The third meeting of the 2008 IEEE TAB Periodicals Committee was held on 13 November 2008, at the Hyatt Regency New Brunswick, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Leung Tsang, IEEE TAB Periodicals Committee Chair (2008-2009), called the meeting to order at 1:07 pm EST. A list of attendees is attached.

REVIEW AND ADOPTION OF AGENDA The agenda was approved as presented.

APPROVAL OF JUNE 2008 IEEE TAB PERIODICALS COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES The minutes of the 19 June 2008 IEEE TAB Periodicals Committee meeting were approved as written.

CHAIR’S REMARKS Leung Tsang had no remarks and moved on to the business of the meeting.

REPORTOF VICE PRESIDENT - IEEE PUBLICATION SERVICES AND PRODUCTS BOARD John Baillieul, Vice President of the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board (PSPB), discussed the new plan for IEEE Press, the IEEE Access Alternatives Program (an experiment in open access), and competitive positioning (improving timeliness and measuring satisfaction of authors and reviewers). Accomplishments include the Proceedings of the IEEE achieving the number one position with the highest impact factor in electrical and electronic engineering and IEEE Spectrum winning several industry awards.

MOTIONS TO TAB

Endorsement of the following IEEE TAB Periodicals Review Committee (PRC) reports which have completed the entire review process: IEEE Computer Architecture Letters, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, IEEE Magnetics Society, and IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Steve Yurkovich, PRC Chair, presented the reports for endorsement. The motion passed.

Endorsement of the update to the Reprint Voluntary Page Charge/Overlength Paper Charge (VP/OPC) listing Laura Creighton, briefly discussed the list. There was a question as to what percentage of authors actually pay the voluntary page charge.

ACTION ITEM – Report back on percentage % of authors who pay voluntary page charges and percentage who pay overlength paper charges.

The motion passed.

Endorsement of change in charter for IEEE TAB Periodicals Review Committee

1). Presentation

2). Charter change

Steve Yurkovich presented the details of the requested change in charter for the TAB Periodicals Review Committee (PRC). PRC reviews all periodicals every 5 years for quality and timeliness. The number of new periodicals over the last few years has resulted in the committee member’s workload increasing significantly. It is requested that the committee size increase by up to 4 more members, with two of those members coming from PSPB to bridge communications between the two boards. The other main change is to add a development aspect to the Committee (changing the name to the TAB Periodicals Review and Development Committee). PRC objectives include to make suggestions for improvements, and to monitor quality, timeliness and adherence to policies and procedure. While no formal process has been established, over time the sharing of best practices to improve quality and timeliness has become an important part of the PRC process and being to able to mentor those Societies/Councils (S/Cs) that request it between formal reviews would help further the goals of improving timeliness and quality. Adding a development component to the committee would formalize this process. Timeliness data for all periodicals will also be reviewed regularly and timeliness metrics already approved will be reported on..

Discussion ensued and included concerns about the work load for S/Cs that publish outside of IEEE Pubs in providing timeliness data, the desire to change the name from “development” to “advisory” committee, and labor intensity of 5 year reviews (and suggestion to only review those S/Cs that don’t meet established metrics for periodical health and quality). Yurkovich mentioned that he always asks the S/C if they consider the process valuable and not a waste of time and PRC has never received any feedback that it wasn’t important. Comments to change from “development” to “advisory” were positive and the motion and charter were reworked and re-presented.

MOTION: Endorsement of change in charter for IEEE Periodicals Review Committee charter to become the IEEE Periodicals Review and Advisory Committee.

Collection of timeliness data will begin with periodicals produced within IEEE Pub Ops.

Efforts to gather data on out-of-house publications will be incorporated in the future

The motion passed.

Endorsement of changes to the PSPB Operations Manual Section 8.4.1 - Approval of New Periodicals– Laura Creighton, Senior Periodicals Product Manager, briefly explained the changes to this section of the PSPB Operations Manual. As the Technical Activities Board (TAB) is exempt from these changes, it does not apply to us, but PSPB asks us to endorse all changes to their operations manual. The new periodicals mentioned in this section are mainly geographic/other IEEE entity unit periodicals that previously didn’t have clear procedures to follow in proposing a new journal. Themotion passed.

Endorsement of changes to the PSPB Operations Manual Section 8.4.2 - Procedure for Making a Major Change to a Publications Service or Product Roberto de Marca, TAB Vice-President, noted that changes were requested by TAB to the original submission by PSPB. PSPB agreed to make the changes and the revised version endorsed by TAB is posted here. The motion passed.

