We have closed the books on 1996, a year in which we published 2432 pages, a record for the 1990s. Part of the reason was the Special Issue on Codes and Complexity orchestrated by Guest Editor in Chief Alexander Vardy. The timetable for submission, review and revision was extremely tight and the appearance of the Special Issue on schedule was due to extraordinary efforts by Alex, his team of Guest Editors and our indomitable IEEE Editor Nela Rybowicz. She worked holidays to keep the schedule from slipping and we are extremely appreciative.
The theme of complexity in coding has waxed and waned in prominence over time and this is a period where interest is very strong. So strong that even within algebraic coding theory we are seeing an emphasis on performance as a function of decoding complexity rather than minimum distance as a function of block length. And this emphasis is entirely appropriate. After reading the new work on turbo codes and expander codes it is interesting to go back and read classic papers like Gallager's work on low density parity check codes. Also to look at how much computational horsepower is required for modern empirical investigations and to compare with the state of the art of simulation in 1962.
Plans are underway for an issue of the IT Transactions commemorating the 50th anniversary of the appearance of Shannon's 1948 paper. The issue is scheduled to appear in October 1998. It will be a collection of invited papers and the current IT Society President Sergio Verd\'u will serve as Guest Editor in Chief. Authors are being encouraged to give a perspective on what has happened in the last 50 years and to speculate about what the next 50 years might bring.
Electronic publishing continues to consume a great deal of our time. IEEE now uses a menu pricing structure that encourages electronic final manuscripts. While the Transactions still does not require final manuscripts in electronic form, we shall continue to encourage authors to submit final manuscripts in both hardcopy and electronic form. The fact that over 95% of final manuscripts are in electronic form really reflects the way papers are written today. Even with an electronic manuscript, the Transactions are not completely electronic. Look closely at any issue and you will see that figures (and tables) are still camera-ready and really considered artwork. IEEE is in the process of establishing a standard for the electronic processing of figures and tables. At present they can accept and process only TIFF images for direct insertion into the final paper.
We continue to have zero backlog. Papers that are accepted are immediately scheduled for the "current issue". Due to the production schedule at IEEE, the current issue is usually an issue that will appear three to six months in the future.
The quality of the IT Transactions is due in no small way to the dedication and technical judgment of the Associate Editors. We would like to thank retiring Editors Te Sun Han, Claude Crepeau, Vijay Kumar, and Tom Hoeholt for their service to the IT Transactions. We welcome Shlomo Shamai (Shannon Theory), Torleiv Kloeve, Ruud Pellikaan (Coding Theory) and Doug Stinson (Cryptography) to the Editorial Board.