I have now received essentially all of the chapters for the Review of Radio Science (RRS). I say "essentially all" because there is a small possibility we may yet receive one or two additional very late chapters from Commission K. However, we currently have 37 chapters, with all Commissions being represented. The quality of the chapters appears to be very good. A current table of contents for the RRS is attached as Appendix 1.

There has been something unique in the process of assembling the book this time. In past triennia, we have had reasonable success in getting most of the chapters in by, say, November of the year prior to publication, with a few notable exceptions involving individual authors coming in very late. It has been unusual to have problems with more than one, or at most two, Commissions’ contributions as a whole. This time, the majority of the chapters were received in a reasonably timely fashion. However, three Commissions have had significant problems getting their chapters in, with one whole Commission’s chapters not being received until the latter part of February, and another still sending me chapters in the latter part of March. All of this has substantially complicated – and delayed – the process of getting the book edited.

The editing is well underway, although I will readily admit that I am behind where I should be (I’m afraid that seems to be my normal status at this time in the production cycle!). As I did for the previous volume, I have hired (at very low cost) a person to help with the basic formatting and, where necessary, conversion of equations. At this point, I do anticipate having the fully edited book and CD-ROM master to the IEEE Press/John Wiley & Sons publishers by the deadline of June 1. Phil Wilkinson has generously agreed to serve as Associate Editor-in-Chief, helping to prepare the CD-ROM master.

The merger of the IEEE Press and John Wiley & Sons is complete, and appears to be operating smoothly. Some time ago, they reaffirmed that they would honor URSI’s contact with the IEEE Press for the publication of the RRS book and CD-ROM. I am scheduled to have a telephone conference with the person in charge of production at Wiley before the Board meeting, and I will report any additional news at that time. I have very recently been informed of one change: we will be required to have a transfer of copyright form (transferring copyright to URSI) signed by at least the lead author of each chapter. At the suggestion of the IEEE Press, I have adapted the IEEE form, and will be getting each author’s signature as part of the process of proofing the galleys.

The information for this section of the report was kindly provided by Gert Brussaard.

Provisional Program: The Local Organizing Committee (LOC) is currently reviewing the need to produce a hardcopy version of the Provisional Program. The basic tradeoff is between providing a printed version for people who may not have easy access to the Internet or e-mail, and a production cost of about EUR15,000. A decision, in consultation with the URSI Secretariat, will have been made by the Board meeting. Regardless, there will be an electronic version of the Provisional Program, and it should be ready by the Board meeting. It will be made available on the Web site as a PDF document, about 200 pages long.

Final Program: Currently, the LOC is receiving the Proceedings papers and the 100-word abstracts via the Web site. The Final Program will be of the same basic format as in Toronto, but with the 100-word abstracts added [and with the papers in presentation order within sessions, the sessions in numerical order within Commissions, and the Commissions in alphabetical order, as agreed to at the Coordinating Committee meeting in Ghent]. This will make it a 400-page document, i.e., twice the size of the Final Program booklet in Toronto. No problem is foreseen with production of the Final Program, and the LOC already has a printer ready to do it.

CD-ROM: Production of the CD-ROM will be carried out by Bill Imbriale’s company, 3WAIsmen. They have produced the CD-ROM versions of the proceedings for all recent IEEE AP-S/USNC/URSI meetings, and for other international meetings, as well.

At the May, 2001, Board meeting, I was asked to take over the technical Editorship of the Radio Science Bulletin (RSB), as part of my duties as Assistant Secretary General (Publications). I did so, beginning with the September, 2001, issue. [On a personal note, I was honored to do so and appreciate the opportunity very much.] Thanks to Kristian Schlegel, we had a technical paper in that issue, and we have been fortunate enough to have at least two technical papers in every issue since then. About half of these have been invited, and half contributed. A very special "thank you" goes to Ken’ichi Okamoto, the Program Committee of the Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference (AP-RASC’01), and to Yoji Furuhama, for their help in identifying candidate papers from that conference. The good news is that we have seen an increase in the number of papers being contributed. Hopefully, people are beginning to recognize the RSB as a valid, peer-reviewed vehicle for radio science publications of a broader nature, of interest across several of the Commissions.

