What Is the Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Newsletter?

The Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Newsletter is a periodical publication produced by the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society (IEEE EMCS) to communicate technical developments, standards updates, society activities, and practical guidance to its membership. Unlike the society's peer-reviewed journals, the newsletter emphasizes accessible, practitioner-oriented content: articles explaining recent regulatory changes, reports from technical committees, announcements of upcoming symposia and chapter events, and short technical notes that do not require the full journal submission and review cycle. It serves as the connective tissue of the EMC engineering community, linking researchers, compliance engineers, standards developers, and chapter officers between the larger annual gatherings of the IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility.

The newsletter has published across several format iterations since the society assumed its current name in 1978, reflecting shifts in print media, digitization, and the internet. Its role has evolved from a mailed print journal in the society's early decades to a digital publication distributed through the IEEE EMC Society's online publications portal, where current and archived issues are available to EMCS members.

Purpose and Content

The primary editorial purpose of the newsletter is to keep the working EMC practitioner informed of developments that bear on day-to-day engineering and regulatory compliance work. Recurring sections typically include: updates from the society's standards subcommittees summarizing in-progress revisions to C63, IEC 61000, and related documents; technical feature articles contributed by society members on topics such as filtering design, shielding effectiveness measurement, or new coupling mechanisms; column contributions from the president and other society officers on governance and strategic direction; and chapter reports summarizing local events from around the world. The newsletter also carries notices of calls for papers for the IEEE EMC and SI&PI Symposium, short news items from standards bodies including CISPR and ANSI, and occasional historical pieces documenting the origins of concepts or organizations central to the field.

Scope and Audience

The intended audience is the IEEE EMCS membership, which spans industry engineers, regulatory specialists, academic researchers, and technical managers. This breadth means the newsletter must address content ranging from measurement laboratory practice at a very applied level to theoretical developments at a conceptual level, without requiring deep expertise in any single sub-area. Feature articles are written for practitioners, meaning they emphasize design guidance, measurement procedure, and standards interpretation rather than mathematical derivation. This distinguishes the newsletter clearly from the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, which publishes full-length peer-reviewed research, and from the IEEE EMC Magazine, which overlaps in audience but targets slightly more formal technical content. The newsletter occupies the most informal and timely position in the society's publication portfolio.

Applications

The Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Newsletter supports a wide range of professional activities, including:

• Standards monitoring, enabling engineers to track revisions to EMC test methods before they take effect
• Professional development for EMC engineers seeking accessible summaries of recent research and regulatory changes
• Society governance communication, keeping members informed of officer elections, chapter news, and committee activities
• Conference preparation, with advance notices of symposium programs, workshops, and paper submission deadlines
• Historical documentation of the development of EMC engineering practice and IEEE EMCS organizational milestones