IEEE T&S Magazine: Undergoing Transformation

Citation: K. Michael, "IEEE T&S Magazine: Undergoing Transformation [Editorial]," in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 5-6, winter 2012, doi: 10.1109/MTS.2012.2230072.

Image by Karolina Grabowska

Our magazine is in a transformative period, not only because we are “Going Green” in 2013, but because we are experiencing tremendous growth in quality international submissions. This means that we are increasingly appealing to an international audience with transdisciplinary interests. This has not gone unnoticed by the media, nor by our SSIT readership or wider engineering community.

To those who have sent me personal messages of support, or have noted papers they have enjoyed reading, I thank you. The downside to the success we are experiencing means we have ended up with a slight backlog of papers awaiting publication. We also need more people to put up their hand to review papers from diverse areas of expertise, we have had to increase our overall rejection rate, sporadically increase our page count, and reduce the word count of some papers that have been accepted.

We are looking into various ways that we can overcome some of these issues as we go online next year, especially by using the power Web 2.0 can offer to integrate various facets of our outreach activities. For instance, we are seeking the ability to use a single portal for SSIT news and events, ISTAS conferences, Technology and Society Magazine (with full manuscript registration), SSIT-related social media, and an SSIT blog.

In this Winter (December) 2012 issue we also say thank you to our outgoing Associate Editors, Professor Ming Ivory of James Madison University and Professor Reza Djavanshir of Johns Hopkins University, for their contribution to the Magazine over the years. Professor Ivory is now the Director of the Graduate Integrated Science and Technology program at JMU, and Professor Djavanshir continues his work in the Innovation for Humanity course at JHU, taking students to do research and help with underprivileged societies in Kenya, Rwanda, Peru, and India. I know their link to the Magazine will remain an important one.

It is my pleasure to announce that our incoming Associate Editors, beginning January 1, 2013, are Professor Steve Mann of the University of Toronto, Canada, and Dr. Jeremy Pitt of Imperial College London, England. Recruiting both Steve and Jeremy was a strategic decision for several reasons.

The first and foremost reason for their election has to do with their international standing in the engineering community. Steve, who was an instrumental force at the MIT Media Lab at the time that Nicholas Negroponte was Director, has had an awesome impact on the field of wearable computing internationally, and Jeremy has been instrumental in key EU-wide activities on pervasive adaptation, responsible for bringing thought leaders together from across the world.

As a prolific inventor, Steve has integrated his science, technology, engineering, and mathematics work with that of design and art (DASTEM), and has never shied away from speaking of the social implications of emerging technologies, especially those stemming from his own inventions. Jeremy’s current research focuses on the logical representation of computational justice in self-organizing networks and infrastructures, and the impact of ubiquitous and adaptive computing on society, commerce, and culture. In his latest edited book, This Pervasive Day (2012), he demonstrates the importance of continually asking the right questions in our quest for advancing humanity.

The second reason for getting Steve and Jeremy on board has to do with their physical locations and online presence. Steve is based in Toronto, Canada, and is well known in the United States (in fact globally) for his work in DASTEM. Jeremy is based in the U.K. and has a large network into the EU in particular. We need to cultivate and encourage our global presence more broadly, commensurate to the submissions we are receiving from authors residing internationally.

Another growth market is in India, China, and Japan, and I look forward to introducing one more Associate Editor from one of these countries in the future. For now, please join me in welcoming both Steve and Jeremy to Technology and Society Magazine. I know they will have a tremendous impact on the Magazine through their ongoing support and counsel.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Terri Bookman for being such a tireless Managing Editor for many years. While SSIT has been around for 40 years, Terri has been Managing Editor of the Magazine for 22 years! She has remained our single constant throughout. I feel extremely fortunate to be surrounded by such a great team, past and present, as I head into my second year as Editor.

What to Expect from Technology and Society Magazine in 2013…

Many exciting changes are planned for IEEE Technology and Society Magazine in 2013. T&S will continue to grow in size, with close to 300 pages of material published next year. In addition, in 2013 T&S will be published in digital format, with the option to purchase the hardcopy.

Beginning in March 2013 with our Spring 2013 issue, all T&S subscribers will receive two emails. The first will announce the publication of the issue and will contain a clickable Table of Contents linking to the PDF IEEE Xplore file for each article. The Table of Contents also will carry short summaries and an identifying icon for each article in the new issue.

The initial Table of Contents announcement email will be quickly followed with a second email for the issue. The second T&S email will contain links to a "virtual" version of the magazine—an electronic version of the magazine that mimics a paper copy. Readers will be able to turn pages and experience T&S much the same way they would experience a paper copy.

Please watch for these emails in early March, and we hope you enjoy Technology and Society Magazine's new format.

—The Editors

Citation: K. Michael, "IEEE T&S Magazine: Undergoing Transformation [Editorial]," in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 5-6, winter 2012, doi: 10.1109/MTS.2012.2230072.