SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003 (Vol. 20, No. 5) pp. 5-7 0740-7459/03/$26.00 © 2003 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society How IEEE Software Engineers Its Content
As I write this issue's From the Editor column, I have just returned from our annual board meeting. At this meeting, the magazine's combined Editorial and Industrial Advisory Boards meet to reflect on the past year and plan for the coming year. This is what makes IEEE Software unique among the computing literature. Topically Reactive Publications Most technical computing publications are topically reactive—they depend mainly on unsolicited submissions to fill their pages every year. Prior to joining IEEE Software, I was editor in chief of another academic journal for almost 10 years. Readers would often suggest I publish more on this or that topic. Unfortunately, because the topics we published were what the contributors chose to submit, we had little flexibility in "engineering" the journal's content. For the most part, leading a reactive publication is much like riding an inner tube over a waterfall. Rather than planning your trip, you're along for the ride. On the other hand, reactive publications are useful in that they accurately reflect the topics that researchers and other luminaries are currently thinking about. For instance, if lots of people are thinking about inspections, you'll get lots of inspection papers. If lots of people are working on glass box testing methods, you'll get lots of glass box testing papers. Because the goals of many such publications are to document an idea's source and facilitate communication among a community's researchers, this actually works the way it is intended. Topically Proactive Publications On the other hand, a publication such as IEEE Software has a unique goal: to expose practitioners to important trends in the software development community. This goal lets us be topically proactive. In other words, rather than simply depending on whatever gets submitted, we can engineer submissions through a well-planned and organized focus-issue mechanism. By proactively selecting focus-issue topics rather than waiting for what comes in, we can plan our "trip." This isn't to say that we don't encourage unsolicited "regular" contributions. In fact, we welcome them. However, the focus-issue mechanism helps us set IEEE Software'sdirection. But how do we decide what topics warrant a focus issue? This is where our annual board meeting comes in. Every summer, our Editorial and Industrial Advisory Boards meet to discuss important trends in the software development industry. The bulk of the three-day meeting entails discussions of trends and topics about which software practitioners need to know. By the final day, we usually have identified dozens of topics. Here are just some of the topics we came up with this June: Paring It Down Unfortunately, we only have six issues each year. So our combined Editorial and Industrial Advisory Boards spend the meeting's third day reducing our dozens of potential special topics into a short list that we think are most relevant to Software's readers. While current readers are of course a high priority, the leading topics are also influenced by what we think the software development community as a whole should be thinking about, if they aren't already. Here is our short list (see the earlier list for longer descriptions): Making It Happen Once we've identified potential topics for focus issues, board members take responsibility for finding people to coordinate them as well as to write and review articles. Of course, not every topic will pan out—we might not find the right champions and guest editors. Moreover, market or world events might bring other topics to prominence. And we might get timely unsolicited special-issue proposals that we think take precedence over our short list. During the next few months, you will probably see calls for contributions to focus issues related to these topics. If one of these topics interests you, be proactive and contact us. Conclusion How did we do this year? One of the roles of IEEE Software's Editorial and Industrial Advisory Boards is to help identify topics our readers are interested in. We are all vitally interested in how well we're doing at this. Did we omit some topics we should have selected? Did we miss some important issues completely? Please let us know by emailing me at warren.harrison@computer.org.
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The effect of software development practices on legal issues. For example, to what degree do developers' software engineering practices affect software product liability?