IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - May 2022 - 50

qualified reviewers who have time to provide a review.
Senior editors are usually in a position to make good
reviewer recommendations. In other instances, reviewers
are not able to meet their commitment and senior editors
can recommend timely alternatives.
The fourth change was implementing automatically
generated email reminders sent to all associate editors.
The email reminders listed the state of each assigned submission
as well as the deadline for the next stage. Submissions
approaching or past an important milestone were
flagged to make this immediately visible to the associate
editor.
The fifth change was enhanced prescreening. All
TAES submissions are now prescreened by the Editor-inChief,
the Senior Editor, and the Associate Editor before
reviewers are invited. This may strike those who do not
publish regularly as harsh, but it must be kept in mind that
new authors are not always properly calibrated to TAES
scope and standards for technical substance. The result is
that only those submissions that have potentially publishable
results are sent to review. The load carried by associate
editors and reviewers was reduced and the quality of
the reviews improved.
The sixth change was to perform fewer review rounds.
In the past, it was sometimes the case that a manuscript
and its revisions were reviewed many times in the hope
that all reviews converged to a single recommendation.
This process was exhausting for the authors, the associate
editors, and the reviewers. We now try to make it clear to
authors that if a manuscript is not close to publishable
form after one or two rounds of reviews, we end the process.
This gives authors closure in a timely fashion. Some
authors elect to submit their manuscripts to another journal.
Others take the time to improve the work and create
an improved version of the manuscript, which is then submitted
to TAES.
In March 2021, TAES switched to ScholarOne Manuscripts
(S1M) as the manuscript management system. The
change was motivated by several factors that the AESS
Publications Board felt improved the author, reviewer,
and editor experiences. Because most IEEE journals use
S1M, authors who publish regularly in IEEE venues and
reviewers who review regularly for IEEE journals are
more familiar with S1M. This reduces author and reviewer
frustration associated with navigating an unfamiliar system.
The built-in tracking and reporting in S1M are
aligned with the metrics used by IEEE to evaluate the
progress of IEEE journals in meeting their goals. This
reduces the time the AESS Vice President of Publications
and the Editor-in-Chief must devote to producing reports
for IEEE. (A byproduct of this time saving is that it creates
time for things like reducing times to the first decision.)
Finally, the transfer of submissions accepted for publication
to IEEE Publishing became a seamless operation after
the switch to S1M.
50
The seventh change occurred in the context of the
switch to S1M. The reviewer form was simplified. The
simplified reviewer form emphasized a reviewer's evaluation
of the technical content of the manuscript. This
made it easier for the reviewers to focus on what was
important to them. It also made it easier for the associate
editors to identify issues important to making an
informed decision.
The eighth and final change was implemented this
year: associate editor recognition. The recognition was a
way to reward associate editors who were able to keep up
with their assignments, keep up with the reviewers, and
make timely decisions. The first group to receive this recognition
is listed in the Appendix. The criteria for the recognition
in 2021 were the average time to the first
decision within 70 days and meaningful feedback to
authors in the decision letters. Only those who achieved
this with a minimum of six manuscripts were considered.
The recognition comprised a small gift and a certificate.
RESULTS
A plot of the history of the TAES time to the first decision
measured in weeks is shown in Figure 1. The data are
taken from the quarterly submission-to-epublication report
produced by the IEEE Publication Services and Products
Board. The plots show data up to the fourth quarter of
2021, the latest data available as of this writing. Also
shown for reference is the IEEE average for journals. For
the time interval shown in the plot, the TAES average
decreased from 22.9 weeks (Q4 2017) to 13.1 weeks (Q4
2021). In the same time period, the IEEE average
decreased from 12.7 weeks to 11.4 weeks. The data demonstrate
the remarkable progress TAES has made over the
past four years. The relatively constant IEEE average
shows that this progress is not a byproduct of creative
accounting: the progress is real.
The reduction in the average time to the first decision
has also had a positive impact on the average time to
online posting for submissions accepted for publication.
The progress is documented in Figure 2. These data are
from the same source used to produce Figure 1. For the
time interval shown in the plot, the TAES average
decreased from 57.0 weeks (Q4 2017) to 32.3 weeks (Q4
2021). During the same interval, the IEEE average
decreased from 32.7 weeks (Q4 2017) to 27.7 weeks (Q4
2021). As before, the relatively steady IEEE average
shows that the TAES progress is real progress.
We believe the improvements in the average time to
the first decision and the average time to online posting
have had a positive influence on the quality of the editorial
decisions and on TAES JIF. The quality of editorial decisions
is somewhat difficult to quantify. But most senior
editors and I have the sense that the quality of all aspects
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MAY 2022
IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - May 2022

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