George E. Smith Award

IEEE Electron Device Letters was launched under the leadership of George E. Smith by the IEEE Electron Devices Society in January 1980. It was instituted to fulfill the need for a peer-reviewed quick-turnaround publication. Traditionally, the society has recognized the best paper published in two of our flagship publications, IEEE Electron Device Letters (EDL) and IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices (T-ED) through the Paul Rappaport Award. Over these years, however, although EDL papers have been nominated for this award, they have never made it to the finish line. The reason for this has been that short EDL papers cannot compete favorably against full-length T-ED contributions.We have now taken measures to correct this inequity. I am delighted to announce that the Electron Devices Society and IEEE Technical Advisory Board have approved a special award to recognize papers published in EDL. This award is being named after the founding Editor-in-Chief, George E. Smith. It will be given for the first time in December 2003 at the IEDM in Washington, DC, for the best paper published in calendar year 2002. Apart from technical excellence, an important criterion for selecting the best paper is a clear enunciation of the merit of a contribution in relation to prior art. Hence, authors are encouraged to take the time to look up relevant work already published by researchers in institutions worldwide, especially work other than their own. This will improve the quality of their submission and that of our journal. We intend to sensitize authors to this issue across all EDS-sponsored and co-sponsored publications. This will create the healthy environment where prior knowledge is leveraged to the fullest extent, shortening research and development cycles and accelerating the pace of knowledge creation. Also, it will result in proper credit being given where it is due. This should be a win-win situation for everyone involved.