From Red to Gold: The Rise of IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits to a High-Impact Journal

The first issue of IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), called the "red rag" by some old timers, was published when I was five years old. Today's JSSC readers would have been roughly -30 to +30 years old at the time. The journal is not among the oldest publications in the IEEE or worldwide, but it enjoys one of the highest impact factors. Why? In this article, I ponder this question and demonstrate the longevity of the JSSC papers through some examples. In the interest of space, I have selected papers only from the first ten years, focusing on ideas that are still applicable today.