Safeguarding Sixty Years of Leadership: Project 2018–2021 in Retrospective

Abstract

With the start of a new volume in January 2022, IEEE Communications Magazine (ComMag) celebrates 60 years as the flagship publication of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). What we refer to today as ComMag was launched as a newsletter in 1963. From 1973 to 1976, the name of this publication changed to Communications Society. During 1977–1978, it became IEEE Communications Society Magazine. As of 1979, it was finally changed to IEEE Communications Magazine and has remained as such until today [1]. By virtue of its quality scholarly content, an inherent attachment to ComSoc membership, and a global readership, ComMag is the most important publication of the IEEE Communications Society. I became the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of ComMag in mid-December 2017 and served for two terms: the first concluded in December 31, 2019, and the second finishes at the end of 2021. When I started in this role, the magazine was as successful as always, thanks to the hard work of my predecessors and their teams. They devoted time and effort generously to maintain ComMag standards. There were issues of the type any publication may experience, however, and a project to take them on became desirable [3]. The planning for this project commenced in early 2018 and the implementation started in September 2018 and finished in January 2021.