Greetings, readers of this esteemed newsletter. I speak to you as the current Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. During my time in this position, which started in 2017, our journal has experienced an improvement in all of the most important metrics for a publication of its nature.

For starters, I want to mention the number of submissions. In 2018, TVT had 3349 submissions, a record high for our journal and a very high workload. The following year that number was shattered, as we received 4032 submissions, breaking the 4000 mark for the first time. And of course, each and every one of these submissions had to be painstakingly evaluated and reviewed, selecting only the very best and most appropriate papers for publication.

Our highly qualified and experienced team is responsible not only for carefully selecting the best ideas and research projects for publication, but also for helping the authors effectively in revising their manuscripts and improving overall quality. Their great efforts are reflected in our reference metrics.

IEEE TVT citation metrics, 2014—18

The above metrics are provided by the Thomson Reuters’ Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), and show a steady rise over the last five years. As for the metrics provided by Google Scholar—a very important tool for finding publications—the h-5 index went from 78 in 2017 to 90 in 2018, and the h-5 median went from 101 to 121 between 2017 and 2018.

These numbers mean more and more authors are choosing to publish their results in IEEE TVT, and these manuscripts are becoming more and more relevant in the literature. These improvements, in turn, attract more authors and more important research.

I believe that the increase in quality and importance for our journal will continue in the following years. Of course, I will also work very hard to maintain this level and these improvements.

These outstanding results are fruit of the immense efforts made by our qualified team of experts, who work very hard to review and service our authors and readers. They strive with diligence to maintain a fast response time to our authors (32.7 weeks on average between initial submission and publication—a very low metric) and a high level of manuscript quality for our readers.

I am grateful for every single one of our editors, reviewers, and administrators. And very special thanks to our 2019 Top Editors:

• Kaigui Bian, Peking University (China)
• Sunwoo Kim, Hanyang University (Korea)
• Hicham Chaoui, Carleton University (Canada)
• Guan Gui, the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (China)

They handled the most papers of all editors in our team and maintained the lowest response times, without compromising the quality of the accepted manuscripts. I also would like to mention our 2019 Top Reviewers:

• Nader Beigiparast, University of California - Irvine (USA)
• Boya Di, Imperial College London (UK)
• Guido De Angelis, Regione Umbria (Italy)
• Hongzhi Guo, Northwestern Polytechnical University (China)

They also reviewed the most papers from our team and did so in a timely manner, always providing helpful reviews that helped in improving the manuscripts.

For 2020, the goal is to maintain the quality achieved in 2019. As our reference metrics continue to increase, we expect to receive even more submissions. This will mean even more work, and so I will strive to improve and support our team of editors in all aspects of production.

TVT will also feature new special sections dedicated to electric vehicles and blockchain technologies. These two areas are very important for future networks and services, and thus our journal will strive to support such research. In addition, I will also work to recruit specialists in those fields as editors in the coming months.

We look forward to 2020 unfolding into an amazing year for TVT just like the previous years have been. After all, the readers are the ones who have the most to gain.

IEEE VTS Website