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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, VOL. 11, NO. 1, MARCH 2010
Building an Intellectual Highway for ITS Research and Development
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ELCOME to 2010, and Happy New Tiger Year! I am writing this editorial on the Eve of the Chinese New Year. This is my first Chinese New Year’s Eve in China after a 24-year absence. The night is bright and full of colors with the continuous lighting of firecrackers in the sky. The explosion of sounds is chaotic, rhythmic, and overwhelming, I feel excited, like I am back in my childhood. In just a few minutes, the Year of the Ox will pass into the Year of the Tiger. In a happy coincidence, the first day of the New Tiger Year also happens to be Valentine’s Day, so
Based on the timeliness and quality of their services in the past year, the following three T-ITS editors have been selected: Prof. Urbano Nunes, University of Coimbra, Portugal; Prof. S. C. Wong, The University of Hong Kong, China; and Prof. Ljubo Vlacic, Griffith University, Australia. An award ceremony will be held and plaques will be presented to them at the 2010 IEEEE International Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference in Madeira Island, Portugal. In the future, this award will be issued to selected editors annually. Congratulations to Urbano, S. C., and Ljubo! Thanks for your great service. In addition, a “Top 10 Committee” was established at our editorial meeting last October in St. Louis, MO, to select the 10 best papers published in T-ITS over the past decade (2000–2009). I have asked Prof. Bill Scherer, our society president, to head the committee. The Top 10 Committee will be transformed into a special committee to set up the rules for selecting the best Transactions Papers after 2010. Very soon, T-ITS will have an honor system to reward the contributions and services of our authors and editors.
(The Chinese Character for Double Happiness)
to our readers, authors, reviewers, editors, and everyone. I need to make a Tiger Year’s Resolution for our TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENCE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS (T-ITS), and it should match up with Tiger’s bravery and courage. To do this, my resolution will be for three years instead of one, and for three goals instead of one goal: 1) Before the end of 2010, complete the review process for all manuscripts submitted before 2010. 2) Before the end of 2011, complete the review process for all submitted manuscripts within a period from 9 to 12 months. 3) Before the end of 2012, complete the review process for all submitted manuscripts within a period from six to nine months. Of course, the realization of my resolution depends on our past and future. Below is a brief summary of my 2009 Ox Year Report and 2010 Tiger Year Plan. I. BEST EDITOR AWARD AND THE TOP 10 COMMITTEE First, I would like to announce the winners of 2009 Outstanding Service Awards for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, established by the Board of Governors of the IEEE ITS Society in October 2009.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2010.2043751
II. BRIEF REPORT ON 2009 As I have described to you in my previous two editorials, the overall state of the T-ITS is great and I will not repeat them here. Instead, I will focus on some of the major problems we are facing. 1) Timeliness of the review process. Due to an increase in the number of submitted manuscripts, the load on associate editors was increased significantly last year. Currently, the rate of timely completion for the first round review is less than 70%. 2) Effectiveness and timeliness of the communication between authors, associate editors, and Editor-in-Chief (EiC). Last year, I had encountered five cases that cost me significant amounts of time and effort to solve the related problems. One involved a paper recommended for acceptance with minor revision by a special issue editor but was rejected later by that same editor for the regular issue. Three of the concerned papers were accepted with minor revisions and then recommended for “revise and resubmission” after the review of the modified version. The last case was caused by the long delay and misunderstanding of the review process by both the authors and the associate editor. In dealing with those cases, I realized those problems could be solved smoothly if we had communicated with the authors in a timely and proactive manner. As EiC, I should take the most responsibility in such cases and will take steps to prevent them from happening in the future.
1524-9050/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
BUILDING AN INTELLECTUAL HIGHWAY FOR ITS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
3) Some associate editors have acted as the reviewers of the manuscripts assigned to them. This is not allowed by IEEE regulation. If an associate editor has a special need to act as a reviewer, he/she can include his/her comments in his/her final report to me or send an e-mail to me directly. I believe our associate editors should carefully examine and comment on the manuscripts they receive, but we need to follow the proper procedure. 4) Plagiarism. Last year, we found two cases of plagiarism: One used anothers’ results without proper references, and one was a case of self-plagiarism. All associate editors must be more careful about plagiarism in the future. III. BRIEF PLAN FOR 2010 In addition to my regular editorial tasks, in the Year of the Tiger, I will complete the following five specific objectives. 1) Timeliness. Starting now, any associate editor who has three papers with a review process of more than 12 months without justification will be removed from the editorial board. Last year, I removed more than 10 associate editors from the board for their inaction. 2) Effectiveness. Two weeks ago, I completed a list of a dozen “urgent” tasks for T-ITS. A few of these emergencies were created by losing track of e-mails requesting waivers for extra page charges, since I receive hundreds of them each day. In order to reduce the possibility of such cases, I have created a new Gmail account
[email protected] for handling T-ITS affairs only. In addition, I will start the process of implementing the procedure of informing authors proactively in case the review of their papers cannot be completed according to the specified timeline, instead
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of waiting passively for authors to act themselves. I will hire a new editorial associate for this purpose and to monitor the quality of services in our review process. 3) Awards. We need to work with the Top 10 Committee to select both the Top 10 Papers published by T-ITS from 2000 to 2009 and our first Best Transactions Paper in 2010. To help this process, I will find a team of volunteers to conduct a series of detailed studies of the papers published by our journal so far, from their statistics, author networks, geographical distributions, to their citation, and impact. The result will be published in T-ITS as editorials, special, or regular papers. 4) Review Papers. This year, we will work with a new page budget of 1008 pages: an increase of almost 300. I will use some of the new pages for survey papers, especially those on new topics and emerging fields in ITS. Our associate editors are encouraged to identify potential areas and work with me to find qualified authors for survey articles. 5) New Media. Yes, we will start the process of constructing our blog site for T-ITS this year. Volunteers are much needed. Please contact me with ideas and if you can help. This is my second year as the Editor in Chief. While last year can be viewed as my transitional year, this year marks the official beginning of my elected term. My goal is to start a process of building the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS into an intellectual highway in the transportation world for ITS research, development, and applications. By working closely with you, I hope to reach this goal within three years. FEI-YUE WANG, Editor-in-Chief
