The British Institution of Engineering and Technology has announced the launch of a new journal, IET Biometrics.

The editor-in-chief is Prof. Mike Fairhurst of the University of Kent. In his opening editorial he writes: "The launch of a new Journal is always an exciting event, but when a major international publisher such as the IET embarks on such an initiative then a potentially exciting event becomes also a great opportunity for the targeted community…It is my earnest hope that we can attract contributions not only from the major and most well-established research groups working in the field, but that we can also help less well-established researchers producing high quality work to find their voice."

The first issue is now on-line at http://digital-library.theiet.org/IET-BMT and can be viewed free of charge.

The initial line-up of papers include:

• Editorial: First Issue Editorial
• Face spoofing detection from single images using texture and local shape analysis
• Security evaluation of biometric authentication systems under real spoofing attacks
• Comprehensive analysis of spectral minutiae for vein pattern recognition
• Perturbation-enhanced feature correlation filter for robust iris recognition
• Secure speech biometric templates for user authentication
• Maximisation of mutual information for gait-based soft biometric classification using Gabor features
• Unconditionally provably secure cancellable biometrics based on a quotient polynomial ring
• Grid-based feature distributions for off-line signature verification
• Reducing descriptor measurement error through Bayesian estimation of fingerprint minutia location and direction

The journal is accepting papers for future issues. Information on submission procedures is available on the website.