Journal of the Civil Engineering Forum

About Journal of the Civil Engineering Forum

Journal of the Civil Engineering Forum — A Researched Profile

The Journal of the Civil Engineering Forum (abbreviated JCEF) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal in civil and environmental engineering published by Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and sponsored by the university's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering. It appears four-monthly — three issues a year — and charges authors nothing at any stage. Its current identifiers are electronic ISSN 2549-5925 and print ISSN 2581-1037, its article DOIs use the prefix 10.22146/jcef, and its official home is the UGM journal platform at journal.ugm.ac.id/v3/JCEF. What makes JCEF especially interesting to profile is its long and well-documented history: the journal's own history page traces an unbroken publishing lineage back to 1992, through three earlier titles and four earlier ISSNs, which this profile sets out in full because directory records that capture only the current ISSN pair badly understate the journal's age and archive.

Identity at a Glance

A Thirty-Year History in Four Titles

JCEF's official history is unusually complete, and it matters because the journal an author submits to today is the continuation of an Indonesian-language departmental journal founded more than three decades ago.

The journal was established by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada, in 1992 as Forum Teknik Sipil, a six-monthly journal published in Bahasa Indonesia. Its first issue appeared as Volume I/1 in January 1992, and the second issue (Volume I/2, July 1992) was the first to carry an ISSN: 0854-1116. In 2007 the journal switched to publishing in English and its name became the Civil Engineering Forum. The design and format were renewed in 2009 with a new print ISSN, 2089-5631. With the move onto the Open Journal System platform, the title took its present form in 2016 as the Journal of the Civil Engineering Forum, with online ISSN 2549-5925, and from Volume 3 No. 2 (May 2017) the print version has used ISSN 2581-1037.

Two practical consequences follow. First, the stored coverage window in some directory records — including the pre-existing Journals World record for this post, which showed coverage beginning only in 2024 — is simply wrong as a description of the journal: the current title alone reaches back to 2016, and the publishing lineage reaches back to 1992. Second, citations to Forum Teknik Sipil and to the Civil Engineering Forum in older Indonesian engineering literature belong to this same journal's archive, and OpenAlex's source record for JCEF reflects that continuity by grouping the 2009 print ISSN 2089-5631 together with the two current ISSNs.

A further modernisation step came with Volume 8, Issue 1 (January 2022), when the journal migrated to a new website and OJS version 3 installation, adopted a redesigned logo and moved to a LaTeX-based article layout. The journal is sponsored by the department in cooperation with five Indonesian professional bodies: the Indonesian Association of Hydraulics Engineers (HATHI), the Indonesian Association of Civil and Structural Engineering (HAKI), the Indonesian Association of Geotechnical Engineering (HATTI), the Indonesian Road Development Association (HPJI), and UGM's Center for Disaster Mitigation and Technological Innovation (GAMA-InaTEK). That sponsorship structure explains the journal's applied, practice-facing character: it is a university journal with professional-association roots, not a commercial title.

Scope: Sustainable Infrastructure and Disaster Resilience

JCEF's focus statement says it aims to advance the development of sustainable infrastructure and the dissemination of conceptual ideas and implementation of countermeasures, particularly in the tropics, which are vulnerable to disasters. Its core fields are structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, water resources engineering, environmental engineering, transportation engineering and construction management.

Layered over those fields is a distinctive emphasis that gives the journal its identity: civil and environmental research associated with disasters. The journal particularly encourages work on geo-disasters (earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions), water-related disasters (floods, debris flows, coastal disasters, tsunamis) and human-made hazards (soil, water and air pollution, and water scarcity in tropical regions). Named priority topics include disaster risk reduction techniques, disaster early warning systems, climate change adaptation, vulnerability analysis, pre- and post-disaster reconstruction and rehabilitation planning and management, forensic engineering, socio-engineering approaches to countermeasures, and water reuse and recycling. Indonesia's setting — an archipelago exposed to seismic, volcanic, flood and coastal hazards — is not background colour here; it is the editorial centre of gravity, and manuscripts that engage hazard, resilience or tropical-infrastructure questions speak directly to the journal's mission.

The journal publishes research articles, review articles, technical notes and editorial notes. Research articles run to roughly 6–12 pages, with 6–10 papers per issue, and technical notes are expected at around 3,000–4,000 words (5–8 pages) excluding references. Editorial notes, unlike the other categories, do not pass through peer review. The journal also welcomes collaboration on special issues based on academic conferences, which suits its association-linked community.

