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The IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) is administered
by 15 elected members known as the Board of Governors (BoG). The last VTS BoG
meeting was held during VTC2016-Spring in Nanjing, China. The meeting began
with the President’s Report that included a summary of the last Society Review
and the suggestions provided by the Society Review Committee. VTS President
Javier Gozálvez also reported on:
- New IEEE initiative on Environmental Engineering
- Requirement for all IEEE authors to have an ORCID account from July 2016, and
- Proposed changes to the IEEE Constitution by the IEEE
Technical Activities Board (TAB).
To inform VTS members, the BoG tasked Vice President—Membership Fabrice Labeau to write an article for VTSMobileWorld, outlining the proposed changes to the IEEE Constitution, and providing some background and perspective. Javier also presented the Treasurer’s report, and in particular the action undertaken to use the so-called “50% funding” to increase the number of Transactions pages published in 2016 from 4500 to 8200 pages. The 50% funding rule is one where a society with healthy finances may use up to half the surplus generated in the previous year for specific initiatives. Additional funding was being discussed with IEEE to further increase this number to 9500 pages in 2016. 
The Nomination Committee Chair Jae Hong Lee
reported that 12 nominations had been submitted for the 2016 VTS BoG members
election. Only once since 1990 has there been more than 10 candidates (11
candidates in 1992). The BoG approved all nominations for participation in the
upcoming election.
VP—Membership Fabrice Labeau reported a
slight decline of about 1% in membership compared to last year. He reviewed the
membership development activities that took place in connection with VTC2016-Spring
in Nanjing, wherein Board members gave talks at local universities. A total of eight
talks were planned, consisting of an introduction to IEEE and VTS, how to
publish with IEEE and VTS, and a technical talk. The goal is to create up to three
new chapters in China.
VTS Fellow Evaluation Committee Chair Gordon
Stüber reported that there were nine nominations for IEEE Fellow through VTS
for 2016, seven in the mobile area and two in the automotive area.
VTS has recruited 13 new distinguished
lecturers for 2016. Three of these are from the automotive area, with the remaining
10 coming from mobile—five from physical layer and five from the network layer.
Javier Gozálvez reported on the plans
approved to transition the IEEE Internet of Things (IoT) initiative. The
societies involved approved ComSoc’s transition proposal. A large number of
societies are involved, and VTS would only receive about a 2% share. Coordination
of the automotive IoT activities was not guaranteed. There was also discussion
on the assets that were part of the transition (publications are owned
separately by other societies and are not part of the transition). It was then
resolved that VTS will not participate in the IoT transition.
The BoG approved two motions from the Publications
Committee. The first motion limits correspondence papers in the IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology to 5 pages, with the option of one
additional page for $220 over page charge. The second motion allows IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology to move to mid-level editing service for
2017 for a one-year trial. This motion will help publish more papers in 2017,
and hence reduce the number of backlog papers. In fact, VT Transactions Editor-in-Chief
Michael Fang reported that, with a 25% acceptance rate and the current level of
submissions, we would need to publish 12,000 pages in 2017. The BoG is actively
working to publish all pages necessary in 2016 and 2017, to eliminate the
backlog in the Transactions.
James Irvine informed the BoG that existing
support for TrackChair would end just before VTC2017-Spring in Sydney.
TrackChair has been used for the VTC peer review for the past decade, and VTS
had been given the option to purchase the tool and run it. There was extensive
discussion on whether VTS should purchase TrackChair and continue its existing
workflow with IEEE Registration, or move to EDAS both for peer review and registration.
After debating the benefits and risks of both options, the BoG approved the
purchase of TrackChair and its use for peer review and publications support for
VTC2017-Spring.
The BoG also approved Chicago as host city for
VTC2017-Fall. David Thurston, Vice President—Land Transportation, said he will
act as General Chair for the 2018 Joint Rail Conference (JRC) that will take
place in Pittsburgh (the 2017 JRC will take place 4–7 April in Philadelphia, PA).
2020 will be the 100th anniversary of JRC. | 
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