Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In the editorial published in March of this year we reported the significant changes the Real-Time Systems journal is undergoing this year, the last of which is the transition to continuous article publishing (CAP).Starting from January 2026, papers accepted for publication in this journal will be immediately published as they are accepted, without waiting to be compiled in separate issues made of consistent sets of papers.In this sense, this third issue of volume 61 is the last one of the current pre-CAP era.Moreover, I'm completing 6 years as Editor-in-Chief (EiC) and it is time to hand over to a new EiC who will steer the journal starting from 2026.Thus, this is also the last issue/volume published under my coordination.It is, therefore, the right moment for a brief analysis of my term as EiC, the journal situation and the challenges that lie ahead.When I started my term back in 2020, the journal was starting to show a declining number of in-topic spontaneous submissions and had a few cases of long review turn-around time.Consequently, I identified three main goals for my term: (i) reconnect the journal with the real-time systems community, (ii) speed up the review turn-around and (iii) improve the journal metrics to make it more attractive.Concerning (i) we approached the main real-time systems conferences to set up special issues with extended versions of the papers nominated for the respective best paper awards.The idea was to increase submissions in the short term with invitations and use this increase to bootstrap spontaneous submissions.Despite the successful organization of several conference-related special issues, spontaneous submissions continued low.Moreover, several concerns were raised related to the potential negative impact of organizing special issues by invitation, only, on the journal quality metrics.In the sequel to this discussion, we started publishing topical special issues in topics that were popular among the highest-ranked papers in each conference.Extended versions of such papers were still invited to submit, but these special issues
Source: Real-Time Systems
Author: Luis Almeida
Institution: Universidade do Porto
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,990
OpenAlex ID: W4415619723
FWCI:
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