Guest Editorial Message From Editor-in-Chief

This volume of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (J-STARS) marks a new milestone as J-STARS has become a gold fully open-access (OA) journal since January 1, 2020. The IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society made the decision of this OA flip following the requirement of IEEE that each society should have at least one fully OA journal. J-STARS is one of the first conventional journals to flip to OA, and the lessons we learned from this experience can be shared with other conventional journals that are prepared to flip. The flipped J-STARS is more appealing than a brand-new OA journal thanks to its existing journal impact factor accumulated since its original establishment in 2008.