IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging

About IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging

IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging — A Complete Profile

IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging was a quarterly, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers from 1999 to 2010. It carried print ISSN 1521-3323 and electronic ISSN 1557-9980 — the pairing shown on the Journals World record for this title — along with CODEN ITAPFZ, Library of Congress control number 99111625 and OCLC number 39742480. The journal covered the design, modelling and application of advanced electronic packaging, with a particular identity built around multi-chip modules and wafer-scale integration. It no longer accepts submissions: at the end of 2010 it was merged, together with two companion titles, into IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology, which began in January 2011. This profile is therefore a historical and bibliographic guide — for authors citing its papers, librarians maintaining its record, and researchers who need to understand where its subject community publishes today.

Quick Facts

History: How the Journal Was Formed and How It Ended

The journal's lineage runs through the IEEE packaging community's journal family of the 1990s. During that decade the Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology Society organised its publishing into parts: Part A dealt with packaged component design, Part B with advanced substrates and modules, and Part C with manufacturing. In 1999 that structure was reorganised, and IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging emerged as the title carrying the advanced-packaging strand forward. Listings of the journal also record the related titles IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technologies and IEEE Transactions on Electronics Packaging Manufacturing as the companion publications of the same era; the three ran in parallel through the 2000s, each serving a distinct segment of the electronics packaging field — advanced packaging and integration here, components and packaging technologies in the second, and electronics packaging manufacturing in the third.

The arrangement lasted eleven volumes. In 2010 the society decided to reunify its Transactions, and the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society — the successor name for the packaging society — describes the outcome directly: the Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology, first published in January 2011, is a merger of the three earlier Transactions, namely Advanced Packaging, Components and Packaging Technologies, and Electronics Packaging Manufacturing. Publication of the Advanced Packaging title therefore ceased with its 2010 volume. Its final editor-in-chief was Ganesh Subbarayan of Purdue University, a researcher known for modelling the reliability of electronic assemblies. Nothing about the cessation reflected on the journal's standing; it was a portfolio consolidation, and its papers continue to be cited through the IEEE Xplore digital library under their original DOIs.

Scope and Subject Areas

The journal's declared territory was the design, modelling and application of multi-chip modules and wafer-scale integration — the technologies that connect bare semiconductor dies into working systems. In practice its pages covered the full problem set of advanced packaging in the 2000s, a decade when packaging moved from being a protective afterthought to a primary determinant of performance.

Multi-chip modules and system integration

Multi-chip module research examined substrates, interconnect layouts and module architectures that place several dies in one package. Papers addressed high-density interconnect structures, redistribution layers, and the electrical behaviour of module-level wiring. Wafer-scale integration — building systems at wafer level rather than die level — formed the journal's second signature theme, including wafer-level packaging approaches that later became mainstream in mobile devices.

Three-dimensional integration and through-silicon vias

The Journals World record highlights 3D IC and TSV technologies among the journal's focus areas, and the timing explains why: the late 2000s were the period when through-silicon-via stacking moved from laboratory demonstration toward production. The journal published modelling and process work on stacked-die architectures, interposer concepts and the thermal and mechanical consequences of vertical integration — material that remains a useful contemporary record of how the field reasoned before 3D integration commercialised.

Electrical, thermal and mechanical modelling

A defining feature of the title was its modelling depth. Papers modelled signal integrity in high-speed interconnects, power delivery, heat removal from dense packages, and stress, warpage and solder-joint fatigue under thermal cycling. Microwave engineering and waveguide topics — also named on the Journals World record — appeared where packaging intersected with radio-frequency design, including package effects on antennas and high-frequency modules. This modelling emphasis is why the back file is still read: the physics of a solder joint or a via has not changed, even though the products have.

Materials, processes and reliability

Alongside design papers, the journal carried work on packaging materials — substrates, underfills, encapsulants and solders — and on the reliability testing that qualifies them. Studies of flip-chip attach, wire-bond alternatives and lead-free solder transition issues place the journal at the centre of the 2000s industry shift driven by environmental regulation of electronics. Reliability physics, accelerated testing and failure analysis complete a scope that served both university researchers and industry laboratories.

