UNAPPROVED
IEEE Signal Processing Society
List of Motion/Action/Information Items
Publications Board Meeting
28 May 2013
Vancouver, Canada
Members Present:
Voting Members:
Mari Ostendorf, Vice President-Publications and Chair
Abdelhak Zoubir, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
W. Clem Karl, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing
Anna Scaglione, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Signal Processing Letters
Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
C.-C. Jay Kuo, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and
Security
Li Deng, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language
Processing
Fernando Pereira, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal
Processing
Wan-Chi Siu, Conference Board Representative
Ex-Officio Members:
K. J. Ray Liu (with vote), President
Richard Baseil (without vote), Interim Executive Director
Carlo Regazzoni (without vote), Director-Membership Services
Mazin Gilbert (without vote), Director-Industrial Relations
Guest Members:
Alex Acero (without vote), President-Elect
Members Absent:
Alex Kot, Vice President-Finance
Staff Present:
Theresa Argiropoulos, Senior Manager, Operations
Debbie Blazek, Administrator, Committees and Governance
1. Vice President-Publications and Chair, Mari Ostendorf, called the meeting of the
Publications Board to order at 7:28 PM on Tuesday, 28 May 2013, and called the roll. A
quorum was present.
2. Scaglione moved, seconded by Deng, to approve the agenda. The motion passed
unanimously.
3. Ostendorf presented the Board with her report, which appears in the agenda materials.
Her report outlined publication statistics, as well as challenges/projects in 2013, which are:
* 5-year review;
* Staffing;
* Plagiarism;
* Finances – better page budgeting and impact of Open Access;
*
*
*
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Volunteer burn-out – more IRs, more SAEs, and AE awards;
Quality/impact – acceptance rates, faster reviewing, and more queue releases;
New journals;
Promotion – paper awards and better use of Xplore bibliometrics.
4. Kuo moved, seconded by Luo, that the Publications Board approve the consent agenda.
The motion passed unanimously, with the following results:
4.1. The minutes of the 8 April 2013 Publications Board conference call meeting were
approved.
4.2. Publications Board E-Ballot: Page Length was approved.
4.3. Publications Board E-Ballot: Guide for Associate Editors - Incorporating AQE Decision
for Moderate Editing was approved.
5. Luo moved, seconded by Scaglione that the Publications Board approve the plagiarism
Policy 6.1. Authorship Responsibility and Misconduct, as presented in the agenda
materials. The motion passed unanimously.
 Ostendorf will bring forward Policy 6.1. Authorship Responsibility and Misconduct to
the Board of Governors for review and approval.
6. Luo reported that he has been working to restructure the EDICS for the IEEE
Transactions on Signal Processing. He noted that some of the EDICS categories were
merged together where there were overlaps, while others with low submissions were
dropped. He also noted that new categories were created, which are: signal processing
for power and energy, radar and sonar signal processing, optimization methods for
signal processing.
Luo moved, seconded by Kuo, that the Publications Board approve the revision of the
EDICS for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. The motion passed unanimously.

The Publications staff will work with the Editor-in-Chief to implement the revised
EDICS for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
7. Rich Baseil provided the Publications Board with an update on the Publications Manager
position stating that the job description has been posted and a few internal candidates
came forward. Baseil will review the candidates and a decision will be made on whether
an external posting is necessary. Baseil stated that the process may take approximately
two months.
8. Ostendorf stated that she is proposing two new paper awards. The first award being
proposed is a Groundbreaking (Long-Term Impact) Paper Award. Ostendorf noted that
currently all of the Society’s awards require that the nominated papers need to have
appeared within the last five years for Best Paper Award and three years for the Young
Author Best Paper Award. She stated that papers that are truly groundbreaking may not
be realized for several years. The Publications Board discussed and supported changing
the amount of years that the nominated paper must appear before receiving an award
from five to ten years. The Publications Board also discussed the name of the award
and Ostendorf provided her suggested names as: Long-Term Impact Paper Award,
Sustained Impact Paper Award, and Seminal Impact Paper Award. The Board decided
that Sustained Impact Paper Award was the best name for the award. It was noted that
papers that have already received another Society paper award are not eligible.
Luo moved, seconded by Scaglione, that the Publications Board endorse the creation of
a new society award for papers with long-term impact. The motion passed unanimously.

Ostendorf will bring the proposal for the Sustained Impact Paper Award forward
to the Executive Committee for their feedback and endorsement.
The second award that Ostendorf proposed is the Overview Paper Award. Ostendorf
noted that the Society’s current paper awards recognize journal papers for their
innovations. Ostendorf stated that an overview paper award is needed, as there is little
chance that outstanding overview papers will be recognized if we restrict the long-term
impact award to only original work. The Publications Board discussed the number of
years that the paper must appear before receiving the award and was in favor of
changing the number of years from three to five to more reliably determine long-term
impact. It was noted that papers that have already received another Society paper
award are not eligible.
Scaglione moved, seconded by Luo that the Publications Board endorse the creation of a
new society award for overview papers. The motion passed unanimously.

