T-RO Information for Authors

The IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS (T-RO for short) publishes fundamental scientific papers dealing with all aspects of Robotics. Specifically involved are the following areas as they relate to the field: Kinematics, dynamics, control, modeling and simulation of robots and intelligent machines and systems; manipulation, grasping, and dexterous hands; design of robotic mechanisms; and mathematical and computational issues in robotics. Intelligent robotic instrumentation and measurement; vision and other non-contact sensors; tactile and other contact sensing systems; sensor integration, fusion, and perception; and mechatronics. Assembly and task planning; teleoperation and telerobotics; haptics; robot motion planning, path and trajectory planning, localization and navigation; mobile and autonomous robotics; legged locomotion and humanoid robots; micro- and nano-robotics; and cellular, distributed, and cooperating robotics. Robotics in industry, manufacturing, and flexible automation; and linkages to computer-aided design, engineering, and information systems. Robotics in unstructured environments, including service and household systems, medical systems, construction systems, space and unmanned air systems, underwater systems, and intelligent vehicle and highway systems. Robotics application methodologies such as control, learning, hybrid systems, mathematical optimization, artificial intelligence, neural networks, and fuzzy systems. Robotics and intelligent system-related computer hardware, software, and architectures; advanced programming languages and software development environments; virtual reality; and human-robot interface and integration.

The bimonthly IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS publishes Regular Papers, Short Papers, Communications Items, Survey Papers, and Book Reviews.

Short Papers usually describe a single result, experiment, or technique of general interest for which a short treatment is appropriate.

Communications Items are a separate class of short manuscripts that are subject to an expedited review process. Appropriate items include (but are not limited to) rebuttals and/or counterexamples of previously published papers. Normally, the Editors will review these submissions internally, although they will request outside review when appropriate.

Survey papers covering emerging research topics in Robotics are also published, and unsolicited manuscripts of a tutorial or review nature are welcome. However, prospective authors of survey papers should contact in advance the Editor-in-Chief in order to assess the possible interest of the topic to T-RO.

Book Reviews of special interest to Robotics are also considered and reviewed by members of the Editorial Board. Interested authors or publishers should contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Papers describing specific current (industrial and beyond) applications are encouraged, provided that the designs represent the best current practice, detailed characteristics and performance are included, and they are of general interest.

Multipart papers will only be published if there is compelling rationale for a multipart treatment. All parts of such submissions must be accepted for any part to be published.

Papers submitted to a Special Issue are handled similarly to normal contributions. 

Submission of Manuscripts

The IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS handles only electronic submissions of papers (Regular Papers, Short Papers, Communication Items, and Survey Papers) in PDF form. Since January 1, 2008, papers should be submitted through the T-RO Papercept site at the address ras.papercept.net/journals/tro. Information on submission procedures can be found here.

Manuscripts should be original, previously unpublished work, and not simultaneously under consideration for publication elsewhere. The material, if accepted, should be properly available for general dissemination to the readership. It is the responsibility of the authors, not the IEEE, to determine whether disclosure of their material requires the prior consent of other parties and, if so, to obtain it. If authors make use of charts, photographs, or other graphical or textual material from previously published material, the authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to use the material in the manuscript.

The IEEE and the TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS support the evolutionary publication paradigm, in which early versions of a work may have appeared in conferences. Submission of expanded/improved material from previous conference papers is allowed, provided that the sources are indicated during the submission procedure, they are explicitly cited in the manuscript, and that differences/changes/additions are discussed in the text of the paper. If the copyright holder of the conference paper is not IEEE, authors should also be aware of potential copyright infringement in case of major overlapping with the paper submitted to the TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS.

Submission of Multimedia Material

The IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS considers also multimedia attachments for material (typically, videos) accompanying the submission of a paper.

Multimedia can be "playable" files (.mpeg, .avi, .wav, .mov, .midi, etc.) or "dataset" files (e.g., raw data with programs to manipulate them). Such material is intended to enhance the contents of a paper, both in clarity and in added value. IEEE has set up general guidelines for the submission of multimedia, ranging from the format, to the description of content and of user requirements, and to the way this material should be referenced to in the body of the paper. This information is available in the "Multimedia Materials" section of the IEEE "Author Digital Tool Box" at www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl.

