Journal of Graphic Engineering and Design

About Journal of Graphic Engineering and Design

Journal of Graphic Engineering and Design — Journal Profile

The Journal of Graphic Engineering and Design, universally shortened to JGED, is the scholarly journal of the Department of Graphic Engineering and Design at the University of Novi Sad's Faculty of Technical Sciences in Serbia. It has been published in open access since 2010, and it occupies a niche that few journals anywhere attempt: the meeting point of printing and packaging technology, graphic design, typography and visual communication, where the questions are as much about materials, colour measurement and production processes as about aesthetics. Its print ISSN is 2217-379X and its electronic ISSN is 2217-9860, the pair recorded on this JournalsWorld record and confirmed in the journal's Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) listing, where the publisher is named as the University of Novi Sad.

Graphic engineering is a discipline with deep roots in Central and Eastern Europe, where university departments of graphic technology train engineers for the printing, packaging and media industries, and Novi Sad's department — known by its Serbian acronym GRID — is one of the field's established centres. JGED is that department's voice in the international literature. It publishes in English, in print and online, and every article is free to read under a Creative Commons licence. For researchers in print technology, colour science, packaging and design, it offers something the big commercial journals in adjacent fields do not: a venue edited by people who work across the whole chain from prepress to finished printed product, and who expect a design paper to respect production reality and an engineering paper to respect visual quality.

History and identity

DOAJ's record dates the journal's open access from 2010, and OpenAlex's source record for the journal likewise gives 2010 as its first publication year, so the journal's public history begins at the start of the last decade. It grew out of the Novi Sad department's own research community and its regional conference culture, and it has developed into a genuinely international outlet: its author base now spans Europe and well beyond, with papers from design schools and printing institutes in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia appearing alongside Serbian and European work. A 2021 study of competencies for future graphic design graduates in Malaysia, published in JGED by authors from Malaysian universities, is a fair sample of how far the journal's reach now extends beyond its home faculty.

The journal's identity rests on the double meaning of its title. "Graphic engineering" names the technical disciplines — prepress, press and postpress processes, printing materials, colour reproduction, packaging production, functional printing. "Design" names the creative disciplines — graphic design, typography, photography, visual communication, product and industrial design. Many journals cover one side or the other; JGED's editorial premise is that the two sides belong in one conversation, because a printed artefact is always both an engineered product and a designed object. That premise explains the journal's scope list, which runs from 3D printing and material measurement science to visual perception and photography without treating any of them as foreign territory.

Scope and subjects

The journal's official aims and scope page states that JGED aspires to showcase the fusion of artistry and technical expertise in graphic engineering and design, and it lists the topics in scope: graphic engineering; prepress; press; postpress; packaging; colour and quality management; 3D printing; functional printing; material and measurement science; ecology and waste management; visual perception; visual communications and media; electronic publishing and new media; graphic design; industrial and product design; typography; and photography. DOAJ's subject classification places the journal in mechanical drawing and engineering graphics (LCC T351-385), and its registered keywords — engineering graphics, computer graphics, graphic design, typography, engineering and printmaking — give a compact map of the same ground.

In practice, recent volumes show the scope working at several levels. Process research examines how inks, substrates and press conditions interact, how colour can be measured and controlled, and how print quality can be assured. Materials research looks at papers, boards, polymers and printed electronics, including the fast-growing area of functional printing, where printing methods deposit conductive, sensor or photovoltaic layers rather than images. Packaging research connects structural design, materials choice and consumer perception. Design research addresses typography, layout, visual identity and the cognitive side of visual communication, including how readers perceive and trust printed and screen media. Sustainability is a standing thread: ecology and waste management are named scope topics, and the journal regularly carries work on recycled substrates, waste reduction in print production, and the environmental footprint of packaging. Authors should note the engineering expectation that runs through all of it: even a design-led paper is expected to show method — a defined sample, a measurement, a comparison, a user study — rather than opinion alone.

Publisher, editors and editorial practice

The publisher of record is the University of Novi Sad, and the journal is produced by the university's Faculty of Technical Sciences, Department of Graphic Engineering and Design; article pages state that papers are published by the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Department of Graphic Engineering and Design. This directory's stored record showed only a numeric publisher code (7377); the verified publisher is the university and its faculty, as above. Editorial correspondence from the journal in 2023 was signed by its editor, Nemanja Kašiković of the University of Novi Sad, and the journal maintains a public editorial team page, linked from its DOAJ record, which readers should consult for the current board, since board membership changes over time.

