The IT Transactions are venturing on-line! The Information Theory Society is experimenting with making the full text of published papers available to the membership through the World Wide Web. IT Society members can access the Transactions through an IEEE effort called OPERA. We hope that you will visit the site ( http://www.jolly.ieee.org/) and send us comments to help improve the service. Since the Transactions went on-line June 20 there have been 417 requests for HTML files and 37 requests for PDF files in the first 10 days. We expect these numbers to increase significantly as more members learn about the service.
In October 1998 there will be a special issue of the IT Transactions celebrating the 50th anniversary of the appearance of Shannon's 1948 paper. Sergio Verdú is the Guest Editor in Chief. Plans are also underway to compile a comprehensive index of all work published in the IT Transactions since its inception. The Ad Hoc Committee on the IT Transactions is looking at two different options: i) a web-based bibliographic searchable index, and/or ii) a CD-ROM containing the full text of all published papers. Again we would appreciate advice from IT Society members and readers of the Transactions.
The IT Society President Sergio Verdú has articulated the concern in our community at the impact of excessive reviewing delay on the quality and timeliness of the IT Transactions. Dedicated reviewers are the mainstay of the IT Transactions and we are looking for ways to show our appreciation and to strengthen the special attachment many of them have for our journal. Of course the quality of the IT Transactions is due in no small way to the dedication and technical judgment of the Associate Editors. Al Hero (Signal Processing) and Costas Georghiades (Communications) will be retiring this summer. They have both handled a great many papers, with sensitivity and sound editorial judgment, and we shall miss their service.
We are planning a modest expansion of the Editorial Board to properly respond to the high volume of submissions in Shannon Theory, Coding Theory and Detection/Estimation. Imre Csiszar will join Shlomo Shamai as Associate Editor for Shannon Theory beginning January 1, 1998. It is an appointment that brings distinction to the IT Transactions and we appreciate Imre's willingness to serve. We also welcome the appointment of Alexander Barg as Associate Editor for Coding Theory following the resignation of Ruud Pellikaan.
Many of you received the July issue of the IT Transactions in June! The end of year index has a way of delaying the November issue and we hope that you will remember July and cut us some slack.