IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2017 - 6

3) Any IEEE Society will be able to host a data competition,
assuming efficient management of the competition (establishment of the time period, user management, and
so forth), and have participants submit analysis results
directly to the IEEE DataPort to facilitate assessment
and review. The IEEE GRSS DataPort was inaugurated
with a synthetic aperture radar/polarimetric synthetic
aperture radar database for a contest held by the GRSS
Brazilian Chapter.
In short, the IEEE DataPort is similar to IEEE Xplore but
contains data sets instead of papers and articles. Data sets
can be restricted (i.e., accessible after payment) or open
access. We believe that GRSS members will appreciate the
opportunity to upload data sets that will be citable (i.e.,
they will have a DOI) and can be linked to as supporting
information for their publications toward the objective of
reproducible research.
STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
A list of GRSS members having a wide variety of expertise has been forwarded to the IEEE Committee on Public
Visibility; these members will be available as contacts when
topics within the scope of the GRSS arise that require an
educated opinion. If you would like to participate, please
send me an e-mail including the topics on which you could
comment. I will then update
the list and send it to the IEEE. I
believe one aspect of the GRSS
THE GRSS IS THE FIRST
that can be improved is our
SOCIETY TO JOIN THE IEEE
public perception; despite the
large impact our research has
DATAPORT, THE NEW IEEE
on daily life, we are not as well
DATA REPOSITORY SERVICE.
known as other professional
societies that deal with, for
example, mobile communications, computing, the Internet, and so on. Therefore, this committee is being launched to increase our public visibility.
In addition, our efforts to form a Technical Committee
on Standards for Earth Observation are progressing. We
have already held teleconferences and face-to-face meetings
with representatives of the IEEE Standards Association. A
core team of interested representatives from industry has
been formed, and a list of initial topics has been defined.
If you are interested in standards for Earth observation
(which I consider essential to foster our connections with
industry), I invite you to discuss this topic with Dr. Siri Jodha Singh Khalsa, Nicholas Orlando, and Jonathan Goldberg from the IEEE Standards Association.
It is also important to mention our global outreach efforts. In June 2017, Dr. Paul Rosen, GRSS director of global
affairs, and Prof. William Emery, GRSS vice-president of
publications and IEEE Publications chair, visited the Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bangalore Chapters in India to hold workshops attended by more than 200 people.
In addition, Prof. Paolo Gamba and I met members of
the Brazilian Chapter during the Brazilian Symposium on
6

Remote Sensing (SBSR) 2017, the main remote sensing conference in Brazil. As GRSS president, I was invited to make
a short presentation during the opening ceremony about
the GRSS and the opportunities for collaboration.
We are also very proud that, just six months after the
founding of the Chilean Chapter, the 2017 IEEE Simposio
Internacional Geoscience and Remote Sensing-Chile took
place on 15-16 June. Dr. Alejandro Frery, IEEE Geoscience
and Remote Sensing Society Letters (GRSL) editor, gave an
invited presentation at this inaugural session, which also
included a welcome that I delivered by remote access.
Regarding our finances, I must inform you that the IEEE
has not permitted any budget increases for 2018. However,
so far, we are in very good financial shape. In the last week
of June, Prof. John Kerekes, GRSS chief financial officer, submitted our 2018 budget to the IEEE. This budget includes
more than US$220,000 for a number of initiatives:
◗ to promote international collaboration and the formation of Student Chapters
◗ to work on common projects
◗ to support Chapter activities in emerging regions
◗ to conduct our mentoring program for empowering
women in the GRSS
◗ to support our webinar program to issue certificates for
GRSS educational products (i.e., tutorials, webinars,
and so forth), which will be free of charge for GRSS
members.
According to the IEEE, future budget increases will be
linked to income increases. To prepare for coming changes,
I have asked the GRSS executive vice-president to conduct
a one-day strategic planning meeting prior to the November 2017 Administrative Committee meeting, with two
splinter groups focused on conferences and publications,
the two pillars of the GRSS's income. I will keep you posted
on the outcome in future "President's Message" columns.
PUBLICATIONS INFORMATION
I would like to warmly congratulate our vice-president for
publications, Prof. William Emery, and our four editorsin-chief-Prof. Antonio Plaza [IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (TGRS)], Prof. Alejandro Frery
(GRSL), Prof. Jenny Du [IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in
Applied Earth Observations in Remote Sensing (J-STARS)],
and Prof. Lorenzo Bruzzone [IEEE Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Magazine (GRSM)]-along with all of the associate
editors and anonymous reviewers for their hard work to
achieve the following outstanding impact factors: 4.909
for TGRS, 2.761 for GRSL, 2.913 for J-STARS, and 2.676 for
GRSM. Well done, GRSS!
Finally, I would like to bring to your attention IEEE Access [2], the IEEE's multidisciplinary open access journal.
The IEEE Access impact factor has also increased to 3.224.
The IEEE Technical Activities Board ad hoc committee on
the IEEE at the North and South Poles, which I chair, will
soon be inaugurating a special section in IEEE Access with
contributions from a wide range of scientific and technical
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2017