I must make special note of the outstanding job Inge Lievens and Inge Heleu have been doing with the production of the RSB. Each issue, they take input in a variety of forms and formats (including both electronic and paper), convert it into the final electronic file used to do the printing, and handle the myriad of details involved. They also provide coordination with all of the individuals involved in contributing to an issue, and, along with Paul Lagasse, edit and format all of the very substantial volume of material received in addition to the technical papers. They do all of this on schedule. I really enjoy working with them.

Currently, we have three papers accepted and ready for publication; two papers under revision; and three papers out for review. In the September, 2001, December, 2001, and March, 2002, issues, we published five peer-reviewed papers, plus one paper of historical interest. We have also published Jim Lin’s column, "Radio Frequency Radiation Safety and Health," in each issue. In the June, 2002, issue we will have one of the Maastricht General Lectures, in addition to at least one (and possibly, two) additional papers, and we will have one of the Commission’s Maastricht Tutorial Lectures in the September issue, as well. I am working now with the Commission Chairs to try to get them to provide me with the remaining Tutorial and General Lectures for publication over the next two years. I am hopeful that, at a minimum, we will be able to sustain at least two papers plus a column per issue for the foreseeable future.

I have established a procedure for full peer-review of all papers. This was explained in my Editor’s comments in the December, 2001, issue. It is the same procedure used for IEEE Transactions and magazines. John Volakis has generously agreed to serve as Senior Associate Editor for the RSB, coordinating the reviewing process. Rapid, thorough, high-quality reviewing is critical to a publication when it is trying to build credibility as a venue for authors to publish their works. I hope that all who are associated with URSI will make an effort to respond promptly if asked to review a paper for the RSB.

Being included in major abstracting and indexing services is also an important part of making a publication attractive to authors. I will be working on getting the RSB included in INSPEC over the coming months.

I urge everyone reading this report to please encourage and seek out good papers for the RSB. The Maastricht General Assembly and other meetings this summer and fall should provide opportunities to identify good potential papers. Please encourage authors to submit them to the RSB. If you think it appropriate, please let me or the appropriate Commission Associate Editor know of papers that are candidates for invitations.

I have initiated a discussion within the Publications Committee on the future of the Review of Radio Science. This will continue until the General Assembly, where we plan to formulate a recommendation for consideration by the Council. The ideas put forward as the basis for starting the discussion are included in Appendix 2. All comments and suggestions are welcome.

I have also initiated a discussion within the Publications Committee of the possibility of making the RSB available on the Web (in addition to being published in print). This will continue until the General Assembly, where we plan to formulate a recommendation for consideration by the Council. The ideas put forward as the basis for starting the discussion are included in Appendix 3. All comments and suggestions are welcome.

The Publications Committee will be reviewing all of the URSI-related publications, and their production and distribution, at the General Assembly. At the General Assembly, I am going to suggest that we add the Assistant Scientific Program Coordinator as a member of the Committee for the coming triennium. That person is responsible for the several publications that are produced in connection with the General Assembly, and he or she should be of considerable help to us in those areas. I have also asked Martin Hall, the current Scientific Program Coordinator, and Gert Brussaard, the current Assistant Scientific Program Coordinator, to join us for at least our first committee meeting in Maastricht, specifically to discuss the General Assembly Proceedings and the Program (with the 100-word abstracts). Since these two publications are new with the Maastricht General Assembly, it is also important that we establish some feedback mechanism for finding out how they are received. One way of doing this that is being considered would be to have a survey in every attendee’s pigeon hole at the General Assembly, and to ask for responses by Tuesday of the General Assembly week. We would then have to quickly tabulate the responses, and try to factor them into our report and recommendations to Council before the end of the week.

If there are other items the Publications Committee should consider in its discussions between now and the General Assembly, and at the General Assembly, please let me know.

W. Ross Stone

Chair, URSI Standing Committee on Publications

1446 Vista Claridad

La Jolla, CA 92037

Tel: (858) 459-8305

Fax: (858) 459-7140

E-mail: r.stone@ieee.org or 71221.621@compuserve.com

1. "Experimental Characterization of Nonlinear Active Microwave Devices," Umberto Pisani, Andrea Ferrero, Gian Luigi Madonna, Polytechnic Institute of Turin, Turin, Italy

2. "New Developments in Optical Frequency Standards and Optical Frequency Synthesis," Jürgen Helmcke, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig, Germany

3. "Dosimetry in the Human Head for Portable Telephones," Jianqing Wang and Osamu Fujiwara, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Nagoya, Japan

