Numerically generated stream of sand particles | Where should I publish journal papers?

Published over 2 years ago • 5 min read

Dear Reader,

I hope you are doing great. Here is another newsletter. The highlights are as follows:

  1. Numerically generated stream of sand particles
  2. Struggling with publishing videos and newsletters
  3. Scholarly tip of the week: Publishing journals

Technical Reflections

Numerically generated stream of sand particles

You may be wondering why on earth would someone be interested in creating a stream of sand particles numerically? The answer is quite straightforward:

  1. A stream of sand particles is used for modelling erosive wear of particles (sand, in this case) on metallic surfaces.
  2. You might be interested in modelling the flow dynamics (of particulate systems) for a numerical investigation.

The above image is taken from the work of a current MSc student of mine who generated the model using Python script. It is part of a project where he is using numerical methods in ABAQUS to assess the leading edge damage of wind turbines subjected to sand storms.

So, to numerically do this, manually creating the models in ABAQUS is not always easy due to the large number of particles. It can be done but it is just too tedious. You have to use automatic methods by invoking the power of the Scripting interface in ABAQUS. In this instance, a Python script was created to randomly position the particles ensuring that a required/stated volume fraction is achieved.

If you are to do this, here are some key considerations you have to take:

  1. Make sure you automate the process of generating the sand particles.
  2. You should specify a box (invisible virtual domain) within which the sand particles will be distributed randomly.
  3. Use Monte Carlo methods based on the Sequential Absorption rule to create random sand particles automatically.
  4. To reflect true geometric variance of the sand stream, you shoul specify a range of diameters for the system from which the Monte Carlo method iteratively selects a diameter and creates the corresponding spherical sand particle.
  5. You should also think carefully about how to quantify and validate the findings.

The above are what my student did and the figure shows a typical result generated from numerically generated stream of sand particles.

Behind the Scenes at CM Videos

Struggling to publish videos and newsletters.

If you have been visiting the YouTube Channel or subscribed to my Effective Solutions Newsletter which I host on LinkedIn, you might have noticed that the regularity with which I publish videos or newsletters has reduced. This is not a sign that I am losing interest in these endeavours. No!

Rather, January to May, every year, is a very busy time for me academically as I have a lot of classes to teach and examination assessment. I also need to meet a lot of my research students to support them and these drain on the time I have to do other things.

During this immediate period (January - February 2023), I have also had to write a lot of professional applications and funding bid. These are not trivial in themselves so I have been doing a lot of writing and researching to make sure I write a good and strong applications.

I feel like in the next couple of weeks, I will be able to revert back to a more steady and consistent publishing cycle for all my channels/newsletters. You will even notice that this newsletter (for last week's) is coming today, a Monday, when it was due to be published last Friday. It is because of same reason as described here. Thank you for your patience with me.

Scholarly tip of the week

How do you decide where to publish journal papers?

In this week's Scholarly tip of the Week, I want to reflect of journal paper publishing. This is something most academics, researchers and students have to do as part of demonstrating excellence and contributing to their research area. There are lots of questions around it and where one should publish the papers.

Here, I want to give you some tips on where to publish journal papers. This was necessitated from a conversation I had with one of my students, who got some really excellent research results, but due to a sense of feeling they might not be good enough, the student was opting to submit the paper in a third-rate journal. I promptly stopped the student advising that:

"You should never publish your paper in a low impact journal."

This is certainly a position I take. The challenge of going for a high impact factor journal is that you often might not get the paper accepted in the first instance, but that is okay. It is better to aim for the sun so that if you miss, you can land at the moon, as they say.

Tips for publishing in high impact factor journals

So, here are some tips about publishing your journal papers:

  1. Make it a rule that you will always target the high impact factor journals.
  2. Write the paper with the audience of the high impact factor journal in mind.
  3. To help with your chances of publishing there, you must make sure you incorporate a truly high rigour to your work. For example, if it is a simulation, make sure you paper has experimental data as well as numerous case studies that demostrate the application range of your numerical scheme. Often, layering up ideas and results into a coherent truly impactful (far-reaching conclusions) is better than slicing up the ideas to a single-idea-single-paper fashion. This is what is called salami-slicing in this publishing field but make sure you are not guilty of this.
  4. If you get rejected, do not despair too much. Take the feedback from them, improve the paper accordingly and re-submit to another high impact factor journal.
  5. If you consistently get rejected then you might consider a second quartile journal which is still quite good. Remember, it is quite hard to get all your papers published in high impact factor journals.
  6. As a rule, I will recommend that you accept that maybe 30% of your papers will not go to the highest journals but always work with a view to target the high impact journal in your research field.

How do you determine a good journal?

I will normally go to this Scimago Journal and Country rank website: https://www.scimagojr.com/. It helps you determine what journals are high quality. Such journals are normally regarded as first quartile (Q1) journals. For example, consider this excellent journal: Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering published by Elsevier. It is a truly high impact factor journal and publishes paper in the computational mechanics field. Below is a summary of the output about this journal from the Scimago Journal & Country Ranking website.

What you should really be looking out for is the Quartiles. If it is green, i.e. a first quartile (Q1) journal, then that is a good journal to publish. It also gives you some indications of the readership or coverage of the journal. In this case, it is the fields of: Computational Mechanics, Computer Science Applications, Mechanical Engineering, Mechanics of Materials and Physics & Astronomy. So, if you are working in this field, then you will or can submit your paper to this journal.

This is how you determine where to publish truly impactful journal papers that potentially will lead to high citation count, if it is a well writing paper.

Thank you for reading to the end. I hope you have enjoyed it. I wish you a wonderful week and we will catch up again towards the weekend.

Bye bye and God bless you.

Thank you for reading this newsletter.

If you have any comment about my reflections this week, please do email me in a reply to this message and I will be so glad to hear from you.

If you know anyone who would benefit from reading these reflections, please do share with them. If there is any topic you want me to explore making a video about, then please do let me know by clicking on the link below. I wish you a wonderful week and I will catch up with you in the next newsletter.

Lets keep creating effective computational modelling solutions.

Michael

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I am an university academic, author and content creator who specializes in all things computational modelling. Please join over 800+ computational modelling enthusiasts who read my weekly (Friday) newsletters where I reflect on finite element modelling, engineering, AI and personal development journeys. I also offer insights on different aspects of the academic journey that have led to my becoming an Associate Professor.