The IEICE will celebrate its 100th anniversary on May 1, 2017. Toward the anniversary, the IEICE has been addressing interdisciplinary activities, new social value creation, and institutional reformation targeting enhancement of the IEICE’s status in the international community. Open access publishing of Transactions is one initiative in that direction. As an important step toward that end, the Information and Systems Society (ISS) will initiate open access publishing of "IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems" in January, 2017, ahead of the other Societies.

Since research and development in the field of information and systems are competitive, prompt and worldwide publication of articles is critical. In 2014, the ISS started publishing all transactions online no later than seven days after acceptance. As a follow-up to this advance publication, open access publication disseminates reports on research activities to the world. All articles accepted for publication in "IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems" will be available via J-stage.

The 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan formulated by the Japanese Government stated that "development of information and communications technology (ICT) is now changing economic and social rules in the blink of an eye." and "a super smart society (a.k.a. Society 5.0) designed to make people prosperous will be poised to shape our future, and efforts will be enhanced to build a framework in order to create new value, services, and businesses, one after another." Innovation in information and systems particularly requires interdisciplinary collaborations, which lead to new issues followed by emerging innovation. It is expected that open access publishing will allow us to promote new collaborations with different fields.

Taking the opportunity of introducing open access publication, the ISS aims to build bridges between different fields and further advance globalization.