IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012
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Editorial for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, January 2012 As I enter the seventh and last year as Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS (TPEL), I reflect on what interesting work it has been, where it is possible to follow the technological progress seen in the many different power electronics applications. This Journal contributes importantly to the technology development of the field and the Journal’s performance is well-positioned with in the global Electrical Engineering Journal’s portfolio. I have just returned from a Deans position, and within the last year, I have been attending the most important conferences and the feedback from researchers indicates that the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS has an excellent reputation with a fast review process, very good papers worth citing, and papers that are useful in future research and applications. Our publication is followed very carefully all over the world and almost every month the TRANSACTIONS has papers listed between the top 100 downloads from IEEE Xplore registered monthly. It is also worth noting that the papers are mostly technology papers, and not so much review papers. We are in the process of finding new EIC and hope to announce the person in Spring 2012. Power Electronics has never been as important as it is now. Globally, people talk about global warning and lack of energy resources, and as a result, a number of large R&D programs are initiated to come up with sustainable solutions based on power electronics. Excellent examples are energy efficiency, e-mobility and airplanes, microgrid and smart-grid, renewable energy, e.g., wind power and photovoltaic, lighting fields, where power electronics are unavoidable. Many companies have rapid growth because of the power electronics technology—in many cases they are called the clean-tech industry We still see an increased interest in the TPEL. In 2011, we received more than 1300 manuscripts including letters—an increase by almost 50% within my EIC period, which unfortunately, is pressing our track record from submission-to-final publication in the negative direction. One reason is that we are regularly accepting papers for two Special Issues per year, and in 2011, the Special Issue in the field of emerging technologies in collaboration with the IEEE Industry Application Society was a great success with more than 150 papers. In 2007, we published 2600 pages, 400 pages in 2008, and 3000 pages in 2009. In 2010, our page budget was extended to 3200 pages, 4000 pages in 2011, and it will once again be extended to 5000 pages in 2012. We have presently a backlog of 300 papers to be published and we will be fully caught up in 2012. In 2013, more pages might be added. Fig. 1 shows the number of regular papers received in the past years, as well as the amount
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2011.2178730
Fig. 1. Key figures for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS in the last seven years: a) Number of papers received; b) Number of pages published.
of published pages in the TRANSACTIONS—also the expected numbers in 2012. Every year, we have two Special Issues (in 2012 it will be"Emerging Technologies" by Prof. Tan and "Power Electronics in DC Distribution Systems," by Prof. Wu), and we are continuously seeking new proposals for Special Issues, e.g., looking toward 2014 and 2015. I urge you to contact me for further details if you have any proposals. We are working hard to keep a low review time and our goal is still to be able to promise that no papers will have a first review time longer than 100 days. A few papers are older than this relatively, but this is due to the high number of papers submitted. Fig. 2 shows the time from submission to publication in the last period—as it can be seen, it is less than one year, but this could be better. More pages will help on this issue. The impact factor of a journal is used as a key number for the "quality" of the journal. It is a number saying how many times
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 27, NO. 1, JANUARY 2012
Fig. 3. Impact factor of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS in 2006-2010. (Source: ISI Thomson Reuter).
Fig 2. Average time from submission to publication during: (a) 2010; (b) 2011.
(in average) a journal paper is cited within three years after publication. More exactly, it is calculated based on an average value of the number of citations publications in, e.g., 2008 and 2009 have received in 2010. In 2008 ,we obtained a record high value for the impact factor as shown in Fig. 3, but in 2009, is was reduced a little. In 2010, we saw an increase and are among the top 10 of all published EE journals on a global scale. There are three main reasons for our success. The time from submission to publication has in a period been significantly reduced—seen in a longer time-span, Web of Science (ISI Thomsen Reuter) register some Power Electronics conferences in their data-base and citations from conferences counts and contributes to a higher impact factor. Finally, the amount of
publications is, in general, significantly increased in our field, e.g., IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON RENEWABLE ENERGY, Journal of Power Electronics, IEE Power Electronics, and IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID. However, I still see many authors from our society having the tradition to cite important papers from major conferences, and not so much from journals even though all papers here are completely peer-reviewed with highest quality. Therefore, I will encourage all authors to acknowledge this by means of citing relevant journal papers in their work, and as the amount of published papers in the field is increasing, a thorough study has to be done before publishing a paper now. Authors should both look back in history, but also draw attention to the recent publications illustrating that the authors are complete aware of the state-of-the-art. Still we have the following general guidelines when submitting a publication to IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics FREDE BLAABJERG, Editor-in-Chief Institute of Energy Technology Aalborg University Aalborg East, DK-9220 Denmark E-mail:
[email protected]
Frede Blaabjerg (F’03) received the Ph.D. degree from Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, in 1992. From 1987 to 1988, he was with the ABB-Scandia, Randers. In 1992, he became an Assistant Professor with the Aalborg University, an Associate Professor in 1996, and a Full Professor in power electronics and drives in 1998. In 2000, he was a Visiting Professor with the University of Padova, Padova, Italy. His research areas are in power electronics and its applications like wind turbines, PV systems,and adjustable speed drives. Dr. Blaabjerg is a member of the European Power Electronics and Drives Association and the IEEE Industry Applications Society Industrial Drives Committee. He is also a member of the Industry Power Converter Committee and the Power Electronics Devices and Components Committee in the IEEE Industry Application Society. Since 2006, he has been Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, as well as he was Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Power Electronics Society from 2005 to 2007. He was also Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Industry Applications Society from 2010 to 2011. He received the 1995 Angelos Award for his contribution in modulation technique and the Annual Teacher prize at Aalborg University in 1995. In 1998, he received the Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award from the IEEE Power Electronics Society. He has received ten IEEE Prize paper awards and another prize paper award at PELINCEC Poland 2005. He received the IEEE Power Electronics Society Distinguished Service Award in 2009 as well as the EPE-PEMC 2010 Council award.
