Editorial (Integration, the VLSI Journal)

Three years ago, I had the privilege of becoming Editor-in-Chief of Integration—the VLSI Journal. Today, it is a great honor for me to write this short editorial at its 25th anniversary. The strong support and trust of Elsevier, editors, reviewers and authors has led the journal to the healthy status that we are enjoying today. In a permanent effort to serve our readers, we start with this issue the publication of a series of invited papers on hot topics and future trends in VLSI technology. This series starts with two papers. In the first one, “Variability in nanometer CMOS: Impact, analysis, and minimization”, D. Sylvester, K. Agarwal and S. Shah review the increasing impact of process variations in nanoscale CMOS technologies, their analysis mechanisms and variability reduction strategies. In the second paper, “Network-on-Chip design and synthesis outlook”, D. Atienza, F. Angiolini, S. Murali, A. Pullini, L. Benini and G. De Micheli, review the Network-on-Chip paradigm as a promising alternative to the interconnection problems of emerging multiprocessor systemson-chips. We are convinced that these two papers will attract the attention and interest of our audience. Additional review papers will follow in the near future. In the past few years, a number of changes have been introduced at Integration—the VLSI Journal. In parallel to the tremendous progress in the VLSI arena, the scope of the journal has been updated accordingly. Submission of manuscripts and their peer-review process have been dramatically improved with the incorporation of a new service: the electronic submission system EES. This system enables a complete electronic flow, from submission to production, of manuscripts. Major effects of this system have been (a) a safer and quicker reception of manuscripts at the Editorial Office, (b) a faster communication with editors and an increased speed in the transition to review; (c) a better communication with reviewers and improved review handling process and (d) an improved tracking of manuscript status. The elapsed time from submission to publication has noticeably decreased. However, this does not mean that we are satisfied and we will try to further reduce it in the future. As an additional service to our readers and authors, accepted manuscripts are now also published at the article database ScienceDirect. Between 1 and 3 weeks after acceptance, manuscripts are electronically available. Although they may not have an issue number yet assigned, they immediately get a Digital Object Identifier, which allows identifying and citing each manuscript in other publications. One measure to decrease the review time as well as to increase its quality has been the introduction of a new role in the Editorial Board: the Associate Editor. Associate Editors will assist Subject Editors and the Editor-in-Chief in handling the peer-review of manuscripts as well as supporting promotion activities that will be appearing in the near future. My deepest gratitude to all the new Associate Editors who have volunteered to come aboard and serve the journal: A. Acosta (University of Seville, Spain), M. Alioto (University of Siena, Italy), D. Atienza (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain), Yici Cai (Tsing Hua University, China), J.M. Delosme (Université d’Evry, France), A. Doboli (State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA), G. Even (Tel Aviv University, Israel), A. Gentile (Universita degli studi di Palermo, Italy), S.K. Nandy (Indian Institute of Science, India), N. Nedjah (State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), S.V. Rajopadhye (Colorado State University, USA), T. Risset (Insa-Lyon, France), D. Stroobandt (Ghent University, Belgium), L. Thiele (ETH-Zürich, Switzerland) and H. Zhou (Northwestern University, USA). The passion they have in the journal will be extremely important to maintain and increase its quality standards. Starting in volume 40, the journal has also modified its layout to a most modern one. The new journal layout has also allowed the publication of a higher number of papers per year, hence solving the publication backlog that the hardcopy version of the journal had a couple of years ago. Increasing the number of published papers was also needed due to the huge increase of manuscript inflow (over 100% in the past 3 years), reflecting also the increasing visibility and attractiveness of the journal to our readers (and potential authors). Last but not least, I would like to especially acknowledge the huge effort of my predecessors as Editors-in-Chief: Prof. L. Spaanenburg, Prof. R.H.J.M. Otten and Prof. Georges Gielen. I wish to use this opportunity to also thank the numerous reviewers (over one thousand along the past 3 years) that unselfishly have devoted their time and effort to select high-quality papers and have provided unpaid feedback to the authors to improve their manuscripts. Publisher, editors and reviewers are pieces of a machine powered with the rich creative science that our authors provide with their manuscripts. Our deepest gratitude goes to all authors who have put their trust in Integration—the VLSI Journal, to publish their work. From these lines, we encourage current and potential authors to continue doing so. The final goal of our journal (and our main motivation) is to serve the scientific community. Therefore, we thank all researchers who trust Integration as an invaluable source of scientific and technical knowledge Francisco V. Fernández (Editor-in-Chief)