Upon receipt, the Editor-in-Chief circulates the proposal to the Senior Editorial Board for their comments. Depending on this feedback, the proposal may be approved, rejected (with appropriate supporting reasons), or returned to the GEs for additional information. Usually this process will take no more than 2 weeks.
SI Proposal Assessment Criteria
A. Relevance
How relevant is the proposed topic? How relevant is the topic for the signal processing society? How important are the available results?
B. Timeliness
How timely is the topic? Have there been significant contributions to the area during the last 5/10 years?
C. Applications
What applications or theoretical tools are relevant to the current proposal? How could these applications/tools benefit the signal processing community?
D. Broadness
How broad is the research appeal? Are there strong research groups in a significant number of different countries working in the area?
E. Cross-communities
Does this special issue have the possibility of eliciting interest from other IEEE societies, thus increasing the basis of potential authors and readership?
F. Redundancy
Have there been previous special issues in this area in other publications, notably IEEE Transactions? How successful were they in terms of readership/citations?
G. Target authors
Are there particular authors that should be targeted for this special issue, perhaps with an invited or tutorial paper (still subject to same rigorous reviewing process)?
H. Guest editors diversity
Do the guest editors present enough diversity in terms of topics coverage, gender and geography?
I. Guest editors qualifications
Do the guest editors have sufficient expertise and experience to properly handle reviews of papers in the proposed areas? Have the guest editors published in the area of the proposal or are they industry leaders in the area? Do all guest editors meet the minimum qualifications of being at-least 5 years since a PhD?
SI Follow-up by Senior Area Editors
Upon approval of the Special Issue (SI), the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) will appoint a pool of Senior Editors (SEs) to oversee the review process for all manuscripts submitted to the SI. The assignment of SEs is at the sole discretion of the EiC. Guest Editors (GEs) may request a change only in the presence of a conflict of interest or other compelling ethical concerns.
The GEs are responsible for handling submitted manuscripts, including selecting and inviting reviewers. The assigned SEs will oversee the review process as observers on behalf of the EiC, with full visibility of the editorial workflow through the manuscript management system. Under normal circumstances, the SEs will not intervene in the editorial handling of manuscripts. Their role is to monitor the review process, ensure that the journal's editorial standards and ethical policies are consistently applied, and intervene only when necessary to address significant procedural issues, conflicts, or other exceptional circumstances.
The GEs are encouraged to communicate with the assigned SEs whenever questions or concerns arise during the review process. The EiC remains available to resolve any issues that cannot be addressed at the SE level.
