Editorial & reviewing
Editorial & reviewing record
An accountable record of what I review, where I serve, and what I'm available for. Open to Associate Editor, Special Issue Guest Editor, and TPC roles.
Journal reviewer record
| Journal | IF (current) | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
| IEEE Internet of Things Journal | 10.6 | 2 weeks |
| IEEE Trans. Mobile Computing | 9.2 | 2 weeks |
| IEEE Open J. Communications Society | 6.1 | 2 weeks |
| IEEE Communications Letters | 4.4 | 2 weeks |
| IEEE Trans. Quantum Engineering | 3.9 | 2 weeks |
| Wiley Int. J. Communication Systems | 2.1 | 2 weeks |
Conference TPC memberships
- ITU Kaleidoscope 2026 · Technical Program Committee Member · UN AI for Good Summit, Geneva
- IEEE WCCI / IJCNN 2026 · Emergency Reviewer (recruited by Conference Chairs)
- IEEE ICIN 2026, IEEE ICCSP 2026, Springer DMBD 2025, IEEE EDUCON 2026, CCNCPS 2026, ICOMIT 2026 · TPC Member
- IEEE QCNC 2026, IEEE ICNC 2026, IEEE ICAD 2026, IEEE ACDSA 2026, IEEE DSIT 2025 · Reviewer
- Elsevier ACLing 2025, IEEE ICMLCN 2026, IEEE ICECET 2026 · Reviewer
Standards body participation
- IETF LAKE Working Group · PQ-EDHOC Design Team member, contributing to standardization of quantum-resilient authenticated key exchange for constrained IoT devices.
- ISA99 Committee · Member of the committee that develops ISA/IEC 62443, the global standard for industrial automation and control systems (IACS) cybersecurity.
Areas of editorial competence
- Post-quantum cryptography — lattice-based KEMs and signatures, hybrid deployments
- Industrial control system security — ISA/IEC 62443, OT lifecycle constraints
- IoT cryptographic protocols — EDHOC, OSCORE, LAKE outputs
- Quantum machine learning — kernel methods on NISQ, ZZFeatureMap, QSVM
- Reinforcement learning under partial observability — POMDPs, suffix memory
- Energy-efficient VLSI for resource-constrained crypto
Editorial philosophy
A good review tells the author something they did not already know about their own paper. That is the bar I hold myself to. Acceptance/rejection signals matter, but the author has more to learn from a tightly-argued list of three substantive concerns than from twenty marginal observations.
For early-career authors, my goal is to make the next draft better, not to gatekeep. I distinguish between fixable engineering decisions and structural problems and I try to say which is which. I never reject on writing alone — language is a service issue editors can solve, scientific contribution is the part I am asked to assess.
For controversial methodologies, my preference is conditional acceptance with explicit caveats over rejection. The literature gets stronger when ambitious-but-imperfect claims are published with their limitations made visible, not when they are excluded and reappear elsewhere with the limitations omitted.
I disclose conflicts the moment I see them, including subtle ones — co-authored once, share a funder, hostile review history. The cost of an over-disclosure is a re-assignment; the cost of an under-disclosure is the integrity of the venue.
Turnaround matters. I commit to a two-week review window or I decline. Sitting on a paper for three months without contact is not rigor — it is rudeness.
Conflict-of-interest disclosure
- Affiliation — independent researcher, Chicago, IL. No institutional affiliation creating topical COI as of 2026-04.
- Active funding — none currently active.
- Recent co-authors — sole-authored on most IEEE papers; co-authors disclosed for VLSI, quantum-resilient IoT, and green-cognitive-radio papers (will identify on assignment).
- Standards body — IETF LAKE and ISA99 affiliation declared on each review assignment.
Time commitment availability
~6 papers per month, 2-week turnaround. Open to Associate Editor roles requiring up to 30 papers per year. Open to Guest Editor roles for special issues in PQC, ICS security, or quantum machine learning.
Endorsements
Inquiries
Editor-in-Chiefs and TPC Chairs: shujaatali@ieee.org with subject [EDITORIAL]. Response time 8 hours US Central.