szczecin, 15.12.2017