In preparing this material, it is recommended to follow the general IEEE guidelines right from the initial submission. In addition, specific guidelines hold for the TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS:

  • The paper should be self-contained, i.e., fully readable and understandable independently from the multimedia material.
  • Videos should be prepared without using special codecs (coders/decoders) plug-ins and allowing portability under various platforms. Accordingly, the most common media formats are strongly recommended rather than their latest versions.
  • Only freely available media players (e.g., QuickTime, RealPlayer, Microsoft Windows Media Player) should be required by users.
  • A "ReadMe.txt" file (in ASCII text format) should accompany the multimedia, describing:
    • Minimum requirements for the user. In particular, provide the version of the software that is required to play/run the submitted files. Include the name of the software, the version number, and any special requirements for the player.
    • Contact Information. The author should provide contact information in case users have questions regarding the multimedia material (IEEE will not provide any technical support for this).
  • A "Summary.txt" file (in ASCII text format) should also be prepared, describing in 5 sentences or less the contents or value of the multimedia object.
Authors can submit their multimedia material (say, a video, the ReadMe file, and the Summary file) as a single zipped archive file (max 50 MB) during one of the submission steps at the T-RO Papercept site ras.papercept.net/journals/tro.

The multimedia material will be reviewed together with the submitted paper. Once a paper and its associated multimedia material is accepted, the latter will be available in the T-RO page within IEEE Xplore (ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?puNumber=8860), side by side to the pdf file of the paper.

Style of Manuscripts

  1. Since August 15, 2008, all manuscripts should be submitted in the final double column format of the Transactions using an IEEE style file. Instructions and templates (LaTeX or Word) are downloadable from the IEEE "Article Preparation and Submission" section of the IEEE Author Digital Toolbox at www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl, together with other useful tools for authors.
  2. If you use LaTeX for preparing a Short paper, download the style files (IEEEtran.zip) and then typeset your manuscript in the "technote paper" format, i.e., put the command "\documentclass[9pt,technote]{IEEEtran}" in your LaTeX file.
  3. Regular papers are limited to 10 TRANSACTIONS pages, Short papers to 5 TRANSACTIONS pages, Communication items to 3 TRANSACTIONS pages, and Survey papers to 14 TRANSACTIONS pages. These page limits include everything needed for publication, e.g., figures and tables. For Regular and Survey papers only, authors are requested to include also current biographies (no more than 100 words) and recent photographs. For all categories, mandatory page charges are imposed on extra pages (see Page Charges).
  4. Excessively long papers are not accepted by the system. The maximum acceptable length (with extra page charges) of the submitted PDF file in Transactions format is: 17 TRANSACTIONS pages for Regular papers, 9 TRANSACTIONS pages for Short papers, 4 TRANSACTIONS pages for Communication items, and 20 TRANSACTIONS pages for Survey papers.   
  5. When using the IEEE style format, the first (title) page will contain the paper title and each author's name, affiliation, and full address (mailing address, email address, and fax number), with the corresponding author clearly indicated, the abstract (no more than 200 words for Regular or Survey Papers, and 50 words for Short Papers or Communications Items), the keywords (index terms), and the beginning of the main text of the paper. Do not use a cover page (the appearance should be just as published articles in the Transactions). Also, T-RO does not use double blind review and thus the authors' names should be indicated in the PDF of the paper. The type of submission (Regular Paper, Short Paper, Communication Item, or Survey Paper) can be indicated in the page header.
  6. All figures and tables must be numbered and cited in the text.
  7. References must be in a separate reference section at the end of the paper, with items referred to by numerals in square brackets. References must be completed in IEEE style as follows:
    • Author(s), first initials followed by last name, title in quotation marks, periodical, volume, inclusive page numbers, month and year.
    • Books: Author(s), first initials followed by last name, title, location, publisher, year, chapter, page numbers.
  8. Upon acceptance, the submission of final material is fully electronic through the web site of T-RO Papercept. This includes also the procedure of electronic copyright transfer to IEEE. All the source files, the multimedia attachment, the auxiliary paper information, as well as the final PDF of the paper should be submitted in this way, by following the on-line instructions. In preparing drawings (graphs, charts, diagrams, etc.) and illustrations, please pay attention to their clarity. For instance, lettering should be large enough to be readily legible when the drawing is possibly reduced to two or one-column width - as much as 4:1 reduction from the original. Digital photographs should be of high contrast.
  9. Galley-proofs of accepted articles will be sent in PDF format to the corresponding author. For further information, see the IEEE "Manuscript Proof Procedure" section at www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl.

