Dear CASE Colleagues,

It has already been a year and three months since I and Secretary-General YUN were elected as executives in August last year. When the Council of Asian Science Editors (CASE) was founded in 2014, I began my journey in the organization as the General Secretary, and more than seven years have passed since then. CASE currently consists of approximately 450 members; although most members are from Indonesia and Korea, a total of 26 countries are represented within the organization. Within the organization, three countries–Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia–currently have regional councils, with Malaysia soon joining the list. You can get a glimpse of the activities of the three organizations in this newsletter.

CASE offers the opportunity to keep up with trends in the rapidly changing environment of scientific publishing. The digital era that began in the 1990s radically changed the academic publishing ecosystem. Since then, we have had to adapt to constant changes in the research environment, such as artificial intelligence, OPEN science, big data, and other technological developments. In the future, we have no idea where a complex and specialized publishing world will lead our editors. Given this situation, I think a reasonable strategy for Asian academic journals to increase their survival rate is to share new information with organizations such as CASE, Council of Science Editors, and European Association of Science Editors, and for researchers and editors to study on their own.

The 2021 event was postponed by a year; thus, the 7th Asian Science Editors’ Conference and Workshop will be held in Malaysia on July 12, 2022. The virtual event will cover the topics of journal development and indexing in the citation databases. The target audience is science editors and the staff of publishing companies across Asia. Two sessions will be held at this event: one on artificial intelligence and big data in science journal editing and publishing, and another on the challenges of getting your journals indexed.

Special thanks to the Secretary General of the organizing committee, Dr. Yera Hur; program committee chair, Prof. Sun Huh; local committee chairs, Drs. Zuriati Zakaria and Rusli Daik; and Secretary General of the local committee, Prof. Y. Farina. I hope that small regional journals published in each country will develop into international journals by forming regional councils across Asian countries and sharing information with others. I look forward to seeing you all at the event in July.

Hyungsun Kim
President
Council of Asian Science Editors