It has been ten years since Ingeniería e Investigación was classified for the first time at the C category according to Publindex by the Colombian Research Council COLCIENCIAS¹. During the last six years the journal has held the highest category A1. Considering an international perspective, the SCImago Journal Rank - SJR can be considered, the Ingeniería e Investigación 's SJR shows an increasing trend in the last six years and its most recent classification reaches Q3. COLCIENCIAS has announced the modification of the journal classification procedure. According to the new rules, it is expected that the journal reaches the A3 classification. Currently it holds the A1 classification².

These achievements come from the preceding team efforts, led by professors Óscar Fernando Castellanos and Paulo César Narváez Rincón, who have performed an outstanding job by positioning Ingeniería e Investigación as a visible and attractive space for publishing research articles from the different application fields of engineering.

The Engineering Faculty has entrusted me the mission of continuing, as Editor, with the labour of professors Castellanos and Narváez. The journal faces many challenges in the coming years, where the most important one is to sustain and improve the journal ranking. I hope to correspond the Faculty's confidence by carrying on with the current trends and finding the way out to set the journal into a path of improvement.

As well as the recent changes in journals classification, during the last three years, COLCIENCIAS has changed the model for classifying research groups and investigators. The model employed in 2013 was significantly different to the previous one. A short review of the results was presented by professor Narváez in the editorial note of Ingeniería e Investigación 34th edition first release of 2014. The preliminary results of the most recent classification were released at the beginning of March³. The amount of Universidad Nacional de Colombia’s classified research groups was 473, a 7% increase compared to the 444 groups in 2013. This reveals an improvement in the institutional results. However, it is worthy to note that the number of groups classified as A1 in 2014 was 58, while in 2013 was 102. This implies  a 43% reduction in groups classified as A1. Although it is possible that A1 groups had worn down their performance, it is also possible that the new model rules assign a different classification to groups that maintain a sustained performance. It is important to recognize the benefits of measuring and classifying the research groups and investigators regarding the improvement of productivity and international visibility of Colombian research. Nevertheless, the new metrics could not recognize the particularities of each research group and discipline, discouraging their members to continue their investigating activity. It is advisable that the researchers and their groups carry out a detailed review of the classification results, take the suitable measures and express their opinion about the impact of the new classification model.

The current edition contains fourteen research papers on different engineering topics. Alternative optimization techniques are applied in two papers for problems such as touristic sites visit frequency and particle size distribution in colloids.  Two papers are interesting for chemical engineers: one on biomass application to the improvement of sawdust and coal pellets, and another one on operational parameters for ethanol fuel production. One paper on discrete modeling of computer worm epidemics are also included. Several papers on electrical and electronic applications were selected.  Two papers linked to electronic engineering issues: one on modeling and simulation applied to photoconductive antennas and another one describing the development of a device for universal data transmission. Finally, for electrical engineers four papers can awaken special interest: the application of variable speed operation on Francis turbines, the development of a system for detecting damaged insulators at substations, the improvement of large scale power systems dynamics and the diagnose of electric transformer failures by means of on-line frequency response analysis.

The Editorial team of Ingeniería e Investigación hopes that the current edition provides the readers a short but substantial overview of the current advances and research topics in engineering, and would like to invite all the readers to keep on sending their contributions, so as to share this invitation to their partners.

¹ Colombian Management Department for Science, Technology and Innovation.

² Ranking reported on January the 27th of 2015 on http://www.colciencias.gov.co/sites/default/files/ckeditor_files/files/ibnpublindex2014.pdf

³ Results released on http://www.colciencias.gov.co/noticias/resultados-preliminares-convocatoria-693-para-el-reconocimiento-de-grupos-de-investigaci-n-

Fabio Andrés Pavas Martínez
Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical y Electronic Engineering
Director Ingeniería e Investigación Journal
Universidad Nacional de Colombia