Editorial Process, Journal Statistics and Costs

JCEF uses double-blind peer review by selected reviewers. Manuscripts must be submitted through the online submission system on the journal portal; manuscripts sent by any other means are automatically discarded. Submissions must be written in English, must present authentic results not previously published elsewhere, must be free of plagiarism (the board states it will reject texts indicating plagiarism), and must follow the journal's article template — manuscripts that do not follow the writing guidelines are returned before review. Copyright is granted to authors, and the journal states it will defend authors' work and reputation and address allegations of plagiarism or fraud.

Unusually, the journal publishes its own workflow statistics on its homepage, and they are worth reporting as the journal's own figures: a time to first decision of 5 days, 72 days from submission to acceptance, 47 days for time to publication, and an acceptance rate of 27% for 2024. Treat these as publisher-reported operational statistics — they describe the journal's recent pipeline rather than a promise to any individual author — but they paint a coherent picture of a selective journal (roughly one paper in four accepted) with a fast first-decision screen.

On cost the position is unambiguous and confirmed from two directions: the journal states there is no article processing charge and that submission, publication and download are all free of charge, and its DOAJ record independently records no submission or publication charges. Funding comes from the sponsoring department, professional-association cooperation, sponsorships and conference activity described in the journal's published business model, rather than from authors.

Indexing and Verification

The journal's about page lists its indexing as: Scopus, ASCI (Asian Science Citation Index), Crossref, Dimensions, DOAJ, GARUDA, Indonesia One Search, SINTA (Science and Technology Index) and WorldCat. Of these, the DOAJ listing was verified directly for this profile from the DOAJ record itself, which shows: Universitas Gadjah Mada as publisher, Indonesia as country, English as the language, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence, no charges, a peer-reviewed open access journal added to DOAJ on 8 February 2022, and subject keywords spanning civil engineering, environmental engineering, disaster prevention and structural work. The Scopus listing is the journal's own claim as displayed on its official page; authors whose institutions require Scopus proof should confirm against the current Scopus source list at submission time, as with any journal. The Indonesian national systems (SINTA and GARUDA) matter particularly for Indonesian academics, for whom SINTA accreditation feeds directly into institutional performance assessment.

Metrics: Attributed Figures and a Correction

OpenAlex, queried directly by ISSN for this profile, resolves JCEF to source record S4210167876, grouping ISSNs 2089-5631, 2549-5925 and 2581-1037 — that is, it treats the 2009-titled predecessor and the current title as one continuing source. The record names Gadjah Mada University as host organisation and Indonesia as country, and reports 326 works, 1,338 citations and an h-index of 14.

The pre-existing Journals World directory record for this journal instead carried an h-index of 3 and a coverage window of 2024–2026. Both stored figures conflict with the evidence in hand: OpenAlex's directly fetched h-index is 14, and the journal's documented history (current title since 2016, lineage since 1992) refutes a 2024 start. The stored h-index may come from an earlier or narrower Scopus-based snapshot, but that origin could not be verified, so it should not be quoted. The OpenAlex figures above are the verified ones for this profile, with the caveat that OpenAlex counts only the works and citations inside its own open graph. No Journal Impact Factor from Clarivate could be verified for JCEF, and none is claimed here.

Read in context, the metrics describe a mid-sized regional engineering journal with a genuine citation footprint — more than thirteen hundred citations across roughly three hundred and thirty works is a respectable record for a no-fee university title — whose influence is concentrated in Indonesian and Southeast Asian civil engineering, disaster and infrastructure research.

Who Should Consider Submitting

JCEF is a strong fit for researchers working on: structural and geotechnical engineering in seismic and tropical settings; hydraulics, water resources and flood or coastal hazard work; transportation engineering in developing-country contexts (recent issues include, for example, studies of cyclist behaviour in Yogyakarta and building information modelling adoption in Indonesian dam projects); construction management; and environmental engineering tied to pollution, water scarcity or waste systems, including landfill methane estimation work published from West Java. Authors from outside Indonesia do publish here, and the disaster-resilience framing travels well to other hazard-exposed tropical regions.

The honest cautions are equally clear. The 27% acceptance rate the journal reports means weak scope fit is likely to end at the screening stage; the English-language and template requirements are enforced before review; and the journal's centre of gravity is applied and regionally grounded work, so a purely theoretical manuscript with no infrastructure or hazard connection should be framed carefully or sent elsewhere. In exchange, authors get a genuinely free, open access venue with professional-association sponsorship, DOAJ-verified status and a three-decade institutional home.

