The WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs celebrates its 20th anniversary

WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs https://doi.org/10.1007/s13437-021-00248-w EDITORIAL The WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs celebrates its 20th anniversary Jens‑Uwe Schröder‑Hinrichs1 © World Maritime University 2021 It is 20 years ago that the first issue of the WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs (JOMA) was published—an opportunity to look back at the beginning of the journal—to consider its achievements and to chart the future course that the journal should steer in its future development. JOMA was established at a time when the World Maritime University (WMU) underwent a significant change of its academic profile and nature. Initially, when the university was founded by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the capacity building mandate of WMU was realized primarily through the teaching programs only. Fifteen years later, the university had developed up to a level where research-related aspects became a top priority for further enhancing the academic profile of WMU. The first editorial in JOMA,written by then-WMU President Karl Laubstein (2002), referred to the introduction of a doctoral program at WMU and an expanded research focus. The editorial also referred to WMU’s special mandate and the role the University plays internationally in relation to global capacity building in furtherance of the objectives of the parent body of WMU: that is, IMO, a specialized agency of the United Nations. It is within this context that JOMA was set up as a contribution by WMU to the wider maritime community—administrations, industry, as well as education and research—with the objective of stimulating critical discussions on contemporary maritime issues. Contrary to today’s academic journal scene, there were hardly any maritime journals at the time JOMA was established. It was felt that WMU, as a result of its special nature, has the capability of bringing together a wide variety of researchers and professionals as authors so as to generate the content needed for such a journal at the right academic level. Twenty years later, we can say that the JOMA succeeded and met the objectives. The beginning of the Journal was quite simple. JOMA was published twice a year with five to six manuscripts per issue. The founding editor, Professor Günther Zade, first Vice-Rector of WMU for almost 20 years, approached most of the authors personally to invite them to write for the journal. This practice was continued until * Jens‑Uwe Schröder‑Hinrichs 1 World Maritime University, Malmö, Sweden 13 Vol.:(0123456789) J.-U. Schröder‑Hinrichs 2006, when Günther Zade passed away. Karl Laubstein had the confidence in a young team of WMU faculty members to continue developing the journal, and this is how I became an editor of the journal, supported by my colleagues Max Mejia and Pierre Cariou. The new editorial team developed an ambitious vision for the journal, and one of the first priorities was to ensure that the journal would find its place among other respectable journals in its field. In 2006, JOMA was already well-regarded; we focused on ensuring that we would no longer rely on invited manuscripts, but instead develop the journal into a preferred outlet for publications in an author community with strong interest in maritime topics. The Journal was produced in-house until 2010. This meant that all the editorial corrections and suggestions were done at WMU and with the help of faculty support staff. For the layout, an external consultant, Peter Larsson, was employed who helped us not only with the journal, but also with a number of other publications that WMU produced at that time. In due course, we managed to even host electronic versions of the journal on an independent online platform. However, it became clear that it would need a more professional foundation if the journal wanted to explore and materialize its full potential. We were very fortunate to receive an expression of interest from Springer to help us grow our academic publications and make them available to a global audience through their professional publishing network. This was a big step that lifted JOMA to a completely different level and I would like to use this opportunity and thank Brigitte Reschke and Andreas Vogel for all their help, encouragement, and support over the years. Another milestone of further development was the cooperation with the International Association of Maritime Universities (IAMU) who selected JOMA for a publishing partnership in 2014 and established the IAMU Section in the journal where manuscripts related to “Maritime Education and Training” (MET) are submitted for publication. I handed over my editorship to my colleague Aykut Ölcer in 2017 from whom the current editor, Dong-Wook Song, took over in 2019. They both grew the journal substantially from two issues we published in 2016 to four issues with almost 600 pages in 2019. JOMA is covered by analytical platforms, and the indicators provided by these platforms in terms of citations and impact of the Journal are very promising as was confirmed by the 2020 review paper by Sahoo and Schönborn (2020). I am therefore very confident for further academic presence of JOMA in the domain of maritime affairs over the years to come. From this chronological account of the Journal’s early years, I would like to move on to review the topics covered over the years and the contributions we have made tothe discipline of maritime affairs. It will not be possible to discuss all the different interesting manuscripts we have published during the last 20 years. However, it may be worthwhile to go back to the first issue from October 2002 in order to see how it all started. The first issue included six articles and two book reviews. The topics covered were highly relevant and still touch on important discussions which are still relevant to a certain extent even today. The issue started with an article by Harilaos Psaraftis (2002), regarding the approaches to be taken to increase ship safety, who was discussing the question of whether maritime safety policies should be more proactive or not. He did then critically make a point that maritime safety policies 13 The WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs celebrates its 20th… are usually not so much developed as a result of a proactive approach. At the time JOMA was initiated, accidents had quite a significant impact on the development of maritime safety policies and regulations. Psaraftis criticized that the response to accidents often involved mainly changes in design and technology and did not pay enough attention to the human factor. He also suggested that the focus in policy and regulation-making should be changed to preventive measures leading to a reduced accident probability. Member States of IMO have come a long way during the last 20 years, but the message of this article should still remind us about the importance of making proactive safety policies. This also applies to the second manuscript of the first issue wr (...truncated)