IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - April 2018 - 3

Editorial

by M.E. El-Hawary

EEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Magazine (SMCM) is in
its fourth year of publication,
which, by all accounts, means that it
is in its growing phase, and there is
much to learn and many challenges
to meet. Among the earliest complexities for the magazine was becoming part of the Society's culture and
walking the path differentiating the
magazine from other Society periodicals such as the transactions, letters,
and newsletters.
The transactions are the most visible as credible archival publications.
In 1973, The IEEE Systems, Man, and
Cybernetics (SMC) Group published
the first issue of IEEE Transactions on
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. While
the transactions ceased production in
1995, three retitled publications (IEEE
Transactions on Systems, Man, and
Cybernetics: Systems; IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics; and IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems)
were launched. IEEE Transactions on
Computational Social Systems was
launched in 2014 as the fourth archival
Society publication. Over the past 45
years, the transactions have become
the premier peer-reviewed periodicals
in the Society's areas of interest.
The first issue of IEEE Systems,
Man, and Cybernetics Newsletter was
published in 2003. Its mandate evolved
from being the vehicle to share urgent
events with the SMC Society (SMCS)
community to including highlights celebrating the achievements of colleagues
as well as activities and coverage of the
areas of interest of its technical committees. Presently, the Society's website (http://www.ieeesmc.org/) supplements the newsletter as a favored tool
to communicate urgent matters and
news to the SMCS community.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSMC.2018.2807838
Date of publication: 20 April 2018

Taking Stock
The SMCS transactions continue
to attract phenomenal numbers of
submissions. In areas often covered
by the SMCS, theoretical or practical
ideas emerge. The faster an idea of potentially great value is published, the
sooner it will be applied and benefit
the community. With this motivation,
in May 2017, the SMCS Board unanimously approved a proposal to launch
a new SMCS publication, IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Letters
(SMC Letters), for the fast publication
of short articles. SMC Letters seeks to
publish peer-reviewed articles to offer
a timely and concise account of innovative research ideas and application
results and report significant theoretical findings and application case studies in areas of interest to the SMCS.
The phase-one proposal was presented to the IEEE Technical Activities
Board (TAB) Periodicals Committee
(TAB PC) and approved at the time
of preparing this editorial. This publication provides a separate processing queue for short, urgent papers, a
queue in which reviewing remains as
thorough as it is in the transactions
but it will be much faster because the
submissions will be much shorter.
TAB has a multitude of periodicals,
and the TAB PC, along with its TAB
Periodicals Review and Advisory
Committee, is responsible for overseeing all of them. The TAB PC is a
volunteer-driven body that, according
to the chair's report of June 2017, is responsible for
◆ providing guidance and support
to Societies and Councils (S/Cs)
in developing new periodicals for
the IEEE
Ap ri l 2018

◆ developing key metrics for exist-

ing periodicals to guide the TAB
PC in the approval of all new
periodicals
◆ enabling S/Cs to efficiently and
realistically propose and launch
new journals
◆ providing a process to identify
weak periodicals and then engage
with the sponsoring S/Cs to either
revitalize or terminate
◆ socializing clear publicationrelated rules for the successful
performance of a publication.
The TAB PC identifies publications
with publishing challenges (such as
few paper submissions, severely late
publications, and nonadherence to
the IEEE's publishing operations)
and assigns members of its team to
focus on a publication's situation.
In November 2017, the TAB PC
directed staff from technical activities and publications operations to
monitor the mailing dates of publications. If a periodical misses two consecutive issues (when issue n is not
ready by the end of the month during
which issue n + 1 was due to mail),
it triggers a communication from the
staff to the editor-in-chief (EiC), Society leadership, and the TAB PC.
In 2016, the TAB PC started monitoring proposed (i.e., forecasted) versus
actual article counts for new launches.
At the beginning of this article, I suggested that a prime challenge for the
magazine was to become part of the
SMCS's culture and differentiating it
from other Society periodicals. I look
for your feedback and suggestions.

IEEE SyStEmS, man, & CybErnEtICS magazInE

http://www.ieeesmc.org/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - April 2018