Journal of Real-Time Image Processing: first issue of volume 11

Although we are half way through the 11th publication year of Journal of Real-Time Image Processing, the four issues of volume 11 have already appeared this year and this issue constitutes the first issue of volume 12. This is due to the fact that this year in 2016, two volumes or a total of eight issues are being published. The additional volume 12 is arranged for the purpose of significantly reducing the backlog of accepted papers that have already appeared as online-first articles but are waiting to appear in print. An editorial board meeting of JRTIP was recently held in Brussels in April 2016 which took place during the SPIE Conference on Real-Time Image and Video Processing as part of SPIE Photonics Europe. We thank our colleagues who made the meeting possible by their presence in Brussels despite the difficult circumstances that existed. A picture of the board members and the journal editor attending the meeting appears in Fig. 1. After general information on the merger between the publishing companies Springer and Nature with no impact on the organizational aspects of JRTIP and a brief overview of the JRTIP publishing report, the following major topics were discussed during the meeting: (1) improving the turnaround time of the review process, (2) problems related to copyright aspects and self-archiving of preprint articles, (3) creating critical mass for special issues in light of the increase in the number of pages per issue, and (4) the handling of significant increase that has occurred in the number of manuscript submissions. To address the difficulties of finding reviewers who provide timely and quality reviews, it was recommended to select potential reviewers from the list of references of submitted manuscripts, to follow-up reviews by proactive engagement with reviewers and timely reminders, and if necessary to provide reviews by the handling associate editor when timeliness becomes significantly affected. The substantial increase in the number of submissions in 2016 compared to 2015 is partly due to the fact that many manuscripts whose scope does not match the real-time thrust of the journal are being submitted by authors who fail to take the real-time theme of the journal into consideration. To address copyright issues, it is important to note the Springer’s Open Access publishing policy including author rights under Springer’s copyright statement and its self-archiving policy as outlined at the link http://www.springer.com/gp/open-access/authors-rights/ self-archiving-policy/2124. Another topic discussed at the meeting among the associate editors present, who all had conducted special issues previously, was the impact of their special issues due to the coverage of hot topics in real-time image and video processing, generating a trigger for awareness of hot topics, and serving as a catalyst toward recruiting motivated associate editors to the editorial board. Considering that the number of pages per issue has now grown to 200 pages, it is important for future special issue proposals to generate a critical mass of articles that are relevant to the real-time thrust of the journal on a focussed topic of interest. It would be greatly beneficial if colleagues who wish to be guest editors of JRTIP first contact potential authors in advance before proposing a special issue to make sure a critical mass of articles can be offered as a special issue. & Nasser Kehtarnavaz kehtar@utdallas.edu