1. IEEE Journal on Special Topics in Information Theory Status Report
Jeff Andrews
(on behalf of New Pubs committee)
Chicago BOG Meeting
October 2017

2. Status Update – Executive Summary
Aachen BOG meeting: a formal proposal to create a new special topics journal in IT was presented.
Motion: “ITSoc should submit a letter of intent for a special topics journal to IEEE”
An extended discussion occurred, well-summarized in the meeting Minutes
Vote: 17 For, 1 Opposed, 7 Abstain, Motion Carried
Letter of Intent was submitted to IEEE on Aug. 30
To be reviewed at next IEEE TAB Meeting, mid- November
Steering Committee formed

3. Letter of Intent (LOI)
Proposed Title (this can be changed later, suggestions welcome): IEEE Journal on Special Topics in Information Theory
Proposed Launch Date: End 2018 or Early (2019 much more likely)
100% ITSoc ownership (financial and technical)
LOI text provided on next slide

4. LOI Text
The proposed IEEE Journal on Special Topics in Information Theory will publish high quality technical papers on all aspects of Information Theory. It is intended to be a multi-disciplinary journal focusing on the intersections of information theory with fields such as machine learning, statistics, genomics, neuroscience, theoretical computer science, and physics. Many fields lean heavily on the fundamentals of information theory, including concepts such as information entropy, compression, coding and decoding, mutual information, divergence, capacity, and rate distortion theory. There will also be special issues for hot topics firmly within the information theory research community, such as new types of codes, short-packet communication, advances in multi-terminal information theory, quantum information theory, information theoretic security, and so on.
Such a journal is urgently needed for several reasons. First, the only other journal owned by the Information Theory Society is the venerable and well-regarded IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. But this existing journal is already very large, and not designed to handle submissions in many of the aforementioned cross-cutting topics, where a custom guest editorial team equipped with the relevant expertise would be preferable. Second, such a journal would lead to cross-pollination between information theory and these large and important fields. Third, there is a lack of any comparable journal in many of these multi-disciplinary communities, and so there is an opportunity to invigorate and broaden the information theory society by leveraging and encouraging collaboration with these growing fields. Unlike the existing Transactions, which is known for deep and mathematically rigorous, but often quite long and challenging (for non-experts) papers, the proposed journal will have predictable sub-to-pub times, be more open to application-oriented and experimental papers, and have survey or tutorial papers headlining the special issues. These features will serve to help educate the ITSoc community, reach out to new communities, and build interest in new cross-cutting areas of research.

5. Steering Committee
Four prominent ITSoc members have graciously agreed to serve as founding members of the journal Steering Committee
Robert Calderbank
Muriel Medard
Vincent Poor
Ruediger Urbanke
Chair of committee TBD (J. Andrews acting as “Shadow Chair” during the proposal phase)
Responsibilities will include selecting EIC, and generally steering the journal to a successful first few years

6. Expected Next Steps Await feedback on the LOI, end of 2017
Andrews may be asked to present the LOI to the TAB
Summary provided at February BOG Meeting
Phase I Proposal, early 2018
Identify first EIC, mid 2018
Line up first several special issues, mid 2018
Phase II Proposal, late 2018