Professor Ok Yong-sik Becomes the First Asian Elected Co-Editor-in-chief of Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, an Authoritative Journal in the Environmental Field

▲ Professor Ok Yong-sik from the Division of 

Environmental Science & Ecological Engineering

Professor Ok Yong-sik from the Division of Environmental Science & Ecological Engineering, College of Life Sciences & Biotechnology, was elected co-editor-in-chief of Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology (CREST), the world’s most authoritative journal in the environmental field.

The journal CREST, published by Taylor & Francis since 1970, is one of the most influential journals in the environmental field. As of 2019, the journal’s CiteScore was 13.3 (top 1% journals in the field of environment), and its impact factors were as high as 8.302.

The journal CREST has editorial board members and associate editors around the world, including Professor William Mitch from Stanford University. Since 2021, the journal has operated an editors-in-chief system consisting of co-editors-in-chief from five countries, including the US, Germany and Canada. Professor Ok will extend the research areas in fields relating to the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDG), including waste management technology for microplastics and other materials, as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics. Professor Ok was elected the initial editor-in-chief of the Journal of Hazardous Materials (IF 9.038 as of 2019), published by Elsevier.

Professor Ok published 30 highly cited papers (HCP) in 2019 involving studies on the accomplishments of UN SDGs. Professor Ok had a total of 85 HCPs and hot papers as of December 2020 and has been selected as one of the highly cited researchers (HCRs) in three consecutive years, from 2018 to 2020, ever since HCRs in the cross-fields began to be selected in 2018.

In addition, Professor Ok serves as a program director of the sustainable waste management program in the Association of Pacific Rim Universities. He took the lead in attracting the Nature Forum and Nature Conference to Korea University, first among the universities in Korea. As an organizer, he will convene the Nature Conference in Seoul in October this year with the editors-in-chief of the three major journals of Nature.