Call for Papers: Special Issue on Tech Predictions 2025

Computer seeks submissions for this upcoming special issue.
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Submissions Due: 31 January 2025

Important Dates

  • Submissions due: 31 January 2025
  • Publication date: September 2025

Call for Papers

Technology predictions have always been hard to make, yet they attract wide audiences because of their speculative nature and potential impact. Accurate predictions could have substantial impact on business. Degree of speculation as well as potential impact is dramatically amplified with radical changes introduced by pandemics and wars. The ability to correctly predict may differentiate countries that will sustain tragic losses from those that will evade impact. Similarly, technology trends may make a difference in whether industries will entirely go away, undergo complete transformation, or suddenly start blooming.

Technology prediction is hard because it entails technical and business components, as well as a time dimension. Superior technologies have not always won. And those that did win sometimes took much more time to mature and ultimately reach adoption. Technology success depends on technical, production, market, social, and many other aspects.

Successful technology predictions will provide a basis and justification for the prediction, including research and development results that can quantify and qualify prediction. Ideally, the prediction will have been motivated by novel technological aspects or the use thereof.

Over the past ten years, the IEEE Computer Society has conducted technology predictions at the end of each year. Many other organizations around the world do the same. For examples of papers on technology predictions, see the December 2019 issue of Computer, including a rebuttal by Jeff Voas, at that time the incoming EiC of Computer. For examples of technology predictions, see the IEEE Computer Society Press Room, including scorecards from the past 10 years.

Scope of Interest

All submitted papers to this special issue are to focus on state-of-the-art technology predictions from various academic and industry viewpoints. The topics of interests in this special issue include, but are not limited to:

  • AI, AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), Large Language Models
  • Novel architectures, accelerators, quantum, memory, storage, interconnects
  • Sustainability, new energy sources, energy sector digital transformation
  • Digital Twins across industries: data centers, aerospace, bridges, dams, etc.
  • High Performance computing and data analytics
  • Communication technologies 
  • Reliability, availability, and serviceability; security
  • Continuum of deployment in cloud and edge
  • Megatrends, standards and road-mapping
  • Predictions in space tech, manufacturing, bio, health, oil/gas, transport, finance
  • Personal and pervasive computing technologies
  • Societal, legal, and ethical aspects, impact on supply chains, future workforce

Submission Guidelines

Computer is looking for succinct, practical, readable articles that will appeal to experts and nonexperts alike. Feature articles shouldn’t exceed 6,000 words (minimum 4,500 words), including text, bibliography, and author biographies. Columns shouldn’t exceed 2,500 words (minimum 1,500 words), including text, author biographies, and table text. Each figure and table are counted on average, as 300 words. Any article that exceeds these word counts may be rejected automatically without going through the review process. Article titles shouldn’t exceed nine words. All manuscripts are subject to peer review on both technical merit and relevance to Computer’s international readership–primarily practicing engineers and academics who are looking for material that introduces new technology and broadens familiarity with current topics. We do not accept white papers, and papers that are primarily theoretical or mathematical must clearly relate the mathematical content to a real-life or engineering application. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere.

For author information and guidelines on submission criteria, please visit the  Computer Author Information page. Please submit papers through the ScholarOne system, and be sure to select the special-issue name. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts.

Important Submission Instructions:

As of 19 November 2024, Computer Magazine will use the IEEE Author Portal for all new submissions.

  • If you have not yet started the submission process, please use the IEEE Author Portal to submit your article.
  • If you have started a draft of your submission OR if you submitted your paper prior to the IEEE Author Portal launch, you will finish the peer review life cycle of submission(s) currently under review through ScholarOne Manuscripts. You do not need to submit a new manuscript. All new and future submissions will be submitted entirely through the IEEE Author Portal.

Questions?

Contact the guest editors at co9-25@computer.org.

Guest Editors:

  • Jyotika Athavale, Synopsys
  • Dejan Milojicic, Hewlett Packard Labs
  • Nita Patel, Otis