Call for Papers

At present, COVID-19 is a major global public health challenge. Worse, this epidemic could last for 2 years, according to US experts. To address it, scientific research institutions attempt to actively leveraged networking technologies to fight the epidemic disease, which have effectively improved the efficiency of epidemic monitoring, virus tracking, prevention, control and treatment, and resource allocation. For example, in order to make full use of the resources of medical experts, the remote consultation system, supporting live-streaming video and telemedicine by 5G, cloud computing, blockchain and other networking-related technologies, has been quickly implemented in many hospitals all over the word.

Although networking technologies have played an important role in the epidemic prevention and control, new challenges arise when billions of people around the world have been ordered to stay at home to help curb the epidemic disease. As the virus spread, the networking demand for HD video conferencing and online teaching has skyrocketed. Moreover, many streaming services — like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube, have reduced the quality of their streams to reduce strain on the Internet. Therefore, more advanced networking technologies should be deeply investigated and implemented to help us with fighting COVID-19.

This special issue aims to explore recent advances and disseminate state-of-the-art research on advanced networking technologies for epidemic monitoring, virus tracking, prevention, control and treatment, and resource allocation. The topics of interest for this special issue include, but are not limited to:

• Advanced networking technologies in public health management
• Advanced networking technologies for telemedicine, remote diagnosis and treatment
• Cloud-based/Edge-based networking services for online working and learning
• Stable heterogeneous networking access for medical information transmission
• Edge/mobile computing for detecting and tracking infections
• Mobility-aware networking services and applications for epidemic monitoring, prevention and control
• Crowdsourcing-based approaches for virus testing and research
• Soft caching, proactive caching and other approaches for content-orient networking services
• Privacy and security of the medical information transmission

The papers for rigorous and well-coordinated peer-review process will be collected through the Manuscript Central System for IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering.

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors are invited to submit their manuscripts electronically, adhering to the IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering guidelines. Note that the page limit is the same as that of regular papers. Please submit your papers through the online system and be sure to select the special issue or special section name. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts, to the ScholarOne portal. If requested, abstracts should be sent by e-mail to the Guest Editors directly.

Important Dates

Manuscripts Due: 22 August 2020 (Extended Deadline)
Peer Reviews to Authors: 1 November 2020
Revised Manuscripts Due: 1 January 2021
Second-round Reviews to Authors: 1 March 2021
Final Accepted Manuscript Due: 1 April 2021

Guest Editors