Ostendorf will bring the proposal for the Overview Paper Award forward to the
Executive Committee for their feedback and endorsement.
9. Karl reported on Policy 6.15. Handling of Rejected Papers noting that the proposed
changes in the policy are to clarify the rules for authors who resubmit manuscripts that
have been previously rejected from another journal and to make the rules consistent
between the policy, Information for Authors, and the Scholar One submission process.
The Publications Board discussed the wording in the last sentence of the last paragraph
of Policy 6.15. Handling of Rejected Papers. The Publications Board conducted a straw
poll and was in favor of changing the wording “will be” to “maybe” rejected.
Karl moved, seconded by Luo, that the Publications Board approve, as amended, Policy
6.15. Handling of Rejected Papers. The motion passed unanimously.

Ostendorf will bring Policy 6.15. Handling of Rejected Papers forward to the
Board of Governors for their review and approval.
10. Zoubir raised concerns about the current process for handling white proposals for special
issues and white papers for feature articles, which involves circulating confidential
material by email. Further, there is no easy way to send email to a subset of the
editorial board when there are members with a conflict of interest in reviewing. He
would like to have the white proposals for special issues and white papers for feature
articles reviewed within ScholarOne Manuscripts, providing a mechanism for anonymous
comments. The solution ScholarOne Manuscripts came up with would involve manually
inviting 20 or so board members for every proposal that is submitted. There is another
option that allows submitting comments anonymously, but it has the disadvantage that
if comments are added simultaneously then some could be lost. The solutions proposed
by ScholarOne Manuscripts are more tedious than the currently used Google docs. Luo
stated that the TSP Tier 1 review process has a similar problem of reviews being
conducted by email. Ostendorf stated here concerns about doing business by email,
which is a problem to JSTSP as well as TSP and SPM. She would like a solution that
works for multiple publications. This will be a topic on the agenda of a future meeting.
11. Kuo proposed a Best Associate Editor (AE) Award to recognize and show appreciation to
the good performers. Ostendorf noted that some of the journals have a large number of
associate editors, so more than one award may be needed. The Publications Board
discussed generating a survey that would be sent to all authors of accepted papers. It
was noted that the information received on the associate editors from the survey would
be very valuable. Some concerns that were brought forth were: we don’t want to miss
nominating the good associate editors and how many awards should be handed out?
Ostendorf suggested recognizing them during the AE Best Practices meeting or
enhancing the meeting in some way to show the Society’s appreciation. Some members
thought that a single “best AE” would be controversial. Liu suggested providing them
with a certificate from the Society/President/VP that they can display. Kuo and Karl
were in favor of a recognition, but wondered how to implement. Ostendorf suggested
forming a subcommittee to look at the issue. The subcommittee consists of: Kuo
(Chair), Luo, and Karl.

Baseil will contact Chris Jannuzzi, Executive Director, Electron Devices Society, to
get a copy of the survey their Society uses and will find out how it is
implemented.

The subcommittee will look at this issue in more depth and will bring the topic
back to the next meeting of the Publications Board.
12. Ostendorf reported that the Publications Board will meet at GlobalSIP in Austin, TX, in
December 2013. She noted that no meeting will be held at ICIP.
13. Ostendorf noted that she was skipping over the item of co-sponsored journals due to the
limited time.
14. Ostendorf reported on the Periodicals 5-year review and noted the timeline for the
review. The Editors-in-Chief are asked to check the data and update information on the
competitor’s journals, editorial policies, future plans, etc.

The Senior Manager, Operations, will forward the last 5-year report to the
Publications Board.
15. Charles Bouman reported on a proposal for a new journal called IEEE Transactions on
Computational Imaging (TCI). Bouman stated that there are a lot of “hot topics”
growing in the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP) and the journal has a large
page budget that is continuing to grow. He stated that there would be no problem filling
the new TCI journal as there is some overlap with TIP of 15% to 20%, but TCI would
also attract a new community of researchers that have a greater emphasis on multidisciplinary systems-oriented research. The new journal would attract people from
industry and government. Thrasos Pappas stated that this new journal is a great
opportunity for the Society as it would give SPS the opportunity to link applications with
imaging. He does not see any threat to TIP. Scaglione stated that TCI may lower the
impact factor of TIP at least for a couple of years. Acero stated that the Society should
socialize the proposal for TCI with other Societies before going to TAB for approval to
avoid any pushback. Karl suggested to possibly create subsets of TIP that are separate
transactions, such as: TIP-Information Processing and TIP-Data Analysis. Kuo
suggested to create a new technical committee that would support this new area.
Ostendorf requested that a straw poll be conducted to determine whether Bouman
should create a full proposal taking into account the cannibalization issue (hurting the
impact factor of TIP) and other issues raised by the Publications Board. Even though the
straw poll was not unanimous, Bouman received support to move forward.

