State of the Journal

WELCOME to the January issue of TC. This is going to be another exciting year for us. In this issue I will share with you some of the developments that TC is undertaking. During 2011, TC has maintained its position as a leading and prestigious publication in the fi eld of computing. The number of manuscript submissions (inclusive of Special Sections) was 872 papers (at the time of writing this editorial in November 2011). The number of papers published was 139 papers plus approximately 140 additional papers were posted online as preprints (with an acceptance rate around 23.6 percent). Going by the number of papers received to date, I can guarantee you that 2012 will be another successful year for TC. The page budget stood at 1872 pages during 2011, which will maintained at the same level in 2012. As a measure of overall timely review, over the last 12 months the delay encountered from submission to fi rst notifi cation has been under three months. We are striving to improve this turnaround period and I am positive that this will be achieved due to the effort of the great team that we have. I would like to extend my gratitude to the wonderful team of Associate Editors, Guest Editors, reviewers, and IEEE Computer Society staff. Of course, we cannot forget our loyal authors and readers. I thank you all for such a job well done! A number of special sections have been published in 2011. TC does not publish special issues and the special sections are the mechanism used to enable the organization of mini special issues to publish on topical themes that are of importance to our readership. The themes covered in 2011 were Dependable Computer Architecture, Computer Arithmetic, Chips and Architectures for Emerging Technologies and Applications, Science of Design for Safety Critical Systems, and Concurrent Online Testing and Error/Fault Resilience of Digital Systems . The organization of such special sections will continue in 2012. Information on the scheduled special sections appears on the journal’s homepage (please see http://www.computer.org/portal/web/tc). I look forward to the participation of our community in these special sections. In 2011, TC celebrated its 60th anniversary. Many of our past and current volunteers joined in these celebrations. One of these activities was to publish quotes in the journal web page from researchers reminiscing about their involvement with TC (see http://www.computer.org/portal/web/tc/60th). This page will remain active throughout 2012. So, please feel free to keep on sending me your congratulatory quotes and I will endeavor to have them published. In late 2011, a few of our Associate Editors concluded their tenure: Sonia Fahmy, Tarek El-Ghazawi, Sunil Khatri, Anna Lysyanskaya, and Igor Markov. I would like to express our thanks to these colleagues for all their professionalism and hard work and wish them well with their future endeavors. Also, in 2012 several new Associate Editors have joined our team: Eui-Young Chung, Petru Eles, Vincenzo Eramo, Masahiro Fujita, Teofi lo F. Gonzalez, Michael Hsiao, Niraj K. Jha, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, Manish Parashar, Gang Qu, Sanjay Ranka, Francisco Rodríguez-Henríquez, Eric Rotenberg, Berk Sunar, Zahir Tari, Mateo Valero, and Julio VillalbaMoreno. These colleagues were chosen through an extensive selection process which was approved by the IEEE Computer Society. I would like to welcome them to the board and I am sure their presence will contribute to the continued success of TC. Please feel free to send me your suggestions and recommendations. I welcome your ideas and suggestions on ways in which we can improve TC. I also look forward to receiving your technical submissions. One last development that I would like share with you is our multimedia center (see http://www.computer.org/ portal/web/tc/multimedia) that is an exciting new development that I would like to encourage you all to contribute it. We are hoping to grow our multimedia center in 2012 with the help our community.