Ford Sets Tech-Paper Record as SAE Boosts Quality Standard

March 15, 2017

Lindsay Brooke

SAE International and its industry partners are continually improving the quality and topicality of technical papers published annually. And as the paper review process has become more rigorous, the industry has responded with an increased number of manuscripts submitted over the last five years. That has helped SAE deliver maximum value to its members and WCX attendees.

OEMs are helping to raise technical paper quality overall by learning from each other. The ‘Written Only’ paper category was established to give authors the opportunity to submit a manuscript at any time. With this, SAE did not need to be reliant on event ‘call for papers’ (CFPs) for manuscripts. And rather than simply rejecting a paper, organizers can now suggest that authors withdraw their paper, continue to work on it, then submit it to the Written Only portal for publication consideration. This has raised the bar on paper quality and has boosted quantity as well.

For 2017 Ford Motor Co.’s well-planned-and-supported process for employees to submit manuscripts has set a new benchmark. Ford engineers will have over 200 technical papers published for 2017—a record number from a single OEM, according to SAE staff.

Over 2,000 technical papers were submitted for review and consideration by SAE International for publication at WCX17 , being held April 4-6 in Detroit. Typically 60% of those submitted are approved for publication.