I am a researcher in the field of computer science and would like to share my experience as well as my concerns. I have more than 15 years of experience in engineering discipline and almost 8 years of experience in academia.

Many times, I have urge from my senior colleagues and researchers to submit articles in journals which clearly falls in the category of applied science or engineering such as the IEEE journals including its transactions and Elsevier journals.

Generally, from my experience a pure scientific article when submitted to an engineering domain journal often has negative results and most of the time reviews received will be subjective, sometime contradictory, and often reviewers say they are unable to understand the certain aspects of the proposed method or suggest explaining some well-known terms and editor will make ground based on above results to make a negative decision. The problem may not be with the article but the background of reviewers/editors.

From fundamental definition point of view science should focus on the new novel methods and engineering focuses on the application of existing scientific methods to determine the practicality. Of course, not all scientific methods can be practical in an intuitive way at a given time and situation, but novelty is the main concern in scientific methods only. For engineering prospects, the methods are not necessarily to be novel, rather using existing scientific methods and tools it may focus on determining new insights from the application point of view.

But in practice the line between science and engineering has diminished, science journals are publishing engineering articles and engineering journals are publishing the science journals.

Do you think the line between science and engineering has diminished and the potential consequences are discouraging science research?, Please share your experience.