Editorial: Keeping identity in times of change
Paulo Lobato Correia, Xudong Jiang · IET Biometrics · 2020
This is the first editorial written by the new Editors-in-Chief (EiC) of IET Biometrics. The previous role of Prof. Michael Fairhurst is now shared between Paulo Lobato Correia (IST-UL, Instituto de Telecomunicacoes / Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal) and Xudong Jiang (NTU, Singapore). The recent Editorial by the Honorary Editor-in-Chief, Prof. James Wayman, was devoted to thanking Prof. Fairhurst for his vision and contribution as founder and EiC of IET Biometrics for the past eight years. We want to thank him again for all the work and his constant enthusiasm for this endeavour. We are committed to work closely with a team of outstanding Associate Editors (AEs), who are key elements to help handling submissions. Together, we aim for a faster article review process, while keeping and enhancing constructive and quality peer-review and unbiased editorial decisions. The journal continues to rely on its most valuable assets, the Authors and the Readers. IET Biometrics keeps looking for scientifically sound original research articles, advancing the state-of-the-art, and well-organized review papers on relevant topics, providing a good starting point and guidance for whoever is studying a specific topic, by providing a structured description of the available approaches, along with a critical discussion and highlighting directions for the future. The scope of IET Biometrics has always been relatively wide, to cover not only core technological issues but also those that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. Besides topics directly related to ‘the automated recognition of individuals based on their behavioural and biological characteristics’, the scope of IET Biometrics also includes ‘any topics where it can be shown that a paper can increase our understanding of biometric systems, signal future developments and applications for biometrics, or promote greater practical uptake for relevant technologies’. To make this even clearer, in 2020 IET Biometrics started accepting other paper types, notably case study papers, reporting on specific instances of an interesting or particular phenomenon or system related to research areas covered by the journal. You are invited to read the first case study paper by Galdi et al., published in the current issue of the journal: ‘PROTECT: Pervasive and useR fOcused biomeTrics bordEr projeCT - a case study’, presenting the multibiometric verification systems developed within the EU project PROTECT. More changes are ahead, as from 2021 IET journals will adopt the Open Access model. This means that published papers will be freely accessible online. And the content published since 2013 will also be made free-to-view online, contributing to an increased visibility of IET Biometrics papers. To conclude this brief editorial, and on behalf of the editorial team, we would like to invite the talented researchers within our community to continue to support IET Biometrics by submitting solid research for publication and playing an active role in the review process. This will ensure that IET Biometrics keeps its identity in this time of many changes and challenges.