Here’s a little bit of news which may have escaped notice by some in the information theory community:

“In view of its concerns about excessive reviewing delays in the IT Transactions, the BoG authorizes the EiC in his sole judgment to delay publication of papers by authors who are derelict in their reviewing duties.”

Reviewers may be considered to be derelict if they habitually decline or fail to respond to review requests, or accept but then drop out; or if they habitually submit perfunctory and/or excessively delayed reviews.

I’ve said it before, but I think that transparency is the thing which will make reviews more timely — what is the distribution of review times? What is the relationship between paper length and review length? Plots like these may shock people and also give a perspective on their own behavior. I bet some people who are “part of the problem” don’t even realize that they are part of the problem.