Bouman will create a full proposal on a new journal titled IEEE Transactions on
Computational Imaging (TCI) taking into account the issues raised by the
Publications Board.
Ostendorf reported on a proposal by Petar Djuric for a new Transactions titled, IEEE
Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks that will help reduce
the size of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. Ostendorf stated that spinning
off new journals from existing ones is not a bad idea as long as the existing journal is
not jeopardized. Liu stated that spinning off new journals gives the Society the
opportunity to bring in new communities of people.

Ostendorf will ask Djuric to talk with Luo to gather data and work out the details.
This new journal will be considered at a future conference call meeting.
16. Ostendorf reported on the future of SPS publications and reviewed her slides, which are
attached to the agenda and will be presented at the long-range planning meeting.
Ostendorf reviewed her two slides on SWOT analysis and asked that if anyone had
updates for the two categories of opportunities and threats and to send them to her.
17. Ostendorf reported that authors are submitting journal papers that have been expanded
from conference papers. Both IEEE and SPS approve of expanding conference papers,
but this information is not communicated to the reviewers, so some reviewers are just
rejecting the journal submissions. She stated that there is a need for better guidelines
for reviewers on this issue. Ostendorf stated that she would like to discuss
AE/author/reviewer guidelines at the next conference call meeting.
18. Ostendorf reported that the ACM merger is moving forward and will get reviewed by TAB
in June. She stated that ACM approved the MOU, but Open Access was not mentioned in
the MOU. Baseil will address the Open Access issue with ACM to get their approval.
19. Ostendorf reported on submissions in double-column format and noted that discussion
on this double-column format needs to happen because when a paper is submitted it
gets posted on Xplore. Once the paper appears on Xplore there is no way to remove it if
there is a problem. The Publications Board discussed reviewing papers in the twocolumn format and noted that because the font is smaller, the papers are hard to review
and add comments to. Deng noted that he prefers the single-column format for
providing comments/remarks. Ostendorf asked for a straw poll to gauge whether people
felt strongly about single vs. double-column formats at submission. The consensus of
the Publications Board was to leave it as is with the double-column submission format.
20. Karl decided to skip his item on paper submissions from China.
21. Scaglione moved, seconded by Deng, that the Publications Board approve to change the
format for the IEEE Signal Processing Letters from four pages to four pages plus one
page for references only, following the change in the format for ICASSP paper
submissions. The motion passed unanimously.

Ostendorf will bring forward the motion to change the format of the IEEE Signal
Processing Letters to the Board of Governors for approval.
22. Scaglione stated that she would like the Signal Processing Letters conference initiative
to include ICIP, GlobalSIP and all SPS workshops that opt in. She noted that authors
would need a mechanism to check off what conference/workshop they want their paper
presented at.
Scaglione moved, seconded by Abdelhak, that the Publications Board endorse the Signal
Processing Letters conference initiative is expanded to include ICIP, GlobalSIP and any
SPS workshops that opt in. The motion passed unanimously.

Ostendorf will bring forward the motion to the Conference Board for approval.

Someone will need to monitor the papers to determine that they are exactly the
same as the Signal Processing Letters final manuscript.
23. Karl stated that the Editor-in-Chief-Elect should work in tandem with the current Editorin-Chief to make the transition to ScholarOne easier. Karl stated that ScholarOne only
allows access to one Editor-in-Chief at a time and he did not gain total access until April
2013. He stated the importance of shadowing the current Editor-in-Chief, so that both
can view the same papers and reports and navigate the day-to-day processes.
Ostendorf stated that changes need to be made in ScholarOne tailoring the system to
our specific needs, but currently the system does not allow two individuals to hold the
EIC role. Ostendorf stated that we need to push IEEE for changes to ScholarOne. Luo
noted that he used the “viewer access” during his EIC-elect period.

Ostendorf will look into the viewer access to determine if it fits the EIC needs.
Ostendorf stated that she feels that the Transactions on Image Processing and
Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing need to implement Senior Area
Editors for their journals.
24. Ostendorf stated that every plagiarism case should have an ad-hoc committee. For
cases where the plagiarism is blatant (e.g. verbatim copying of a large section of a
paper), the committee may consist of the journal’s Editor-in-Chief and the publication’s
staff person.
25. Ostendorf stated that she will review the cumulative list at a later time.
26. Ostendorf stated that the next meeting will be a conference call sometime in July 2013.
27. Zoubir moved, seconded by Scaglione, to adjourn the meeting. The meeting adjourned
without objection at 10:57 PM.