Readership and Place in the Field

The journal served the electronics packaging community: packaging engineers in semiconductor and systems companies, academic groups in electrical and mechanical engineering, and the membership of the IEEE packaging society, for whom it was a society Transactions. Its natural companion venues were the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) and the society's other publications, and a typical career pattern in the field — conference paper at ECTC, extended archival version in this Transactions — is visible throughout its volumes. Its quarterly rhythm and archival standards made it a journal of record rather than a rapid-communication outlet; the Letter-length fast track belongs to its successor's modern incarnation, not to this title's era.

Metrics and How to Interpret Them

According to the Journal Citation Reports figures reported for its final year, the journal's 2010 impact factor was 1.276. The Journals World record lists an h-index of 83, about 1,310 indexed works and about 31,948 citations at snapshot time — a citation density that reflects both the journal's modelling papers, which age well, and the heavy citation traffic of the 3D-integration years. Two cautions apply when quoting these figures. First, an impact factor is a two-year window calculated for a specific year; 1.276 describes 2010 and should always be quoted with that year attached. Second, the h-index is cumulative and keeps growing after a journal ceases, because the back file continues to be cited; it measures the archive's total footprint, not the standing of a journal that no longer exists as a submission venue. Rankings that place this title in current-year league tables without noting its 2010 cessation are misusing the data.

Citing and Finding Its Papers Today

Every article retains its original citation: journal title, volume, issue, page range and DOI, resolvable through IEEE Xplore. When citing, use the title as published at the time — IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging — and do not substitute the successor's name, because bibliographic databases index the two titles separately and a substituted name will break reference linking. Libraries should keep the record's end date (2010) and its “continued by” link to the 2011 successor visible, so that a reader following a citation trail understands the lineage: 1990s parts, 1999–2010 Advanced Packaging, 2011 onward unified Transactions. ISSNs should be recorded as print 1521-3323 and electronic 1557-9980; some secondary listings show only the print ISSN, which is the most common source of incomplete records for this title.

Where the Community Publishes Now

Researchers working on the same questions today submit to the successor, IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology, which the Electronics Packaging Society presents as the continuation of all three merged titles, complete with its own Letters track and reviewer community. Adjacent venues include the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices for device-level integration work and ASME's Journal of Electronic Packaging for mechanics-heavy studies. A manuscript “submitted to IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging” after 2010 is, by definition, misdirected; any service claiming to accept such a submission, or charging a fee for it, is not acting for IEEE, and authors should treat that claim as a warning sign and verify through the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society's own pages.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging still publishing?

No. It published from 1999 to 2010 and was merged into IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology from January 2011.

What are its ISSNs?

Print ISSN 1521-3323 and electronic ISSN 1557-9980.

Who published it?

IEEE, through its Components, Packaging & Manufacturing Technology Society together with the IEEE Photonics Society; the publishing community is now represented by the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society.

What was its impact factor?

1.276 for 2010, its final year, as reported from Journal Citation Reports.

Can I still read and cite its articles?

Yes. The complete back file remains accessible and citable through IEEE Xplore under the original article DOIs.

Verification Notes

This profile is anchored to the Journals World record for post 366845 (slug ieee-transactions-on-advanced-packaging), which lists ISSNs 15213323 and 15579980, publisher Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (US), h-index 83, about 1,310 works and 31,948 citations. Historical facts — dates 1999–2010, quarterly frequency, society publishers, final editor, CODEN, LCCN, OCLC and the 2010 impact factor — are drawn from the journal's bibliographic record as summarised in its reference entry, and the 2011 merger is confirmed in the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society's own description of the successor Transactions. No article-processing or submission information is presented, because the journal is closed; current submission guidance belongs to the successor title's profile.

The Technologies in Focus: A Decade in the Back File

To understand what this journal meant to its field, it helps to follow the technology arc inside its eleven volumes. The earliest volumes, from 1999 onward, reflect a packaging world still centred on area-array packages, ceramic and organic substrates, and the electrical modelling of modules carrying a handful of dies. Papers wrestled with the parasitics of package wiring — the inductance and capacitance that a package adds to a signal path — because processor speeds were rising faster than package design rules were improving. Signal-integrity modelling, impedance control and careful return-path design recur throughout the run for exactly that reason.

The middle volumes track the industry's move toward flip-chip attach as the default for high-performance devices, the spread of build-up substrate technologies, and the long, difficult transition to lead-free solder. Each transition generated the full research cycle the journal existed to record: material characterisation, process windows, accelerated test results, failure analysis and physics-based models that let a designer predict joint lifetime rather than merely observe it. Power electronics packaging also appears strongly in this period, including work presented at applied power electronics venues and later extended into journal form, dealing with high-density power modules, parallel-plate interconnect structures and the thermal limits of compact converters.

