Building the Journal of Aerospace Information Systems: A Successful First Year

We just completed the first year of operation of the Journal of Aerospace Information Systems (JAIS). JAIS succeeded the Journal of Aerospace Computing, Information, andCommunication (JACIC), andwas founded on the fact that information systems provide the intelligence, resilience, safety, and operational capabilities of aerospace systems of today and the future. The growing requirements and complexity of these systems drive significant research worldwide. Our goals for 2014 are to build on the significant momentum from our first year and to further attract high-quality domestic and international papers that advance the state of knowledge in the areas of computing, information, and communication systems. We received about 45% more submissions in 2013 than JACIC did in 2012. The fields of computer science and information systems are developing at an unprecedented rate and are having extraordinary impacts on modern aerospace systems. The rapid growth and dissemination of new technologies in these fields has also given rise to a culture that emphasizes open-source, broad distribution of core technological capabilities, even amongst market competitors. While these fields have premiere peerreviewed journals and conferences, new developments and achievements are often posted online in moderated forums or directly on blogs. This enables rapid discussion and validation of newmethods and improves the overall understanding of the material. A key initiative in 2014 for JAIS will be to enablemoderated discussion forums on articles published in JAIS from the readership. The posted commentswill bemoderated byme to ensure that the comments are relevant and appropriate. We are very excited to offer this new capability, likely one of the first in the field of aerospace engineering and perhaps even in other fields. Authors have the opportunity to address questions and communicate in the same forum, if they wish. We will increase participation in the Journal through a few key mechanisms: special issues, invited papers from AIAA and other conferences, and inviting past authors to submit papers to the Journal.We are also reaching out to new authors throughAIAApublications and other advertising to attract new contributors. We currently have five special issues in development, in areas as diverse as reinforcement learning and adaptive learning based control, software verification and validation, resilient and distributed operation of aerospace systems, uncertainty quantification, human–automation interaction, and information security in the air traffic management system. We will continue to actively pursue new special issues; I invite potential guest editors and other participants to contact me with potential topics. I would like to personally thank the Associate Editors andEditorialAdvisoryBoard as they have provided invaluable advice on potential topics for the special issues. TheAssociate Editors have provided timely and thorough editorial coverage for JAIS. In addition to special issues, in 2013 we invited authors who had submitted papers to the AIAA Aviation and Infotech conferences to submit papers for potential publication in JAIS. These papers all go through the standard review process and should provide further substantive developments beyond the conference paper. We will continue to invite papers from these and related conferences in 2014 to give authors the opportunity to further provide literature review, detailed research studies, and supporting conclusions in a peer-reviewed journal. The successes of 2013 could not have been had without the tireless support of the Associate Editors of JAIS. Each Editor has made significant contributions in helping shape the direction of the Journal and providing high-quality editorial coverage for all papers submitted to the Journal. I am pleased to announce the reappointment of the following team as Associate Editors: Ella M. Atkins (University of Michigan), Arindam Banerjee (University of Minnesota), Guillaume P. Brat (NASAAmes Research Center), Jonathan How (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and EytanModiano (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). I alsowant to thankNagi Gebraeel (Georgia Institute of Technology) for his service to JAIS in 2013. He has chosen to step down as Associate Editor and I would like to take this opportunity to wish him the best in his future endeavors. Iwould also like towelcomeProf. Sylvia Ferrari (DukeUniversity) as a newAssociate Editor for JAIS.Dr. Ferrari is a leading authority in the field aerospace information systems and will no doubt help elevate the journal to even higher levels. I am very pleased to announce that the Editorial Advisory Boardwill continue to serve JAIS in 2014. These individuals are highly distinguished members of the community and it is an honor to serve with them and the Associate Editors; their names are listed on the JAIS masthead I would also like to thank the authors, reviewers, and the generous support of the AIAA in making JAIS a success.