With a special focus, we have prepared this 100th issue of our journal, considering this moment to be a favorable time to pay tribute to those who have made this possible...

It has already been 37 years of history and a lot of research, and with the 100th edition of Revista Facultad de Ingeniería "redin”, hundreds of professors, students, collaborators, and many more, are honored. Among these agents, the one who laid the cornerstone in the construction of this journal, must be highlighted. Professor Óscar Piedrahita Yepes, who was the first editor-in-chief, affirms that “it was a time when the University was mainly oriented towards teaching, and the development of research in the school was still in its early stage. I have always thought that knowledge is the engine of development and that, for a society to progress, a deep research activity is required, especially at the University, but also in industry”.

Professor Piedrahita says that, in those years, one of the difficulties was that the activities developed in research or in technological appropriation usually did not have sufficient dissemination due to the fact that, in the universities, the projects and works remained on the shelves, unable to permeate the community and have an impact on its social development.

Trying to find a tool that would enable the university professors' union and graduates make their developments visible, a group of professors led by Professor Piedrahita worked on the idea of creating Revista Facultad de Ingeniería, publishing its first edition in September 1984. Its aim was "to have a means of communication and dissemination of the works and achievements in the scientific, technological, and educational fields by the School community."

The birth of the journal was accompanied by some questions that needed to be reflected upon: What was it created for? What were the conditions at the School surrounding the creation of the journal? What was the orientation of the journal?

According to Professor Germán Urrego Giraldo, Dean of the School at the time the Journal's first edition was issued, “an important point we considered was that, in that same period, the first master’s program of the School of Engineering was created, i.e., the Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering. In addition, it coincided with the return of the Research Center to the School, which further helped improve the conditions and define the work route."

However, there were many difficulties: “We really started without a budget; initially, it was a project supported by the Environmental Research Center, where I was working at that time. And we still received contributions from the private sector to help finance the cost of publication”, says the first editor. Nonetheless, this did not end up preventing the project of these teachers.

At the beginning, it was difficult to find authors because there were neither many research groups and projects, nor sufficient funding for these projects. Given the scarce funding, the teachers preferred not to start any projects. But in the mid-90s, the Vice-rectory for Research was created, thereby achieving better conditions for this activity. Later, research was recognized as one of the missionary axes of the University, making thus a greater impact.

From the creation of the Journal, an annual issue was published from 1984 to 1996; later, until 2005, two annual issues were published, and, as of this year, the journal is published on a quarterly basis.

It was in the mid-1990s, under the coordination of Germán Urrego Giraldo, that the journal was accredited for the first time by Colciencias’ classification system for indexed journals. “We classified in a low category, but Revista Facultad de Ingeniería was already a recognized journal in Colciencias. Achieving indexation and such renown was now a goal met for the journal. Those conditions helped out and, with money from the public university budget, it was easier for the University to generate projects to be published in the journal”.

Before reaching that milestone, work had to be done, as stated by Professor Carlos Jaime Noreña Mejía, Dean in charge between 1987 and 1989: “We had to work properly to give the best quality to the editorial board of the journal and its authors, insisting that the journal be technical and scientific, would it not suddenly become a news brochure, a commentary brochure. So much emphasis was placed on the main objective of scientific, technical and pedagogical production”. Some school opinion articles were accepted, but they were few; most were research articles.

Francisco José Molina Pérez, Representative of the Centers in the mid-1990s, comments that “the role of the journal has been very important since it was one of the first windows that the School had outward, given that it was, until then, very endogenous. It was very common, for example, that professors were graduates of the same School”.

Likewise, he declares that the journal was an opportunity for professors of the School to put an effort into writing, considering the publication of articles was not very common, as opposed to today, where it is practically part of the day-to-day life of a professor, especially in the new generations. The journal was a path that encouraged many of them to write their first articles.

Asdrúbal Valencia Giraldo was one of the main believers in and promoters of the journal. He was its director at the time the 10^th issue (1995) was released and so he expresses his pride in having supported this project: “Having persisted, getting people to collaborate, to believe in it, and seeing the path traced become what we know now, is a great source of satisfaction to me. More than 25 years ago, we were celebrating the 10^th issue of the journal and there is a lot of history ahead of it”.

Nevertheless, the journal has gone through several indexing and rating processes to reach the version that is currently being issued. Now, Revista Facultad de Ingeniería is indexed in the following databases: SCOPUS, LATINDEX, SciFinder, Web of Science ESCI, Redalyc, CAplus, EBSCO host, J-Gate Plus, Scielo Colombia, PROQUEST CSA, Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek EZB, Cengage Learning Inc., Copernicus, and Red Colombiana de Revistas de Ingeniería (RCRI). It is also included in the digital repositories REDIB, Google Scholar, Mendeley, Zenodo, National Library, Universidad de Antioquia library, and Colombian Digital Library. It is classified according to the bibliographic indexes Scimago Journal Rank SJR and Scientific Indexing Services (SIS) Texas; additionally, it is indexed in Publindex, PERIÓDICA and Actualidad Iberoamericana.

