by Mete Oner, Founding Editor-in-Chief

Facts and Status of the ejge: Mid-7^th year

July 2002

The first, premiere volume of ejge was published on the anniversary of Terzaghi's birthday in 1996. It included exclusively invited, State-of-the-Art papers. The selection of the authors was done by yours truly, and my right-hand at the time, Debra Siegel Melland, with the guidance of the Advisory Board. Debra is an incredible woman, an Engineering Geologist and Master of Geotechnical Engineering — without whom ejge would not exist.

The second volume of ejge, 1997, just consisted of four papers, which were essentially the late submissions from the invited authors of the premier volume.

No one was personally invited to write for the remaining volumes, but papers kept coming in, at an increasing rate.

This is now the middle of 2002, and some 80 papers have been published by ejge during its initial period of six years (it will be exactly six years old on Terzaghi's birthday in October).

Contributors were from most countries in the world, 25 countries to be exact. Some countries have made just one contribution, while others are approaching two dozens.

Which Countries are These?

These are Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Malaysia, México, Russia, Serbia (frm.Yugoslavia), Sweden, Sudan, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States of America.

Note. Other countries joined the list recently are: Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This sure is a pretty impressive list. What it means to me is that

How the counting was done

Before I give you the counts for each country, I need to clarify the method of counting. Some papers were authored by several people from the same country while others were by co-authors from a number of different countries. It seemed most reasonable to adopt a set of uniform criteria:

1. The working and living address that an author specifies determines which country the author represents,
2. If several co-authors of a paper are all from the same country, it counts as one contribution from that country,
3. If various co-authors of a paper are from different countries, each country represented in the group gets one count,
4. If one or several authors from the same country have presented more than one papers, each paper counts as another contribution from their country.

The counts also include the papers that are being processed but accepted. Rejected papers are excluded.

Country Contribution Stats

The contributions of each of the 25 countries, as defined by the rules given above, are presented in Table 1 (in the now-classic ejge table format).

Table 1. Contributions to the ejge 1996 through mid-2002
Country	Number of contributions
Australia	4
Bolivia	1
Brazil	1
China	3
Canada	5
Croatia	1
France	1
Germany	3
Greece	3
India	4
Indonesia	1
Iran	1
Israel	1
Japan	4
Jordan	2
Korea	3
Malaysia	6
México	2
Russia	1
Serbia (Yugoslavia)	1
Sweden	1
Sudan	1
Turkey	9
United Kingdom	7
United States of America	21

Missing countries?

When you look at the table you can't help but wonder, "where are some of those countries we hear so much from all the time?" Indeed, some countries that are known to have been active in research, and publication in other forums, have not shown up in ejge yet. Among these are the European countries Italy, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Belgium, and Finland. These make up what I call the mystery group. I don't know what's going on. But to their defence, I can tell you that I have received many promises of contribution from geotechs in those countries. So, we are waiting, hoping they will come, sooner or later.

Then there are other European countries that make up the handicapped group: Island, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, which are excused due to their lack of soil, people, or time off from other fun activities such as skiing or counting money.

A third group of countries that could have made a contribution to ejge but so far have not are some of the former Soviet countries. This includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Azerbaycan, Armenia, Gorgia, Makedonia, and Poland. They will join us, too.

No, I didn't misspell some of the names. You see, Azerbaycan, Gorgia, and Makedonia are the way they spell and pronounce their names themselves, and I don't understand why some people want to change them. They are the ones misspelling. Your editor won't make such mistakes. See some fun comments for an explanation.

Pipe dreams