SIGMOBILE 1998-99 Annual Report

Publications Initiatives
 
Mobile Computing and Communications Review (MC²R)
MC²R has become a significant scientific journal. We have been uncompromising in maintaining the highest possible publication standards. Since our last report, five additional issues have been published, between July 1998 and August 1999. Each issue included journal-style and tutorial-style scientific papers that had received double-blind peer-reviews. Our acceptance rate for technical papers has lingered between 16 to 17% per issue. Only papers with exceptional reviews were accepted for publication. Most of these have been cited by other researchers in several other leading publications.

In addition to top-quality papers, we have continued to regularly publish meeting reports from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Wireless ATM Forum (WATM), IEEE and ACM conference and workshop reports, book reviews, and opinion columns and essays from established leaders in our field. Our page count per issue has gone up an average of 50% from last year, varying between 52 and 72 pages per issue. Despite the increase in the number of submitted and ultimately published papers, MC²R has managed to maintain a low average turnaround time of less than 6 months between submission and physical publication.

Since its inception in April 1997, we have successfully delivered 11 issues of MC²R to the SIGMOBILE members.

Some important initiatives undertaken during this past year include:

1. Area Editor Appointments
   
   Two new Areas Editors were appointed to the Editorial Board of MC²R:
   
   
   • Prof. Mani Srivastava joined the Editorial board of MC²R in May 1999. He joins us as the Editor for the area: Energy Conservation and Power Management.
     
     Mani is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received a B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and the M.S. & Ph.D. degrees from University of California at Berkeley in 1987 and 1992, respectively. Prior to joining UCLA, he was with Bell Labs in the Networked Computing Research Department from 1992 to 1996.
     
     
   • Prof. Hari Balakrishnan joined the Editorial board of MC²R in September 1998. He joins us as the Editor for the area: Location-Dependent Applications and Service Location
     
     Hari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received a B. Tech degree in 1993 from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and his M.S. & Ph. D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley in 1996 and 1998, respectively. Hari was awarded the 1998 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his Ph. D. thesis Challenges to Reliable Data Transport over Heterogeneous Wireless Networks. This is the first Ph.D. thesis award presented by ACM in the field of wireless and mobile networking.
   
   With the addition of Mani and Hari, MC²R's editorial board comprises 14 Area Editors, 7 Feature Editors, 3 Advisory Board Members, an Associate Editor, and an Editor-in-Chief.

2. Cross-Indexing of Articles
   
   We are in the final stages of negotiating with the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) to index MC²R's papers in their Scientific Citation Index Database. Like INSPEC (in which our papers are already indexed), ISI has a large worldwide database of scientific papers, journals, and magazines.

   Indexing and abstracting is a service for our authors that we consider extremely important for MC²R's health. Not only does it increase the prestige of our journal, but it also encourages researchers to submit their papers to MC²R, as it exposes their research to a much larger community of researchers and practitioners worldwide.
   
   

3. "Top 10" List
   
   We are in the final stages of compiling a list of "best of the best" papers in the areas of mobile communications and wireless networking.

   Each of our Area Editors was asked to recommend his or her top 8 choices of what they considered ground-breaking research papers in their area of expertise, and to recommend their top 2 choices of tutorial papers that they considered to be a must-read. Our objective is to publish this "list-of-recommendions" on MC²R's web page and in one of the upcoming issues, for all who are interested in learning from the experts about the best papers on a particular topic. Our motivation is to capitalize on the expertise and experience of our editorial board to help younger researchers and practitioners. Additionally and perhaps just as important is the fact that this list will give credit to those who have made pioneering efforts.
   
   

4. Health Aspects of Wireless Technology
   
   Beginning with the January 1998 issue (Volume 3, Number 1), we initiated a new regular feature dedicated to discussing the impact of RF and IR technology on our health. The goal of this column is to educate researchers, engineers, and users about what is known scientifically about IR and RF health effects and what is pure speculation. We feel this information is valuable to our community, which is interested in comprehending the significance of the latest medical discoveries in this field of immerging importance.

   Prof. James C. Lin, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, accepted our invitation to write this column as a regular feature of MC²R. James Lin is a Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and is a recognized authority in the field of health hazards in wireless communications. He has written more that 140 journal papers and is an author or editor of six books.

   On a related note, as a gesture of good-will and healthy cooperation (no pun intended), we agreed to a proposal by Dr. Roth Stone, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, to co-publish Dr. Lin's column in his magazine. We are convinced that the readership of the two publications has little overlap, and thus providing greater exposure to Dr. Lin's articles, is the right thing to do for the sake of both communities.
   
   

5. Web Presence
   
   We maintained and added new material to our web site. Notably,
   • We have added a questionnaire, soliciting feedback from our readers about the quality of our journal. The questionnaire is extremely simple (taking less than 5 minutes to complete), and is very valuable to us as we use the feedback to improve MC²R further. It is worth mentioning that looking at the feedback we have received to-date, we are proud to state that everyone who filled in the questionnaire gave MC²R an "excellent" rating.
     
     
   • Our web site has remained the focal point for most author submission activities. It provides substantial document preparation information, and feedback. We are able to maintain short turnaround times by working exclusively through electronic mail, in order to reduce author, referee, and editor burdens.
   
   
   
   • Our list of Ph.D. theses granted in the field of mobile networking and computing has grown to a listing of 58 theses, many of which are available for download.
   
   
   
   • We have continued to maintain a comprehensive calendar of conferences, workshops, and symposia related to our field. Wherever possible we include links to the web sites of the listed events.
   
   
   
   • Our table of contents, with abstracts from past and future issues of MC²R is provided on this site and is up-to-date.
   
   
   
   • Referee solicitation forms and reviewer guidelines are provided on our site. Because of this, over the last year, we now have a large list of reviewers qualified to review articles submitted to the journal.
   
   
6. Noteworthy News
   
   Mahmoud Naghshineh, an Area Editor of MC²R, has been invited to serve as the next Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Personal Communications magazine. Mahmoud has accepted the invitation and will take over from the current Editor in January 2000. This is a significant position, which recognizes Mahmoud's standing within the IEEE community, and we view it as a statement about the caliber of people involved with our journal. It also opens up a new avenue for us to work closely with the IEEE as we strengthen our community further.

This journal focuses on the networking and user aspects of the expanding field of wireless and mobile networking. It provides a common and global forum for archival contributions documenting these fast growing areas of interest. The journal publishes refereed articles dealing with research, experience, and management of wireless networks. Its aim is to allow the reader to benefit from experience, problems, and solutions described. Regularly addressed issues include: Network architectures for Personal Communications Systems; wireless LAN's; radio, tactical, and other wireless networks; design and analysis of protocols; network management and network performance; network services and service integration; nomadic computing; internetworking with cable and other wireless networks; standardization and regulatory issues; specific system descriptions; applications and user interfaces; and enabling technologies for wireless networks.

MONET's technical scope reflects the emerging symbiosis of portable computers and wireless networks, addressing the convergence of mobility, computing, and information organization, its access and management. The journal publishes Special Issues in all areas of this field. In approving Special Issues, the journal places an equal emphasis on the various areas of nomadic computing, data management, related software and hardware technologies, and mobile user services, alongside more "classical" topics in wireless and mobile networking. The journal documents practical and theoretical results that make a fundamental contribution in these areas.