Throughout its history, the journal has been classified according to Publindex in category C, from June 2005 to December 2007; in category A2, from January 2008 to December 2009; and in category A1, from January 2010 to September 2017. As of this date, Colciencias changed the terms for the classification of national journals, aligning with an international ranking system to quartile. Since then, Revista Facultad de Ingeniería is thus classified in category B corresponding to quartile Q3, according to Scimago.

Professor Molina also highlights the transition of the journal from the printed to the digital format: “The digital journal as we know it now, is relatively new, because it was previously on paper. One of the tasks of its promoters was to get subscribers who paid a fee (more or less 50,000 pesos per year). In that sense, the collaboration of many professors was very important, as was the help of the outreach and research centers of the School; because, in the end, money had to be invested for the journal to be printed and sent to libraries to make our presence known. So, I think that the step from a paper journal to a digital version is very important and, even though this has its costs, it greatly facilitates the distribution of the journal, as well as the transition from a subscription journal to an Open Access journal".

Professor Teresita Betancur Vargas took direction of the journal from the hands of Professor Consuelo Montes de Correa, one of the most remembered and noted characters in this story, who, according to her successor, managed to position the journal as a classified publication in Colciencias, to comply with the entity’s standards, so that the journal had the highest national level that a publication can have. It also achieved indexing in Latin American databases and began to aim at other international databases. Likewise, during Professor Consuelo's direction, the journal began to publish articles in English, which gave the publication a very high standard. However, it was not an easy task, because, according to Professor Consuelo Montes (RIP), “it has been difficult to make authors aware of the importance of publishing in English, but that is our task, and that is what we aim for as primary objective”.

"During the administration of Professor Consuelo Montes, a before and after of the journal was marked", expresses Professor Betancur. Perhaps that milestone is reflected thanks to the work of the professor, who stated that "the secret of academic quality lies on dedicated work, on being aware of everything that happens in the journal and on following the requirements to comply with quality standards; on maintaining a good relationship with the authors, on giving a timely response to their concerns and notifying them, and on having control of the evaluation and publication times”.

Professor Teresita has participated as editor, author and evaluator of articles in the journal. She says that, during her tenure between 2011 and 2014 and in agreement with the editorial board at that time, two goals were proposed: "That the journal migrates completely to English to really achieve international visibility, as we realized that publishing only in Spanish limited the possibilities of accessing international indexes; and so, during that time, we made the transition for the entire journal to be published in English. Also, in this period we started working and installed the Open Journal System version, so that the process of submitting and assigning evaluators, notifying authors and monitoring the status of the articles could be done through this platform”.

Professor Teresita was succeeded by Professor Maryory Astrid Gómez Botero, current editor-in-chief of the journal, who took direction in mid-2014s. After almost seven years of leadership, she states that “the current challenges of Revista Facultad de Ingeniería are to improve its visibility and impact, seeking to be recognized as a high-impact journal at an international level in the engineering area. Therefore, we have been working to increase the level of demand regarding the quality of the articles, calling for a greater number of highly recognized evaluators in the different areas of engineering worldwide, and relying on members with an extensive experience and recognition in their fields of expertise in the Editorial and Scientific boards, as it is necessary to attract distinguished authors to publish their work in our journal. No less important is the need to motivate researchers, both in our institution as well as at the national and international levels, to read and refer to the works published in the journal to promote their citations and thereby improve their impact and bibliographic indexing.

With the publication of the 100th issue, a tribute is made to all mentioned participants, as well as to those who were not mentioned, but who played a fundamental role in this story that has undergone so many changes, so many variations, yet still reflects what that group of committed teachers wished for in the 80s. According to Professor Piedrahita, “for me, it is truly a source of great satisfaction to see how it is today and that we have really reached the goal we set at the very beginning. I am also very happy because, in the first years, the journal was edited with a lot of opinion articles and evaluations of the University's relationship with society, but, over the years, I have seen it improve and the research has increasingly developed within the School; there is also a wider university community actively participating in research projects, and that was the purpose!”.

As for Professor Urrego, he recognizes the work of all the members who have contributed to the journal, not only that of the directors, the members of the different boards, and the publishers, but also that of the administrative staff, secretaries, logistics staff and students who have supported its production as assistants and monitors, which, according to him, “are no less important tasks, given that, without their contributions, the publications would not reach the desired outcome”.

Professor Piedrahita ends by asking to "please greet and congratulate the entire journal team, which is performing an excellent job; they are doing much better than I dreamed was possible!".

… We will be attentive to tell you what happens throughout the next 100 editions.