Keywords Selection

A list of significant keywords (also named index terms) should be included in the first page of each submitted paper. Select a minimum of 2 up to a maximum of 5 (recommended) keywords during one of the submission steps at the T-RO Papercept site ras.papercept.net/journals/tro. There, keywords can be chosen from those in the RAS subject areas (the ones used for ICRA conferences) or typed in freely (for at most 2 keywords).

PDF File Testing

Sometimes, PDF files generated with software or operative systems of Far East countries may have a font embedding problem with Chinese/Japanese/Korean fonts. This prevents the paper to be shown on screen or printed correctly with standard Western system configurations. We cannot expect that all reviewers are equipped with software extensions to work properly with such PDF files, slowing down the review process.

Therefore, authors should carefully generate their PDF files and are urged to check them before submission by using the web facility accessible at the T-RO PaperCept site ras.papercept.net/journals/tro. The minimum version of acceptable PDF is currently 1.4.

It is the policy of the IEEE to own the copyright to the technical contributions it publishes on behalf of the interests of the IEEE, its authors, and their employers, and to facilitate the appropriate reuse of this material by others. To comply with U.S. copyright law, authors are required to sign an IEEE copyright transfer form with the final manuscript. For your information, this form is available at www.ieee.org/web/publications/rights/copyrightmain.html. It returns to authors and their employers full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes. Authors of papers accepted for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS should fill the electronic copyright transfer form (E-Copyright) at the time of final submission of the material for publication.

Ethical Issues

IEEE defines plagiarism as the use of someone else's prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source. Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and is considered a serious breach of professional conduct, with potentially severe ethical and legal consequences.

Self-plagiarism is also unethical. If authors have used their own previously published work(s) as a basis for a new submission, they are required to cite the previous work(s) and very briefly indicate how the new submission offers substantively novel contributions beyond those of the previously published work(s). This applies also to early versions of the paper that may have appeared at conference(s). The original conference paper should be cited and differences/changes/additions explicitly stated in the text of the manuscript submitted to the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS.

Multiple submissions to different journals are unacceptable. This applies to the whole period in which a paper is under review for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS. It is the task of the authors to clearly spell out differences of their submitted papers with similar content. Any common part should be clearly cited. Note that the above holds also for verbatim or very similar submissions in parallel to conferences. Moreover, during the submission procedure to T-RO PaperCept, the authors should specify the existence of a version with similar content submitted to a conference (in the cover note and/or in the appropriate field) and this should be reflected also in the text of the paper submitted to the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS. In case of doubt, please consult the Editor-in Chief of T-RO.

All authors of a paper should have contributed to it. Prior to submission, the corresponding author should have received the explicit consent by all co-authors to submit the paper to the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS.

Any copyright infringement or ethical misconduct will be pursued following IEEE guidelines. For more information, please check the IEEE Intellectual Property Right page at www.ieee.org/web/publications/rights and/or contact the Editor-in-Chief.

Finally note that papers involving experiments with human beings should comply with the rules of the authors' local ethical committee. This should be explicitly mentioned in the text of the submitted paper and a proof of compliance with these rules should be provided upon request. Please contact the Editor-in-Chief in case of doubts.

Page Charges

A mandatory page charge is imposed on all Regular Papers whose length exceeds 10 TRANSACTIONS pages (and up to 17 pages), including illustrations and authors' biographies. This charge is $175 per page for each page over the first ten based on the final typeset length, and is a prerequisite for publication. The same policy applies to Short Papers exceeding 5 TRANSACTIONS pages (and up to 9 pages), to Communication Items exceeding 3 TRANSACTIONS pages (and up to 4 pages), and to Survey Papers exceeding 14 TRANSACTIONS pages (and up to 20 pages).

A voluntary page charge form ($110/page) is sent to the authors with proofs, and the author is encouraged, whenever possible, to make a contribution to defray part of the publication cost. Authors receive 100 free reprints if the charge is honored.

Inquiries

All pertinent correspondence relating to publications should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief. For routing inquiries, please contact the Editorial Assistant.