At IEEE Journal of Microwaves we believe that quality reviewers deserve some extra recognition! As such we have just established an “Outstanding Reviewers” program wherein at the end of each year, both authors and editors are solicited to search through their past papers and nominate particular reviews that made a real difference to the quality of a particular manuscript or the ability of an editor to make a decision on the true merits of a submitted paper. After considerable effort, we also convinced both the MTT Society Awards Committee and the IEEE Technical Activities Board Awards and Recognition Committee chairs that we could/should recognize individuals who have gone above and beyond in evaluating manuscripts. Especially important to the JMW Editor-in-Chief are the recommendations of authors – many of whom had lots of extra work to do after receiving their reviewer comments – in suggesting reviews that really helped them improve their submissions. It might surprise you to hear that the authors who had to do the most work to satisfy their reviewers, were the ones who made the majority of the nominations.

During the nomination and evaluation process, reviewer identities are kept completely anonymous and only the Editor-in-Chief knows the identities of the nominees.

This year we would like to honor three individuals out of more than 190 reviewers who have submitted responses to our requests to look over particular articles – sometimes as many as three times, and submit their detailed comments. The reviews were submitted between September 2023 and November 2024. We are extremely pleased to announce the “Outstanding Reviewers of 2024”:

Erin L. Cortus. Associate Professor and Extension Engineer, Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.

Kapil Dandekar. The E. Warren Colehower Chair Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Interim Dean of Drexel Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

and

Oskar Zetterström.  Postdoctoral researcher, Division of Electromagnetic Engineering and Fusion Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Each of these individuals has received a special certificate of appreciation from the MTT Society and their names were announced in the March 2025 opening editorial of IEEE Journal of Microwaves. We repeat their names here so our entire society can celebrate their achievement and hopefully inspire other researchers to participate in this most important aspect of our peer review process.