It is a pleasure to write this first column as Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the Transactions on Information Theory, a role I took over last July from my predecessor Igal Sason. I would like to extend my thanks to him and to outgoing Executive Editor Erdal Arıkan for all their help and encouragement in my transition. Taking on this role is a great honor and responsibility. The Transactions are a precious element of our Society, a crucial archive of our work.

The challenge ahead of us is to maintain the quality, intellectual vibrance, and status of our Transactions while bringing to it best practices from sister publications. My statement to the Board of Governors (BoG) when seeking the role of EiC reads that “The role of the EiC is I believe to maintain the technical excellence of the Transactions while fostering an environment where new techniques and areas can be incubated. This balance is one that will require constant consultation, consideration, and revision. We do not wish for the Transactions to become a disparate collection of haphazard forays, nor do we wish to become effectively curators of an elegant academic corpus. My plan is to recruit a cadre of area editors to help with assessing, in domain-specific ways, how to preserve, grow and shepherd different areas in a way that is tailored to their communities.”

In giving me this role, the BoG provided its approval for this vision. On a daily basis, the EiC and the Area Editors manage the assignment of papers, ensure timeliness and quality of reviewing, help Associate Editors (AEs) with complex cases such as papers for which finding reviewers is difficult, handle delicate cases such as complaints or appeals, manage desk rejects and generally steer the operations of the Transactions. Each Area Editor is assigned to one of the areas, which have been approved by the BoG, are: Shannon Theory and Information Measures (led by Ioannis Kontoyiannis); Coding and Decoding (led by Moshe Schwartz); Networking and Computation (led by Edmund Yeh); Sequences and Cryptography (led by Anne Canteaut); Machine Learning and Statistics (led by Bob Williamson); Quantum (led by Andreas Winter); Communications (led by Ubli Mitra); Security and Privacy (led by Aylin Yener).

We are operating like a TPC. The area of a paper is indicated by the submitting author. In some cases, the area is changed, generally by the EiC in consultation with the relevant Area Editors. Area Editors shepherd papers in an area and assign them to AEs. As the Area Editors are specialists in their respective fields, they are able to match expertly AEs to the topic of a submitted paper. An AE will generally receive papers from a single Area Editor, but several AEs have expertise that crosses categories. Because Area Editors have visibility into the load of all AEs, we are able to avoid overloading.

Papers are arranged in issues along the areas listed above, which are representative of the wide range of activities of the Society. Such a consistent grouping allows readers to identify papers that might be of interest in each issue. The final assignment of Area for a paper at the time of inclusion in an issue is done by the EiC.

The roster for AEs has grown considerably in the last year, an item that merits discussion and which was explored with the leadership of the Society. I encourage you to peruse our roster of AEs, which can be found on our Society’s website. Incidentally, as some of the readers of this column have already noticed, matters relating to the Transactions are no longer hosted at the institution of the EiC, but have been moved to the Society’s website. In this way, future EiC transitions will be easier and access to documents for our excellent staff at IEEE, Kristen Cignavitch and Joanna Gojlik, is easier.

Many of our AEs had commented that they felt burdened. In some cases, the issue was that we were lacking AEs with expertise in certain areas which may receive a low number of papers but require coverage, in other cases, it was because the AEs in an area were overworked.  While we have put in place procedures and best practices to make their job more manageable, it was clear that we needed more AEs, particularly in the areas such as Quantum where we were in dire need because of the growth of activity in the domain. We have a mix of highly experienced editors, who bring a wealth of knowledge and wisdom, and more junior editors, who bring a fresh perspective and energy. Our new expanded roster is far more diverse, thematically and demographically than ever before. The BoG, in rapidly approving Area Editors and a large roster of new Associate Editors, including by organizing votes by email to expedite the bringing on of new members to the team, has been wonderfully supportive. I wish to thank Wei Yu in particular for his responsiveness and diligence.

In terms of operations, the main challenge for our Transactions is our perennial, stubbornly high review cycles. We have identified that the key reasons for long delays were the difficulty of lining up reviews for unsuitable (thematically or in terms of quality) submissions, the fact that some AEs and reviewers had moved on or become unresponsive, and our atypically long periods for the different stages of handling articles.

For the first issue, the approach has been a new process for desk reject involving Area Editor(s), the EiC and often an AE. Desk rejects are carried out because of poor presentation, lack of thematic match to the Transactions, or clear technical insufficiencies. This nomenclature was chosen carefully to be in line with the best practices of publishing and to remove connotations of haste possibly associated with the name of fast reject. Many papers often languished, contributing to our extremely long publication delays and taxing the goodwill of our reviewer pool. The current approach is that a desk reject occurs through examination by the EiC and two cognate Area Editors, or the EiC, one Area Editor and one AE.

Regarding the problem of unresponsive AEs and reviewers, have now changed the culture so that we may reassign papers when an AE is unresponsive. Rather than rely on automated reminders alone, the Area Editors and I often personally contact AEs and reviewers. Some of the readerships of this column may even have received an exhortatory email from me. Know you are not alone.

For the issue of the long periods between stages of review and publication, we have reduced the times to be more in line with other publications. The time allotted to reviewers was reduced from 120 days to 60 days (90 days to 45 days for revisions). The time between revisions was reduced from 150 days to 60 days. These are more in line with average timelines for IEEE-sponsored Transactions journals but still remain high. I am pleased to report that these delays have not proven to be detrimental to the process. Only a handful of exceptions have been needed. Our preliminary data indicates that the delays in handling papers are already improving. I hope to be able to report positively on this at future BoG meetings and in columns in this Newsletter.

The Transactions have always been a team effort. The team has become bigger, stronger, and more diverse. While the ultimate responsibility remains with the EiC, the growing intellectual breadth of our community is best served by a group approach. I wish to thank our amazing editorial team, the BoG, and you, our community of authors, reviewers and readers, who are the ones behind the success of the Transactions.