IEEE JOURNAL OF

SELECTED TOPICS
IN SIGNAL PROCESSING

A PUBLICATION OF THE IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING SOCIETY

Guest Editor Responsibilities

Once the proposal is approved and the Call-for-Papers is announced, the guest editors are responsible for:

• Informal Publicity: The Editor-in-Chief will ensure that the Call-for-Papers is sent to the SPS membership e-mail list, the J-STSP website, and the various society Transactions and the SP Magazine. The GEs are responsible for other more informal means of publicity, such as distributing the Call-for-Papers at conferences they attend, personally contacting associates working in the area to solicit submissions, announcing it on their personal websites, etc.
• Paper Review: As submissions are received, the Lead GE is responsible for assigning the papers to the GEs, who in turn are responsible for finding reviewers to assess the quality of the submissions. It is desirable for each paper to receive three high-quality reviews, although two can suffice if both are consistent in their opinions. All reviewer invitations and feedback must be conducted through the J-STSP Paper Submission System.
• Accept/Reject Decisions: Keeping in mind the page limitations for J-STSP issues, the GE team works together to determine which manuscripts will be included in the special issue. It is at this time that decisions are made regarding the length of the final approved manuscripts; in some instances, it may be necessary to require authors of accepted papers to shorten their manuscripts so that the page budget of the special issue is not exceeded. Note that due to the specific timetable for each special issue, papers that require major revisions may not be suitable candidates for the special issue; authors of such papers may be encouraged to submit their work elsewhere.
• Final Manuscripts/Copyrights: The GEs are responsible for making sure that authors submit their final manuscripts on time and in the correct format, and for collecting and submitting the required IEEE copyright forms to the SP Society.
• SI Editorial/Organization: The GEs select the order in which the papers will appear in the special issue, and prepare a 1-1.25 page editorial for inclusion on the special issue that introduces the topic, the general contributions of the accepted manuscripts, and open areas for future research. It is preferable to avoid an editorial composed of just an itemized list of "mini-abstracts" for each of the papers, since each paper has its own abstract already. The ideal is a discussion of how the papers interrelate and what aspects of the discipline they cover (or don't cover). Also important would be information on what applications the papers address, and on open problems or new research avenues in the area that should now be explored; i.e., sort of a "what did we accomplish in this special issue, and where should researchers go from here" kind of discussion. The editorial and GE bios should occupy no more than 3 total printed pages. Typically, this requires that the editorial be 1000-1250 words in length, assuming GE bios of about 150-200 words each.