COVID-19 Updates

Announcements on how COVID-19 is affecting the Society activities.

Conference changes:

  • IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) will be run as a virtual online conference on the same dates, June 21-26, 2020, in a manner that resembles the in-person experience as much as possible.
  • IEEE Information Theory Workshop 2020, Riva del Garda, Italy, which was to take place in September 2020, has been postponed to Spring 2021.
  • The IEEE European School of Information Theory (ESIT), Stuttgart, Germany, which was to take place in May 2020, has been postponed to Fall 2020.
  • The 11th International Symposium on Topics in Coding, to be held in Montréal, Québec, Canada, has been postponed  until March 8th to 12th, 2021.
  • 6th International Castle Meeting on Coding Theory and Applications has been canceled
  • 2020 IEEE International Workshop on Privacy and Security for Information Systems will be held virtually .
  • The International Symposium on Information Theory and Its Applications (ISITA) will be held as planned October 24–27, 2020, but special considerations will be made for authors of accepted papers whose travel is restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic

Other changes:

  • The IEEE Information Theory Distinguished Lecturers Program has been suspended effective immediately until further notice.
  • The 2020 IEEE North American School of Information Theory has been canceled .
  • The deadline for submitting nominations for the Shannon, Wyner and Massey Awards has been extended to April 6, 2020.
  • For papers currently under review at IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, there is a temporary relaxation of deadlines for reviewers and authors.  See the message below.
Message from Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory: Temporary Relaxation of Deadlines

March 18, 2020

Dear all,

Due to the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 virus,  the following temporary relaxations of the deadlines for reviews and revisions in the IEEE Trans. on Information Theory are taking place (effective immediately).

For reviewers:
  • review for 1st round of review from 75 days to 120 days
  • review for resubmissions from 45 days to 90 days
For authors:
  • Minor revision - from 45 days to 90 days
  • Revision Required/Major Revision - from 90 days to 150 days
These changes have been implemented already in Scholar One Manuscript, in view of the difficult times and uncertainty that we are all facing recently. Please try very much to meet these relaxed deadlines since it is important for us (as authors, reviewers and editors) to keep the submission-to-first decision and submission-to-publication periods reasonable in these Transactions, while taking of course into account the unfortunate irregular circumstances of the current period of time.

When things will (hopefully soon) return back to normal, the deadlines will be changed back.

Wishing all the best to you and your families.

Keep safe and healthy!

Sincerely yours,

Igal Sason
Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Trans. on Information Theory