JOURNAL COMMENT

Journal comment

In this edition of papers for general interest, you can find twelve contributions from different part of the world - Botswana, Canada, China, France, Iran, Spain, and South Africa. This is a good indication that the SAIMM Journal continues to attract papers from the international community, which is one of the requirements for inclusion on the Department of Higher Education and Training's (DoHET) list of accredited journals. The DoHET list includes ISI, IBSS, South African journals (DHET), Scopus, SciELO SA, and Norwegian journals; and articles in these journals are eligible for subsidy. Academic institutions in South Africa rely on that subsidy to support their research initiatives. This highlights the importance of publishing articles in the SAIMM Journal in a timeous manner. In the past, the SAIMM Journal accumulated a considerable backlog of papers of general interest awaiting publication, and such papers used to take up to a year to appear in print. The SAIMM Publications Committee understands the importance of publishing research results as soon as possible, and efforts are being made to address this issue in the most efficient manner.

The twelve papers that have been selected for this edition of the Journal cover topics ranging from a coupling simulation model between a coal mine ventilation network and gob flow field; the use of forensic laser scanning technology in mining incident investigations; prospects for value addition in copper in the emerging Kalahari Copper Belt of Botswana; modelling of generic excavation sequences for bore-and-fill mining; and evaluation of shaft locations in underground mines by means of fuzzy multi-objective optimization. Papers about the dissolution kinetics of tellurium during alkaline sulphide leaching of gold concentrate, CO₂ reactivity of briquettes derived from discard inertinite-rich Highveld coal incorporating lignosulphonate and resin as binders, and microcrack formation in vanadium-titanium magnetite using different crushing processes also make for interesting reads.

The Publications Committee hopes you enjoy reading the general papers in this month's Journal.

B. Genc