Editorial: Updates to the Editorial Board

Abstract

It is of paramount importance for a scholarly journal such as ACM Transactions on Database Systems to have a strong editorial board of respected, world-class scholars. The editorial board plays a fundamental role in attracting the best submissions, in ensuring insightful and timely handling of submissions, in maintaining the high scientific standards of the journal, and in maintaining the reputation of the journal. Indeed, the journal’s associate editors, along with the reviewers and authors they work with, are the primary reason that TODS is a world-class journal. As of January 1, 2017, three associate editors—Paolo Ciaccia, Divyakant Agrawal, and Sihem Amer-Yahia—ended their terms, each having served on the editorial board for roughly 6 years. In addition, they will stay on until they complete their current loads. Paolo, Divy, and Sihem have provided very substantial, high-caliber service to the journal and the database community. Specifically, they have lent their extensive experience, deep insight, and sound technical judgment to the journal. I have never seen them compromise on quality when handling submissions. Surely, they have had many other demands on their time, many of which are better paid, during these past 6 years. We are all fortunate that they have donated their time and unique expertise to the journal and our community during half a dozen years. They deserve our recognition for their commitment to the scientific enterprise. As of January 1, 2017, three new associate editors have joined the editorial board: • Feifei Li, University of Utah (https://www.cs.utah.edu/∼lifeifei/) • Kian-Lee Tan, National University of Singapore (https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/ ∼tankl/) • Jeffrey Xu Yu, Chinese University of Hong Kong (http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/people/ yu.html)