This journal is the first in a new volume of the series of Safety and Reliability Journals. We aim to publish four journals per year, and the series number reflects the number of years we have been publishing. This journal is volume 42, number 1, so this means we are at the beginning of our forty-second year of publishing journals!
You can find the complete archive of our journals in the Members Area of the SaRS website, but in my remarks, I would like you to take a closer look at how you could contribute to your membership organisation’s journal.
Background to today’s Taylor and Francis journal
For many years, SaRS curated its own journal. When I joined the Society in 1995, the editor pulled together hard copy articles and papers and sent the copy to a local printer, who delivered the journal to the office, and I sent each one out to members.
Later, the editor who followed devised a computerised version of this collation and this was sent to a local printer by file transfer. Again, these articles and papers would be printed and sent to the office.
These journals were only sent to members, with little scope for anyone who was not a SaRS member to read the valuable information.
Moving to Taylor and Francis
One of the main reasons for moving our journal operation to Taylor and Francis was to take advantage of their online portal. This meant that articles and papers could be submitted through an online submission process and, in addition to the usual hard copy sent to members, the various editions of the journal could be accessed online.
This included our archived hard copy journals, which were scanned and stored in the Taylor and Francis portal. Several members have told me how valuable this portal is to understand historical aspects of safety and reliability and compare how this has progressed to today’s technical world.
Change means change
One of the advantages of the new journal submission system, and the system as a whole, is that it is accessible by subscription to organisations and universities. In 2022 SaRS Journal papers were downloaded a record number of times, meaning visibility of the information and knowledge published is much wider. We know that this visibility is now truly international.
This visibility could be the showcase for your knowledge and practice.
But the format changed slightly. In my last remarks I wrote about structure being a precursor for knowledge exchange, and this has worked well for the SaRS journal in procuring academic papers. The accessibility to submit less formal articles has improved, and we want to encourage these in the future.
We want to showcase your knowledge
We are appealing for more articles on the following:
Case studies – these can be individual case studies or comparison case studies. These can either be written as a formal paper, or in a less-formal article style.
Book reviews – if you have a book you would like us to review in our journal please send two copies to the SaRS office. If you have a review of a book in a related area please send to [email protected]
Cross-industry articles – these can be from personal experience or an observation on the industries’ commonalities and differences. These can either be written as a formal paper, or in a less-formal article style.
Technical Articles – as demonstrated by the SaRS journal archives, practice is developed and we learn from others. We would like to know how your practice has developed and what technical knowledge or key technical person influenced that development. This can be a structured paper of a less formal article style.
Additionally, if you would like to be interviewed about your safety, reliability or risk practitioner journey or you have someone else in mind whose profile would be of interest, please get in touch. We are keen to showcase our members.
If you are an Affiliate Organisation, we would like to hear about your operations and how you got to this point, or showcase a member employee of SaRS.
Giving something back to you
Here at SaRS we are grateful for your support. We are always looking for ways to provide more membership benefits, and what could be better than visibility of your or your company’s support of the industry and professionalism.
The journal is better established externally and I see this as a win/win situation that progresses both industry knowledge and member/affiliate visibility – I am happy to discuss your input to this, please contact me at [email protected].
I hope that we can include submissions from our membership as part of the next issues of our forty second year of producing a Journal for our members and the wider world.
This Journal 42.1 contains two papers. The first, by Okoh, looks at the application of inherent safety to functional safety, the main objective being to investigate how inherent safety design can reduce risk by reducing random and systematic failures. The second, by Klamann and Winner, introduces the Detailed Semantic Interface description to support a modular safety approval of automated vehicles.
This leaves me only to thank you again for your continued support of the Society.
Registration with the Engineering Council through the Safety and Reliability Society
The Safety and Reliability Society was successful in April 2020 in their application for a Licence to Register CEng and IEng SaRS Members. The SaRS Engineering Membership Committee has been busy in the first year of the Licence honing our systems and working with the Engineering Council to provide a route to registration for our members. Many thanks to the Engineering Council for their guidance and support in SaRS achieving this goal. In March 2021, the Engineering Council extended this interim licence for a further four years.
We are delighted to announce that more SaRS Members have been registered through the new, direct process. Congratulations to:
Andrew Brown
Karissa Chan
Registering with the Engineering Council through SaRS
Our registration application programme is open, and we are happy to receive applications from candidates for CEng or IEng.
You can find details of how to apply and guidance for your application on the SaRS website under the main Membership green tab—please select ‘Registering with the Engineering Council’ on the drop-down menu.
We strongly recommend that you read UK-SPEC in conjunction with the application process and make sure that you are planning and completing your continuing professional development (CPD).
As always, we are happy to answer any questions and assist you through the process with three rounds of professional review advice (PRA). Please get in touch if you have any questions by emailing [email protected].
We very much look forward to receiving your application to begin your journey to registration with SaRS