The journal's author pages describe its review practice in unusual detail. JGED operates a double-blind review process controlled by the editor, who is responsible for fair play and confidentiality and takes the publication decision on the basis of the reviews. In the main review phase the editor sends each submitted paper to two experts in the field; reviewers work to a limit of 30 working days, use an evaluation form with a checklist covering the aspects that decide a submission's fate, and add observations and suggestions for improvement, which reach the authors without reviewers' names. Reviewers act independently and do not know each other's identities; where the two reviewers disagree, the editor may assign additional reviewers, and the editor may ask authors for additional information, including raw data, where the scholarly merit of a manuscript requires it. DOAJ's record characterises the journal's review model as single anonymous peer review, which differs from the journal's own description; authors should rely on the journal's own pages, which describe double-blind review, and this profile follows the journal's own account while noting the discrepancy for the record. DOAJ gives the journal's typical publication time as ten weeks.

Metrics and standing

OpenAlex's source record for the journal (resolved through its ISSN endpoint at checking time) records 244 works, 886 citations and an h-index of 13, with a two-year mean citedness of about 0.64; its topic profile for the journal — material properties and processing, colour science and applications, graphic design and typography, digital media and visual art, nanomaterials and printing technologies, and consumer packaging perceptions — matches the journal's stated scope closely, which is a good sign that the record really is this journal and not a namesake. Secondary Scopus-based summaries report a SCImago Journal Rank of about 0.177; this directory's older template data placed the journal in Q4, consistent with a specialist title of its size. These figures describe a small, focused journal: its citation counts are modest in absolute terms because its field is modest in size, and within that field its papers are the ones practitioners and design researchers actually circulate. Authors should quote any metric with its source and date, and should weigh the journal's fit and readership above any single number.

Indexing and access

JGED is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which is the listing verified directly for this profile: DOAJ confirms both ISSNs, the University of Novi Sad as publisher, English as the language, open access since 2010, a Creative Commons Attribution licence, DOI registration for articles, and the absence of article processing and other charges. The journal is fully open access: every article can be read free of charge on the journal's site, and the journal's current author pages state that articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), under which readers may copy, redistribute and build on the work, including commercially, with appropriate credit. Older articles were issued under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Serbia licence, as the copyright lines in the archive show; the licence printed on each article governs that article. Copyright and publishing rights are transferred to the publisher on the terms described in the author pages, with authors retaining the enumerated rights to present, copy for personal and teaching use, reuse in future works with reference to the original publication, use within their institution, and pursue patent applications based on the article. The journal states plainly that it levies neither article processing charges nor submission charges, so publishing in JGED costs authors nothing — a fact DOAJ independently confirms.

How to submit

Submissions go through the journal's online submission system, linked from its author information pages, and manuscripts must follow the journal's guidelines for authors. The practical requirements are specific and worth observing exactly. Manuscripts are written in British English and sent in .doc or .docx format. Length is capped at 12 A4 pages, and papers below four A4 pages are treated as short communications rather than full articles. Text is set in 10-point Times; figures and tables use 10-point Times italic, must be numbered separately, and carry their captions or comments above them. Figures should be supplied in vector formats (.eps, .ai, .svg and similar) or as high-resolution bitmaps of at least 300 ppi, preferably in lossless formats such as TIFF or BMP, or high-quality JPEG. Equations are numbered in brackets. Where software code is presented, the journal asks for it to be placed in a table where possible. References follow Harvard style (author, date), arranged alphabetically in the reference list, with the journal's author pages giving detailed examples for in-text citations, quotations and reproduced figures. Funding sources are listed before the references. Papers appear in hardcopy and online, and corresponding authors receive a hardcopy of the issue in which their paper appears — a courtesy from the print tradition that this journal, fittingly for its subject, still maintains. Submitted work must be original, unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere, and responsibility for content rests with the authors.

