From the Associate Editor in Chief - April 2017

Abstract

I've just got back from the annual IEEE Panel of Editors meeting, this year in Montreal; AESS VP Pubs Dale Blair, Magazine EIC (i.e., my boss) Maria Sabrina Greco, and AES Transactions Associate EIC Michael Rice were also there. The PoE is a big deal, with lots of chance to interact with IEEE staff, learn from our peers and see what's new. I always enjoy it, and I think it's time well spent. This year I'll report a few things that may be of interest to you. First, IEEE now has automated checking tools for each finalized Transactions submission to make certain that there be no significant changes (especially in the bibliography – more on this next time you hear from me) relative to the version that was accepted. Another item of interest was from Clarivate Analytics, which is what used to be Thomson-Reuters' Intellectual Property and Science business unit. A key concern for Clarivate is the "indexing" of journals and assignment of metrics (such as impact factor) thereto. The news is that there is a new category, the Essential Science Citation Index (ESCI) that – and I know I am over-simplifying - allows emerging journals early consideration, earlier than the traditional three-year history mark. Finally, I’ll mention the renewed emphasis on "reproducibility" in IEEE publications. I have discussed that before, but what I do want to mention now is that IEEE is teaming with small company "Code Ocean" to facilitate the effort. Specifically, an author can upload his / her code (e.g., Matlab & data files) to the Code Ocean site, and that becomes linked to the author's paper on IEEEXplore. It hence provides readers a way to test the ideas and maybe to improve on them. I'll try Code Ocean soon and get back to you with my experience; but I think it will be great.