Dr Mark Gregory has been appointed a Life Member of TelSoc for his services to the Society as Managing Editor of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy. Dr Gregory volunteered as Managing Editor for six years, 2015-2020, during which he published 6 volumes, 24 issues, and a total of 201 articles.

Mark Gregory took on the role of Managing Editor after the journal had been successfully re-established for two years as the Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, following 63 volumes of the Telecommunications Journal of Australia. The journal was by then attracting strong contributions from Australian authors.

Mark Gregory strengthened the journal with several initiatives during his tenure. Firstly, he moved the journal operations to the Open Journal System, an open-source, cloud-based journal management system. This provided improved and efficient support for submission, reviewing, editing and production of articles and issues. It also means that the journal will stay current with new processes as they become available, without having to maintain special software and systems.

Secondly, Dr Gregory worked to have the journal indexed by Scopus, an Elsevier service used to “value” publications by Australian (and other) academic staff. This made the journal more valuable to academics and raised its profile generally. By the end of his tenure, the journal had been categorised as a “Q2” journal (meaning in the second quartile of “value”) in “Media Technology”, making it extra attractive for academic publication and readership around the world.

Thirdly, Dr Gregory suggested a name change to the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, a change that was implemented from volume 7 in 2019. By dropping “Australian”, the journal is seen to be less regional and becomes attractive to a wider range of authors. In 2019 and 2020, there has been an increase in submissions from outside Australia, suggesting that the name change and Scopus indexing are having the desired effects.

Dr Gregory recruited two new Section Editors to assist him. He was supported by an Editorial Advisory Board, which he chaired. This group of 11 volunteers worked harmoniously and by consensus throughout his tenure.

Dr Gregory leaves the journal strongly positioned for growth in size and influence. His initiatives will provide ongoing benefit to the journal for many years to come.

Outside the journal, Dr Mark Gregory is an Associate Professor in Network Engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne and a public intellectual, commenting especially on Australia’s National Broadband Network since 2014.

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