4. "Transient Response for Coupling of Electromagnetic Fields to Transmission Lines and Crossing Transmission Lines," Y. Kami, W. Liu, and F. Xiao, The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan

5. "New EMC Test Facilities for Radiation Measurements," Heyno Garbe, University of Hanover, Hanover, Germany

6. "Analysis of Microstrip Antennas by Means of the Regularization via Neumann Series," G. Panariello, F. Schettino, University of Cassino, Cassino, Italy; L. Verolino, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy; R. Araneo, and S. Celozzi, University of Rome "La Sapienza," Rome, Italy

7. "Nonlinear Time-Domain Electromagnetics," Daniel Sjöberg, Lund Institute of Technology, Lund, Sweden

8. "Green Dyadics for Bianisotropic Media," Frank Olyslager, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, and Ismo V. Lindell, Helsinki Institute of Technology, Espoo, Finland

9. "Recent Development for Fast Frequency-Domain Integral-Equation Solvers in Large-Scale Computational Electromagnetics," W. C. Chew1, J. M. Song2, S. Velamparambil1, T. J. Cui1, J. S. Zhao1, Y. C. Pan1, B. Hu1, and H. Y. Chao1; 1University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA; 2Motorola, Tempe, Arizona, USA

10. "Plane-Wave Time-Domain Algorithms and Fast Time-Domain Integral-Equation Solvers," E. Michielssen1, Balasubramaniam Shanker2, Kemal Aygun1, Mingyu Lu1, and Arif Ergin3; 1University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA; 2Iowa State University, Amesa, IA, USA; 3Gebze Institute of Technology, Gebez, Turkey

11. "The Finite Integration Technique as a General Tool to Compute Acoustic, Electromagnetic, Elastodynamic, and Coupled Wave Fields," René Marklein, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

12. "Blind Methods for Wireless Communication Receivers," Visa Koivunen, Helsinki University of Technology, Hut, Finland; Juha Laurila, Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland; and Ernst Bonek, Technische Universitaet Wien, Wien, Austria

13. "3G Evolution and Future Generation Air Interface in Mobile Communications," Erik Dahlman, Ericsson Research, Stockholm, Sweden; and Mamoru Sawahashi, NTT DoCoMo Inc., Yokosuka, Japan

14. "Cryptography and Computer Security," Atsuko Miyaji, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Tatsunokuchi, Japan; Wu Wen, ActivCard Inc., Fremont, CA, USA; and Seiichiro Hangai, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan

15. "RF MEMS and Si-Micromachining in High-Frequency Circuit Applications," Linda P. B. Katehi, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; and Steve Robertson, T-Networks Inc., Allentown, PA, USA

16. "Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Silicon and SiGe Devices," Johann-Friedrich Luy, Daimler Chrysler Research Center, Ulm, Germany

17. "Global Modeling of Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Integrated Circuits," G. Stopponi1, P. Ciampolini2, V. Palazzari1, P. Placidi1, and R. Sorrentino1; 1University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy; 2University of Parma, Parma, Italy

18. "Wireless Communications and Sensing Based on Surface-Acoustic-Wave Devices," Robert Weigel, University of Linz, Linz, Austria; and L. Reindl, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

19. "Reverberation Chambers for EMC Susceptibility and Emission Analyses," Mats Bäckström and Olof Lundén, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Linköping, Sweden; and Per-Simon Kildal, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

20. "Electromagnetic Compatibility for Integrated Circuits," E. Sicard, INSA/DGEI, Toulouse, France; Christian Marot, Siemens VDO, Toulouse, France; Jean-Yves Fourniols, LAAS/CNRS, Toulouse, France; and Mohamed Ramdani, ESEO, Angers, France

21. "Geomagnetic Effects on Ground-Based Technological Systems," Risto Pirjola, Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki, Finland

22. "New Techniques in Microwave Radiometry for Earth Remote Sensing: Principles and Applications," Adriano Camps, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain; and Calvin T. Swift, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

23. "Remote Sensing of Inland and Coastal Waters," Arnold G. Dekker, CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, Australia; and Robert P. Bukata, National Water Research Institute, Ontario, Canada

24. "Subsurface Remote Sensing," David A. Noon, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; and Ram M. Narayanan, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA.

