Editorial

Jessica K. Hodgins

Abstract: I've now been Editor-in-Chief of ACM TOG for two full years. We've made a number of changes in TOG recently. Perhaps the most visible change is the new format which began with January 2002. The format change is to more closely approximate that of ACM SIGGRAPH.The July 2002 issue of TOG will be the Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH. These papers will be conditionally accepted at the SIGGRAPH Program Committee meeting in March 2002 and then will undergo a second reviewing phase in which a referee will ensure that the authors have altered the paper to address the concerns of the original reviewers. This referee's job will be much like that of the associate editor in the normal TOG review process.As you have no doubt noticed, publication of TOG has not kept pace with the calendar. However, the number of submissions has increased substantially (57 in 2001 versus 34 in 2000) and the time until the authors receive the first decision on their paper has been reduced to less than four months for almost every paper. We should be publishing on time by the next regular issue, October 2002, and will then be able to start building a backlog of accepted papers at ACM to keep the issues on schedule.This improvement has been made possible by the hard work of the Associate Editors listed in the front cover of the journal and by the reviewers who are listed at the end of this issue. I'm very grateful to both groups for their significant help throughout the year.I hope that the next year sees another 50% or larger increase in the number of submissions. I would be happy to have twice as much work to do so please keep sending those strong submissions our way.