Professor Yong Sik Ok, Asia’s first Editor-in-Chief

for The Journal of Hazardous Materials

First-ever Asian editor-in-chief of the world’s most prestigious journal in environmental engineering

▲ Professor Yong Sik Ok from the Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering 

at the College of Life Science & Biotechnology

Professor Yong Sik Ok from KU’s Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering has been appointed the first Asian editor-in-chief for the world’s most prestigious journal to which more than 10,000 articles are submitted for publication per year.

The Journal of Hazardous Materials, published by Elsevier, is a top 1% journal that was ranked first among 117 journals in environmental engineering by CiteScore in 2018. Professor Ok is currently a co-editor-in-chief of The Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST), which was ranked 2nd in the field by CiteScore. He is now the first Korean scientist to be selected by two major journals in the discipline. Previously, Koreans were appointed as an editor and to the editorial board of The Journal of Hazardous Materials, but he is the first Asian editor-in-chief in its 45-year history.

For his outstanding research achievements in the areas of environmental cleanup, climate change mitigation and waste management, he was named as one of the world's top 1% scientists in 2018. In addition, he is the chief director of the Sustainable Waste Management Program, launched this year by the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), and contributed an article on soil pollution and the need for global monitoring to Nature, a world-renowned journal in science. He has 36 Highly Cited Papers to date. For his efforts to advance science and technology, he received a Korean Minister of Science and ICT Merit Citation on the 52nd Science Day.

Professor Ok is expected to contribute greatly to the development of science in Korea in the future as he will be responsible for the examination of more than 10,000 papers submitted annually from across the world for publication. He was chosen in a survey conducted by the publisher concerning scientists who have made the most vigorous research achievements in environmental engineering over the last five years, and the publisher directly invited him to become editor-in-chief.