DISCUSSION/INFORMATION ITEMS

TAB Society Review Committee (SRC) reporton TAB Periodicals Committee – Leung Tsang explained that the TAB Periodicals Committee was reviewed by the TAB Society Review Committee in June and that some recommendations from SRC were to increase the term length for committee members and consider more formal newsletter reviews.

MOTION: Endorse a TAB Periodicals Committee Charter Change to Modify the Term Length from One to Two years, beginning in 2010. The motion passed.

1). Presentation

2). Charter change

After some research as to whether newsletters should be formally included in the PRC review process, it was determined that newsletters were not considered formal publications. Thus a new motion was made:

MOTION: In conformity with PSPB Operations Manual Section 8.4.1.B, PRC will discontinue review of Society/Council newsletters. The motion passed. (Follow-up Note: this motion will be presented to TAB during the February Meeting Series).

IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) TAB Periodicals Review Committee draft report Jane Lehr, President of IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society, expressed some concern with the PRC report NPSS received after their review in June. The face-to-face meeting went well but the report appeared to note some inaccuracies/inconsistencies with what was discussed. There also some concerned expressed that the PRC role was evolving from an advisory one to a policing one. Yurkovich commented that the PRC can only make recommendations for improvement and that there were no consequences for non-compliance of suggestions. Some issues were clarified and resolved but the main issue that remained was the publishing of slightly modified conference papers in journals. This has been an issue with IEEE customers as they consider themselves to be paying twice for essentially the same paper, one published in a journal, one in a conference proceeding, and PSPB is working on addressing this issue.

PSPB Competitive Positioning Task Force and TAB Ad Hoc Committee on Timeliness Steve Yurkovich presented the recommendations of the task force which include to create a standing committee focused on competitive positioning, add a development aspect to the existing function of the PRC (already approved by this Committee above), annual reporting of timeliness data, creating uniform definition of “acceptance rate” for reporting purposes, and reducing backlog. Due to some concerns expressed, the task force now recommends the competitive positioning committee be a joint TAB/PSPB committee. A white paper on ways to improve timeliness will be presented during the February meeting series.

Periodicals Watch List

1). IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine It was recommended by the TAB Management Committee to delay the launch of this magazine to 2009. There may need to be refunds to 2008 subscribers. Publishing will also remain in house for 2009. IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society agreed with the recommendations and mentioned that there is a new Editor-in-Chief appointed and that the content is available for 2009 issues.

2). Timeliness updates for other titles on Periodicals Watch List

Most of the titles on the watch list appear to be getting back on track. Sorel Reisman, Vice-President of Publications for IEEE Computer Society, mentioned that there were some difficulties with launches this year due to it being the first year without a publisher at the helm. An emergency task force was called for IEEE Trans on Services Computing in particular and the plan is to be caught up with its 2008 issues by January.

Laura Creighton noted that, due to the number of poor launches this year, for future proposals a mid-year launch and 2 issue first year will be recommended.

All titles for now will be kept on the watch list.

Ordering of authors in papers with multiple authorship - requested change to PSPB Operations manual Section 8.2.1.A.2 Not covered due to time constraints. (Follow-up note: PSPB did discuss and voted not to make this change).

Withdrawal of IEEE Information Theory Society as technical cosponsor of IEEE Trans. on Mobile Computing effective 1 January 2010 Not covered due to time constraints, but this is for information only.

IEEE TAB Finance Committee list of Actions and Motions Backup documentation is available online.

REPORTS

Transactions/Journals/Magazines/Newsletters Report Fran Zappulla, Staff Director of Publishing Operations, gave a brief review of survey results from the recent author and reviewer surveys. Overall satisfaction was high.

IEEE TAB Periodicals Review Committee Report Not covered due to time constraints

IEEE TAB Transactions Committee Report Not covered due to time constraints

IEEE TAB Magazines Committee Report Not covered due to time constraints

IEEE TAB Newsletters Committee Report Not covered due to time constraints

Leung Tsang thanked the Committee for their hard work this year and he in return was also thanked for his hard work chairing the Committee.

NEW BUSINESS

The next meeting of the IEEE TAB Periodicals Committee is scheduled for Thursday, 12 February 2008, at Condado Plaza, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

ADJOURNMENT –The meeting was adjourned at 5:10 EST.