25. "Wave Propagation for Multimedia Satellite Services," Bertram Arbesser-Rastburg, European Space Agency, Noordwijk, Netherlands; and David V. Rogers, Communications Research Centre, Ontario, Canada

26. "Space Weather Effects on Transionospheric Radio Wave Propagation," A. Bhattacharyya, Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Mumbai, India; and Santimay Basu, Air Force Research Laboratory, Hanscom AFB, MA, USA

27. "Characterization and Modeling of the HF Communications Channel," Paul S. Cannon and Matthew J. Angling, QientiQ, Malvern, UK; and Bengt Lundborg, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Linköping, Sweden

28. "Ionospheric Models for Radio Propagation Studies," Dieter Bilitza, Raytheon ITSS, Greenbelt, MD, USA

29. "Oscillations in a Dusty Plasma Medium," Gurudas Ganguli, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA; Robert Merlino, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA; and Abhijit Sen, Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, India

30. "Broadband Plasma Waves in the Magnetopause and Plasma Sheet Boundary Layers," G. S. Lakhina, Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Mumbai, India; B. T. Tsurutani, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA; and J. S. Pickett, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

31. "Solar System Radio Emissions," Iver H. Cairns, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia; and Michael L. Kaiser, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

32. "Lightning Effects in the Ionosphere," H. Fukunishi, Tohoku University, Tohoku, Japan

33. "The Contribution of Wave-Particle Interactions to Electron Loss and Acceleration in the Earth’s Radiation Belts During Geomagnetic Storms," Richard B. Horne, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, England

34. "Gravitational Lensing and Recent Contributions from Radio Studies," Neal Jackson, Ian Browne, and Peter Wilkinson, University of Manchester, Cheshire, UK

35. "Advances in Planetary Radar Astronomy," Donald B. Campbell, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA; R. Scott Hudson, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA; and Jean Luc Margot, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

36. "Recent Progress and Current Activities in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)," Jill Tarter and John Dreher, SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA; Steven W. Ellingson, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA; and Wm. J. Welch, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

37. "Possible Exposures from Future Mobile Communication Systems," J. Bach Andersen, P. Mogensen, and G. F. Pedersen, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

By the General Assembly in Maastricht, I will have served as Editor-in-Chief of the RRS for four triennia, resulting in four books of approximately 1000 pages each, plus the Disk of References for three of them, and the RRS on CD-ROM for the most recent edition. While I have gotten tremendous joy out of doing this and been honored to be permitted to do it, I’m afraid that I don’t feel that I can continue doing it. Among other reasons, with duties as Assistant Secretary General (Publications), Editor of the RSB, and Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, I’m feeling more than a little over-committed! I can think of at least two solutions to this problem (and any other suggestions are most welcome).

The first, and obvious, solution is to find someone else willing to serve as Editor-in-Chief. Since, under the current system, that also involves producing the camera-ready masters from which the RRS is printed, as well as the electronic version for the CD-ROM, it is a great deal of work. Contracting out the production aspects of the job would probably cost in the range from $20,000 to $30,000, unless an organization were willing to donate a commensurate amount of services from a publication-support staff, for example. We might be able to find another individual who has the ability and facilities to do this the way I have been doing it. Any suggestions are definitely welcome.

However, after doing this four times and experiencing the same problems each time, I have to question whether we shouldn’t consider a fundamental change in the way we look at this. The problems, of course, center around the fact that six or seven of the Commissions regularly do a very good job of getting their chapters produced, reviewed, and submitted on time. Another three or four Commissions have serious problems, and are regularly late. Of these, one or two Commissions are often very late, and, in some cases, have only barely had even a single contribution. While the problems aren’t always with the same Commissions, there are a few Commissions that always seem to have more problems than others. I think there is a fundamental truth, here: depending on 40 sets of authors and editors from 10 Commissions to complete the authoring and reviewing process at even approximately the same time is not a particularly robust method of operation.

What is the purpose of the RRS? I suggest that it fulfills at least the following purposes:

1. To provide a vehicle for the Commissions to present selected, peer-reviewed reviews of the key, current topics of importance within their areas of radio science;

2. To provide a vehicle for URSI to share what is of current interest and importance in radio science with those outside URSI.

