TAPPI announced that Arthur J. Ragauskas, Ph.D., has assumed the editor-in-chief role for TAPPI Journal. Ragauskas is a professor at the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville, TN, and has been a member of the TAPPI Journal Editorial Board since 2011. As a member of the Editorial Board, he has curated eight special issues on a range of topics, including nanocellulose, lignocellulose, lignin valorization, and the forest biorefinery.
In 2014, after 15 years at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology (IPST) in Atlanta, Ragauskas assumed the Governor’s Chair for Biorefining based in UT’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, with a complementary appointment in the UT Institute of Agriculture’s Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries. He serves in the Energy and Environmental Sciences Directorate, Biosciences Division, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Ragauskas was also the first Fulbright Chair in Alternative Energy, and his activities at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, were focused on the forest biorefinery and new biofuel conversion technologies for lignocellulosics. He is a TAPPI Fellow and a recipient of the TAPPI Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Award.
“It’s very exciting to have Art at the helm of TAPPI Journal,” said TAPPI President and CEO Lawton C. Roberts. “With his unparalleled technical expertise and global reputation as one of the world’s most highly cited researchers in his field, Art brings the vision and experience to keep the Journal a premier publication.”
During his tenure as editor-in-chief, Soledad Peresin, Ph.D., director of the Wood Utilization + Design Institute at Clemson University, will continue as Associate Editor of the Journal.
Ragauskas is taking over the role from Douglas Coffin, Ph.D., of Miami University, who joined the Editorial Board in 2018 and went on to spend six years in leadership roles for the Journal. In addition to sharing his expertise in paper physics and corrugated packaging topics, Coffin provided guidance in many important areas including transitioning the Journal to an Open Access publishing model. After his term as editor-in-chief was over in 2023, Coffin stepped back in to continue as editor-in-chief when Peter Hart, Ph.D. passed away in May 2024, continuing until December 2025 and ensuring that the Journal’s momentum and efforts were preserved.
TAPPI Journal’s open access format provides the industry free access to the latest research as soon as each issue is published. Prospective authors from academic and research institutions, as well as speakers who present scientific papers at conferences, are encouraged to submit their research for peer review and consideration for publication in the Journal. As an added incentive, authors are eligible for the $3,000 Honghi Tran TAPPI Journal Best Research Paper Prize presented at TAPPICon®️. Learn more and submit abstracts at tappi.org/tjsubmit.
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