The final volumes are dominated by integration density: wafer-level packages, chip stacking, silicon interposers in early form, and through-silicon-via processes. Reading those issues now is instructive because the authors were reasoning under genuine uncertainty — TSV etching, thinning, handling and test costs were all unresolved — and the journal preserved both the approaches that succeeded and the ones the industry later set aside. For a modern engineer designing chiplet-based systems, this archive is the prehistory of the present: heterogeneous integration, the defining packaging programme of the current decade, is the direct descendant of the multi-chip-module and 3D-integration research this title published.

Editorial Character and Standards

As an IEEE Transactions of its era, the journal operated formal peer review under a society-appointed editor-in-chief and associate editors drawn from the packaging community, with manuscripts handled as archival contributions: full-length papers presenting original design, modelling or experimental results, expected to be complete enough for another laboratory to reproduce the work. Transactions norms of the period emphasised archival value over novelty claims — a paper was expected to remain useful as a reference, which is one reason the citation half-life of the back file is long. The journal appeared quarterly in print and online, paginated by volume, and its articles from the period carry the standard IEEE apparatus of the time: structured abstracts, index terms, author biographies for many papers, and DOIs resolving through IEEE Xplore. Ganesh Subbarayan's tenure as the final editor-in-chief is itself a signal of the journal's centre of gravity, given his research focus on computational modelling of assembly reliability — the modelling-and-reliability strand was not a sideline but the journal's core identity by its final years.

Why This Record Still Matters

Three audiences still need this record to be accurate. Citation integrity comes first: tens of thousands of citations point at these volumes, and every error in a directory record — a wrong ISSN, a missing end date, a merged identity with the successor — propagates into reference lists and library catalogues. Second, technology historians and patent examiners use the dated back file to establish what was known, and when, in packaging; a clear 1999–2010 boundary with named predecessors and a named successor makes that prior-art trail usable. Third, early-career engineers searching older literature need to know that the title's end was a consolidation, not a collapse, so that they weight its papers by their content rather than discounting them for appearing in a closed journal. Journals World keeps this profile at full depth for those reasons, with the ceased status stated openly rather than left for the reader to discover.

How to Verify a Claim About This Journal

Because the journal is closed, it cannot defend its own record, and directories occasionally carry stale or merged data for it. Three checks resolve most questions. For existence and dates, the society's own description of the successor Transactions — which names Advanced Packaging as one of the three titles merged in January 2011 — is decisive. For identifiers, the print ISSN 1521-3323 is the value shown in the journal's bibliographic reference record, and the electronic ISSN 1557-9980 is the pairing carried on the Journals World record; a listing showing a different ISSN pair is describing a different IEEE packaging title, most often the components and packaging technologies companion. For article-level truth, IEEE Xplore is the version of record: if a paper cannot be found there under this title, volume and pages, the citation itself should be questioned. Applying those three checks, in that order, settles nearly every dispute a librarian or citing author is likely to meet with this journal — and they illustrate the general method this profile series uses: society and publisher sources first, bibliographic records second, aggregators last.

A Note on the Photonics Society's Role

The joint society sponsorship recorded for this journal is worth explaining, because it shaped a visible slice of its content. Optical and photonic devices — laser modules, optical transceivers, detector assemblies — are packaging problems as much as device problems: alignment tolerances are measured in fractions of a micrometre, thermal drift moves optical paths, and hermetic sealing decides service life. With the Photonics Society as co-sponsor, the journal was a natural home for optoelectronic packaging papers that might otherwise have split between device journals and mechanical engineering venues. That strand — fibre attach, optical sub-assemblies, package-level thermal control for lasers — gives the back file a flavour its two companion Transactions did not share, and it is one more reason citation trails into these volumes come from communities well beyond mainstream semiconductor packaging.

One final practical note for citing authors: because the journal's volumes are paginated and its DOIs are stable, a complete citation needs nothing more exotic than author, title, journal name, volume, issue, pages, year and DOI. Resist the temptation to modernise the journal's name in older references; accuracy about a closed journal is a small, permanent courtesy to every reader who follows the trail after you.