We could accomplish these same purposes by publishing the same material in the Radio Science Bulletin (RSB). Furthermore, if we were to publish approximately the same amount of material as appears in a single volume of the RRS over a triennium in the RSB, I think it would eliminate many of the problems. Consider some numbers. I think it is reasonable to expect that we would have perhaps 75% of the papers we now have in the RRS, or 30 papers, which we could obtain without the difficulties we’ve had in the past. These would still be reviews on topics identified at or shortly after the General Assembly (GA) by each Commission, and by authors invited by the Commissions. Each Commission would agree at the GA to a schedule over the triennium by which its papers would be written, reviewed, and submitted. Assuming publication of the 30 papers over a three-year period (two years before the next GA and one year after; this would give the authors of the first papers to be published a year in which to write them and have them reviewed), this would work out to about 2.5 papers per issue of the quarterly RSB. We currently are "generating" an additional 13 papers per triennium through the publication of the Tutorial and General Lectures, so the total would be about 3.5 papers per issue. This would be in addition to other submitted and invited papers. I suspect that – at "steady state" – the total would be around 4.5 to 5.5 papers per issue. That is definitely an expanded RSB, but it is not an unreasonably large RSB.

There are several other potential advantages to this. It would enhance the RSB, without making the burden on the editorial staff too excessive (because the reviewing would still be done by the Commissions, and because the workload would be spread over the triennium). With this reasonably steady stream of papers, the RSB would be able to achieve significant status as a valued source of scientific review material. One topic of ongoing discussion within URSI is how to enhance the value of being an URSI Correspondent (or, if it should be adopted, of being an Individual Member of URSI). An enhanced RSB is one way to do this. Because the reviews would be prepared and published over the course of a triennium, it should be possible to make them more timely. This would be a distinct incentive for some authors. Finally, it removes the above-mentioned flaw of having to bring the output of all the authors and Commissions together at a single point in time. Put another way, in combing the RRS with the RSB, if one paper was delayed an issue or two it would not create a major problem (and there might be another paper that was early, to compensate).

There are several potential challenges and questions associated with the idea, as well. Would authors and Commissions be as willing to participate? If it is successful, I think so. If not, then we would have a problem. If the Publications Committee decides to pursue this idea, it would be important to share it with the Commission Chairs and current RRS Editors, and to get their feedback, before the GA. There would be an added work load for the Secretariat. However, we will be paying $10,500 for the production of the RRS on CD-ROM this triennium (which would be saved), and we are saving substantially more than twice that amount because we eliminated Modern Radio Science and the RRS in print form for the GA attendees. Potentially, some of this savings could be used to provide additional staff time, staff, or contracting help for the production of an expanded RSB. If anyone can foresee other potential problems, please raise them.

Please offer ideas and suggestions on this topic.

This is a subject that has come up in several contexts over the last triennium. This is most certainly not a proposal to eliminate the printed version of the RSB, but rather to add a Web-based publication of the same material. I think most of the potential advantages are obvious. One that may not be as obvious as the others is the potential for reducing printing and (more significantly, I think) postage costs associated with distributing unneeded printed copies of the RSB. If the RSB was available on the Web, URSI might be able to provide printed copies only to those who specifically request them, rather than shipping pre-determined numbers to Member Committees and others.

A disadvantage is the increased effort necessary to make the RSB available on the Web. Making it available in a series of PDF files that could be downloaded would probably not require too much additional effort. Making it available as a series of HTML pages – which, I believe, is the "right" way to do it – would certainly require substantial effort. However – again – this might well be a task that could be contracted out, hopefully at a cost that would be less than the amount saved on postage and printing.

(Some of the following ideas came from a discussion with Paul Lagasse.) Part of a decision on whether or not to make the RSB available on the Web is the question of to whom to make it available, and whether or not to charge for it. Currently, we collect $40 as part of the registration fee at the General Assembly – and from those who become correspondents between General Assemblies, a relatively small number – as payment for a print subscription to the RSB. If we make it available on the Web, do we do so on a subscription basis, only? Making it available for free, to everyone, is much more consistent with the purposes of URSI. What does that do to the fee charged for Correspondents? One good solution may be to still charge a fee – probably less than $40 – as part of the General Assembly registration fee, and to use that to underwrite the production of the RSB. We could then make it available for free on the Web, and as a printed subscription for an additional fee to those who wanted to receive printed copies (there is some IEEE and SIAM experience that says that even if available for free on the Web, at least 60% of the subscribers will continue to pay to receive a printed copy of most publications). If we were to make it available for free on the Web, we would definitely want to require that anyone accessing it register, so that we would then be able to contact them for publicity about future URSI meetings.

Please offer ideas and suggestions on this topic.

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