Sunday, January 20, 2008

IEEE Transactions on Amateur Hour

I would like to bitch about IEEE Transactions on Communications, the 'flagship' journal of the Communications Society. Scare quotes are intentional.

It is hard to imagine how my experience with this journal could have been worse. In 2005 (!) I made two submissions -- a letter and a regular paper -- for publication. For the letter -- a short submission for which a quick turnaround is expected -- I waited 13 months for the first decision, which turned out to be a rejection. So thanks very much, that's over a year that I'm not going to get back to improve the paper. I'm not even mad about the rejection so much as the ridiculous amount of time taken.

The regular paper, though accepted, ended up going through a 2.5 year review process, which I'm sure would have been far longer in the absence of repeated and insistent requests for status updates from me. At one point the associate editor handling the paper had failed to respond to any of several repeated requests for an update over a period of about a month. Then, after the paper was accepted, I had to harass the publications editor to give me an estimate on the publication date. Finally, it is supposed to appear in the Jan 08 issue; yet, it is January 20th and the January issue has yet to appear. I checked -- this is pretty much the only IEEE journal that has not already printed its January issue.

The contrast is striking when compared to my experience with IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications -- I submitted a paper last February, and it has already been accepted and is on the path to publication, probably later in the year. Pretty much everyone on the publication path was professional and attentive to their responsibilities.

My advice to any telecommunications researcher is to AVOID Trans. Comm. if at all possible. I did not encounter anyone at this journal who seems to realize that careers are on the line whenever they engage in this kind of thing.

UPDATE: Jan 21: the issue has now been posted.

No comments: