VP Publications Column – March 2014

IEEE Systems, Man, & Cybernetics Society has well established traditions and reputation as a
society with high quality publications that date back to the birth of the IEEE Transaction of
Systems, Man, & Cybernetics in 1971 and its spin-offs – Part A, Systems & Humans; Part B,
Cybernetics; and Part C, Applications & Reviews – in the late 90s. In 2013 these three journals
further evolved in the Society flagship transactions covering the three main technical activity areas
of SMC: IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (Editor In-Chief: Philip
Chen), IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems (Editor In-Chief: Ellen Bass), and IEEE
Transactions on Cybernetics (Editor In-Chief: Jun Wang).

Extensive research and rapid application development in the area of social networking inspired the
launch of the newest SMC journal in 2014 (jointly with the Computer Society) – the IEEE
Transactions of Computational Social Systems (Editors In-Chief: George Cybenko and Eunice
Santos).

In 2015 another new publication, the IEEE SMC Magazine (Editors In-Chief: Mo El-Hawary) will
launch and replace the current eNewsletter (Editor In-Chief: Mo El-Hawary). It will provide a forum
for everyday activities of the SMC Society, its technical committees, and members.

In the last several years we have witnessed significant growth in the quality of the SMC
publications. The impact factors and the number of citations place SMC Transactions Part A
(2.44), Part B (3.95), and Part C (3.11) among the top publications in their technical area. This
success would not have been possible without the dedicated work of all society members who
contributed to the transactions as authors, reviewers, associate editors, and especially, the former
Editors In-Chief Witold Pedrycz, Eugene Santos, and Vladimir Marik.

In 2014 the SMC publication activities are coordinated by the following Publication Committee:

  • Ellen Bass
  • C. L. Philip Chen
  • George Cybenko
  • Mo El-Hawary
  • Dimitar Filev
  • Bill Gruver
  • Vladimir Marik
  • Chris Nemeth
  • Eunice E. Santos
  • Eddie Tunstel
  • Jun Wang

and are supported by the Publications Ethics Committee:

  • Vladik Kreinovich
  • Saeid Nahavandi
  • Ngoc Thanh Nguyen

We are confident that with the support of the Board of Governors, Technical Committees, and all
members of the Society we will be able to further improve the quality and reputation of our
publications. Our efforts in 2014 will be focused on the following priority areas where we think
major improvements are necessary and achievable:

  • Maintaining and increasing the impact factor and citation numbers of our publications
  • Significantly reducing the time between submission and on-line posting/publication
  • Increasing the number of application/industrial contributions