What a JGED paper looks like

The journal's categories and standards give authors a clear picture of the expected product. The journal publishes full research and professional papers — its acceptance correspondence describes papers approved in the professional-paper category — alongside the short communications into which it places manuscripts under four pages. A typical full paper states an engineering or design problem, describes materials, equipment or study design precisely enough to be repeated, reports measurements or observations rather than impressions, and closes with conclusions a practitioner can apply. In process papers that means press and substrate conditions, measurement instruments and repeatability; in colour work it means defined viewing and measurement conditions and reported colour differences rather than adjectives; in design research it means a defined artefact, audience or user sample and an explicit evaluation. The journal's figure standards are not decoration: in a journal read on paper as well as on screen, vector artwork and 300 ppi bitmaps are what keep a spectral curve or a halftone comparison legible in both media, and the Harvard reference style keeps the engineering and design literatures citable in one list.

The department behind the journal

JGED's home, the Department of Graphic Engineering and Design of the Faculty of Technical Sciences, is one of the University of Novi Sad's established engineering departments, and the journal functions as its research showcase and its service to the wider graphic community. The faculty's imprint appears on every article; corresponding authors receive a printed copy of their issue, which tells you the department still treats the printed journal as a real product and not a formality — an entirely fitting position for a department that teaches printing. The journal maintains a public list of its reviewers as part of its author pages, a transparency practice that lets authors see the community doing the refereeing, and its editorial team page, linked from DOAJ, carries the current board. Around the journal sits the department's teaching and laboratory work in the same subjects the journal publishes — printing processes, colour reproduction, packaging, design — and that pipeline of students, laboratory projects and regional industry contacts is what keeps a small society-scale journal supplied with both manuscripts and reviewers. Readers who want to understand a JGED paper's assumptions will often find the answer in that context: this is a journal written by a teaching department for a working industry and a research community at the same time, and its standards are the standards of both.

That dual loyalty also explains the journal's author geography. Because graphic engineering departments across South-East Europe, Turkey and parts of Asia share curricula and industry structures with Novi Sad, their researchers face the same problems — the same presses, substrates, packaging markets and design-education questions — and JGED is one of the few English-language venues edited by people inside that shared world. The Malaysian graduate-competencies study mentioned earlier, and similar papers from design and polytechnic institutions well outside Serbia, are not exotic exceptions; they are the journal working as intended, giving a specialist community a common shelf. For a researcher in that community, publication here puts the work in front of the referees and readers most likely to use it, in a journal whose back archive the community already reads.

Related journals

Readers of JGED commonly also follow the journals around graphic technology and design research: the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology and Color Research & Application for colour and imaging science; Packaging Technology and Science for the packaging side; the Journal of Print and Media Technology Research for print process research; and design-research titles such as the International Journal of Design and Design Studies for the creative disciplines. Those journals each cover a slice of JGED's ground. JGED's distinction is the whole loaf: engineering and design of the printed and packaged artefact, in one open access venue, from a department that teaches and practises both.

Frequently asked questions

What are the ISSNs of the Journal of Graphic Engineering and Design?

The print ISSN is 2217-379X and the electronic ISSN is 2217-9860, confirmed in the journal's DOAJ listing.

Who publishes JGED?

The University of Novi Sad, through its Faculty of Technical Sciences, Department of Graphic Engineering and Design, in Novi Sad, Serbia. The numeric code 7377 in this directory's older data is not the publisher's name.

Is the journal open access, and what does it charge?

Yes. It has been open access since 2010, articles appear under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0 under current policy), and the journal charges neither article processing charges nor submission charges, as both its author pages and DOAJ confirm.

What subjects does it cover?

Graphic engineering across prepress, press and postpress; packaging; colour and quality management; 3D and functional printing; materials and measurement; ecology and waste management; visual perception and communication; electronic publishing; graphic and product design; typography; and photography.

How does peer review work at JGED?

The journal's author pages describe double-blind review by two field experts working to a 30-working-day limit, with an editor-controlled process and additional reviewers where the first two disagree. DOAJ's record describes the model as single anonymous; the journal's own description is the one authors will experience.

How long should a manuscript be, and in what format?

At most 12 A4 pages (papers under four pages count as short communications), in British English, in .doc or .docx, with Harvard-style references and figures in vector format or at least 300 ppi.

What are the journal's citation metrics?

OpenAlex recorded 244 works, 886 citations and an h-index of 13 for the journal at checking time, and Scopus-based secondary summaries report an SJR of about 0.177. Quote figures with their source and date.