SIGMOBILE 1997-98 Annual Report

Publication Initiatives
 
Mobile Computing and Communications Review (MC²R)
 
Established in April 1997, MC²R has become the primary news forum for SIGMOBILE members to share and read about recent research directions and results, and to follow relevant meetings and events around the world that they were unable to attend. MC²R continued to maintain the highest publication standards by publishing double-blind peer-reviewed journal-style and tutorial-style papers covering some of the most important and emerging areas of mobile computing and wireless networking. Regularly published articles included: meeting reports from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Wireless ATM Forum (WATM), IEEE and ACM conference reports, and book reviews. In addition to these timely and informative articles, several opinion columns and essays from established leaders in the field were also published.

Since the publication of the first issue in April 1997, five additional issues were published between July 1997 and June 1998. Due to the growing popularity of this newsletter and in response to a request made by the editors, ACM's SIG Board approved a 50% increase in the overall page budget for MC²R in March 1998. Despite this expansion in submitted and ultimately published papers, MC²R has managed to maintain an extremely small average turnaround time of less than 6 months between submission and physical publication.

Some of the notable initiatives taken in MC²R this past year included:

1. Cross-Indexing of Articles.
   Articles published in MC²R are now indexed within INSPEC:

   INSPEC is easily the most well-used and well-known science and engineering index. This was thus an important milestone for MC²R and SIGMOBILE, as it brings to the forefront the work published in MC²R to a much larger community of researchers worldwide. As INSPEC users' keyword searches hit our articles, we expect that papers published in MC²R will be cited in future publications of these researchers, thus enhancing the reputation of our Newsletter and SIGMOBILE.

2. Web Presence.
   A leading-edge web site was established for MC²R.
    
   
3. Our web site has become the focal point for most author submission activities, providing substantial document preparation information and feedback. We are able to maintain short turnaround times by working exclusively through electronic mail, reducing author, referee and editor burdens.