Reading the Journal: Themes in Recent Issues

Browsing the journal's recent volumes confirms that the stated scope is the real scope. Structural work includes comparative studies of reinforced-concrete modelling approaches and finite-element analyses of thin-walled box-girder bridges, often written with direct reference to Indonesian design guidance issued by the Ministry of Public Works and Housing. Transportation research is strongly represented: studies of cyclist behaviour in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, evaluations of public-transport provision, and infrastructure-planning analyses appear alongside road and bridge engineering papers. Construction management contributions include an assessment of building information modelling (BIM) adoption in Indonesian dam projects, which identified lack of expertise, weak client demand, added project cost, missing regulation and the high initial investment in integrated software as the main barriers — a characteristically practice-facing piece of research. Water and environmental topics range from landfill methane emission estimation and dispersion modelling in West Java to hydraulics and water-resources studies contributed through the journal's association networks. Review articles synthesise emerging construction technologies, such as a critical review of bio-engineered self-healing concrete, showing that the journal also serves readers who need orientation in fast-moving subfields rather than only new experimental data.

For a prospective author, three patterns stand out. First, Indonesian case material is welcomed and common, but it is analysed to international standards and written for an international readership; local data is a strength here, not a limitation. Second, the disaster framing is not decorative: papers routinely connect engineering results to hazard exposure, resilience or reconstruction, and authors who make that connection explicit align with the journal's mission. Third, the author base extends beyond UGM itself — the journal functions as a national and regional platform for Indonesian civil engineering, with contributions from other universities and practitioners, which is consistent with its sponsorship by five national professional associations.

How to Verify JCEF's Claims Yourself

Because journal directories frequently carry stale or garbled data for this title — the pre-existing record for this very post showed a numeric publisher identifier, a coverage window starting in 2024 and an h-index that conflicts with directly fetched data — authors are advised to run three quick checks before relying on any listing. First, open the journal's own history page on the UGM platform and confirm the ISSN chain (0854-1116, 2089-5631, 2549-5925, 2581-1037) and the current title. Second, open the journal's DOAJ record and confirm the licence, the absence of charges and the publisher name as registered there. Third, if your institution requires Scopus indexing, search the current Scopus source list for ISSN 2549-5925 rather than trusting a badge or a third-party blog. Each check takes minutes, uses a primary source, and protects against the most common failure mode in journal selection: acting on a directory record that nobody has re-verified since it was first scraped.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the ISSNs of the Journal of the Civil Engineering Forum?

Electronic ISSN 2549-5925 and print ISSN 2581-1037. Earlier incarnations used ISSN 0854-1116 (Forum Teknik Sipil, from 1992) and print ISSN 2089-5631 (Civil Engineering Forum, from 2009).

Who publishes JCEF?

Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, sponsored by its Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in cooperation with HATHI, HAKI, HATTI, HPJI and GAMA-InaTEK. Some directory records render the publisher as a bare numeric identifier; that is a data-formatting defect, not the publisher's name.

Does JCEF charge authors?

No. The journal states that submission, publication and download are free, and its DOAJ record confirms no article processing or submission charges.

Is JCEF in DOAJ?

Yes — verified from the DOAJ record itself: listed since 8 February 2022, CC BY-SA licence, peer-reviewed, no charges.

What is JCEF's acceptance rate and review speed?

As reported by the journal itself: 27% acceptance rate (2024), 5 days to first decision, 72 days submission to acceptance, 47 days time to publication. These are the journal's published operational statistics, not guarantees.

What are JCEF's citation metrics?

OpenAlex (source S4210167876, fetched directly for this profile) reports 326 works, 1,338 citations and an h-index of 14. An older directory figure of h-index 3 conflicts with this and should not be relied on. Because OpenAlex groups the journal's 2009 print ISSN with its current pair, its counts describe the continuing journal rather than only the post-2016 title, which is the historically accurate way to read them.

Sources and Verification Notes

A note on method: every load-bearing fact in this profile was taken from a source consulted directly during its preparation — the journal's own pages, its DOAJ record read in full, or an OpenAlex record fetched by ISSN — and figures that could not be verified that way, such as any Clarivate impact factor, are stated as unverified rather than repeated from secondary blogs. Where this profile corrects the pre-existing directory record, the correction is shown alongside the original figure so readers can see what changed and why.

This profile is grounded in: the journal's official about and history pages on the UGM journal platform (history, ISSN chain, sponsorship, scope, indexing list, open access policy); the journal's homepage and submission guidelines (article categories, statistics, no-fee statements, business model); the journal's DOAJ record in full (licence, charges, dates, subjects); and a direct OpenAlex source fetch by ISSN (source S4210167876) for works, citations and h-index. Indexing beyond DOAJ is reported as the journal's own published list. The conflicts between the pre-existing directory record (h-index 3; coverage 2024–2026; numeric publisher rendering) and the verified evidence are noted in the body of the profile rather than silently overwritten.