Associate Editors (AEs), and the reviewers they recruit, play the most critical role in ensuring the quality and reputation of the IEEE Transactions on Soft Robotics (T-SRO). AEs are responsible for the fair and thorough review and evaluation of a paper’s originality, relevance, significance, technical correctness, organization and presentation, and references in a timely fashion. The purpose of this document is to describe typical duties, procedures, and best practices for T-SRO AEs.

AEs are selected based on their judgment and the scientific quality of their research; international reputation; likely ability to recruit reviewers; diversity in research topic expertise, geography, and gender; and reliability and commitment to service.

The initial term of an AE is three years, which can be extended by three more years after a review conducted by the relevant SE and the EICs. AEs can also serve for additional terms, but it is normally required that the AE takes a break for at least one year before rejoining the editorial board. This procedure gives opportunities to other members of the scientific community to participate in the editorial board.

An AE may be assigned to handle the review of a new paper up until the last day of their term. This means that an AE’s service generally continues beyond the official end of their term. An AE will handle the review of a paper until its final disposition (accept, reject, or revise and resubmit), so the revision of a conditionally accepted paper originally handled by the AE will be assigned to the AE even if their term has nominally ended. A revised and resubmitted paper is treated as a new paper, so it will not be assigned to the original AE if their term has expired.

The main responsibilities of AEs are:

• supervising the review process of papers assigned to them by the SEs;
• selecting Reviewers for the assigned papers, based on their scientific expertise and their reliability in providing timely and useful reviews;
• ensuring the timeliness and quality of the review process, by sending reminders and interacting with Reviewers when needed; and
• providing a recommendation to the supervising Editor by producing a report that builds on the Reviewers’ comments and includes the AE’s opinion on the paper.

While SEs strive to assign each paper to an AE with an interest in the paper’s topic, this is not always possible, for load balancing and other reasons. AEs must be able to handle the review of papers outside their primary area of expertise.

The review process for T-SRO is managed using the PaperPlaza system. PaperPlaza provides a wide variety of tools to help AEs manage the review process. Reviewer assignments, review entry, and AE reporting are all managed using PaperPlaza.

To access the system, go to the PaperPlaza page, click Start and then Log in. If you have forgotten your login information, you can retrieve it using the PIN management page. It may be useful to spend a few minutes looking over the help pages, and in particular the Associate Editor’s FAQ at the PaperPlaza Help Page.

3.1 Timeline

The Senior Editor and the Editor-in-Chiefs conduct a preliminary evaluation of each submission. Some submissions are rejected or returned at this stage, usually because the submission violates a T-SRO policy, clearly does not advance the state of the art, or is outside the scope of T-SRO. This evaluation is typically concluded within two weeks of submission.

After that, the handling Editor assigns the paper to an AE. Within two weeks, the AE should have either recommended Editorial Reject or recruited Reviewers for a full review process (more details are given below). If the paper goes to full review, the target time to a decision is three months from the original submission date.

3.2 Preliminary Steps for the AE

When a paper is assigned to an AE by an Editor, the AE should give the paper a quick read to roughly understand what it is about, its potential contributions, and who the leading experts are in the topic area. The AE should also check the ithenticate report for possible cases of plagiarism. Potential plagiarism cases should be investigated and reported to the handling Editor.

After this initial screening, the paper will usually fall into one of three categories:

• The paper has the potential to provide a contribution. The AE should initiate the review process and start securing Reviewers (see more details below).
• The paper clearly fails to provide a contribution to the state-of-the-art, or it has some other major flaws (e.g., insufficient novelty, out of T-SRO scope, etc.). The AE should submit an Editorial Rejection recommendation to the supervising Editor within two weeks of receiving the paper to allow a quick response to the authors. See the section below on Preparing a Summary Report.
• The paper should be reassigned to be a different AE by the SE. You should ask for a reassignment in case where you detect a COI that was not apparent (see below for a definition of COI for AEs). Requests of reassignment for lack of specific knowledge of the AE in the MS topic should be minimized.

3.3 Inviting Reviewers

The AE should invite experts in the field to serve as Reviewers for the paper, with the goal of ultimately obtaining three high-quality reviews. Selecting appropriate Reviewers is critical to a high-quality, timely review process. Candidate Reviewers may include leading researchers in the topic area, colleagues who are familiar with the topic, authors of papers cited in the submission’s bibliography, authors of relevant papers that have been previously accepted, and authors who have submitted a paper to T-SRO on a related subject. A good mix of senior and junior Reviewers is desirable as they provide reviews from different perspectives and at different levels of detail.

Reviewers must have an adequate level of experience. The principle is to ask only researchers who have already published in prestigious robotics journals for a review. AEs should not assign reviews to graduate students. Occasionally, a senior researcher may ask her/his students to help prepare a review assigned to her/him, but s/he needs to check carefully and endorse the review by personally clicking the “submit” button.

3.4 Vetting the Reviews

The AE should confirm the quality of the reviews before producing his report.

• Three high-quality comprehensive reviews is the target for T-SRO. If a review does not meet this standard then the AE should ask the reviewer to update or correct his review. If this is not possible then the AE should attempt to find an emergency reviewer with a shorter deadline. AEs should also generally not serve as reviewers since their opinion is already considered in the recommendation letter. It should be the last viable option in cases where obtaining a third quality review would significantly delay the review process beyond the target timeline.
• Reviews should be specific. If the results are already known, references to earlier papers that contain these or similar results should be provided. If the reasoning is incorrect or vague, where and why should be indicated. If the paper should be rewritten, suggestions should be given as to which parts to delete, amplify, or modify. The authors should know the flaws of the paper even during rejection.
• Reviews should be constructive. The ultimate goal of the review process is to provide constructive feedback to the authors on how their work could be improved, not just by noting deficiencies but also by indicating how they might be mended, when possible. The AE is responsible for ensuring that reviews avoid any diminishing or disrespectful remarks, even if the review is negative.

A recommended, but not mandatory, review structure is as follows:

• a summary of the paper’s contribution, to demonstrate the Reviewer’s understanding of the paper;
• high-level comments on topics such as the paper’s originality, relevance, importance, technical correctness, and organization; and
• low-level comments, such as typo corrections, comments on figures and grammar, etc.

To avoid confusion, the Reviewer’s acceptance or rejection recommendation should not be included in the comments to the authors.

3.5 Preparing a Summary Report

Once a sufficient set of reviews has been obtained for a paper, the AE prepares a summary report that synthesizes these reviews and makes a specific publication recommendation to the Editor. In general, at least three thorough reviews are required to make a recommendation; however, if two thorough reviews are available, if these reviews have been provided by trusted experts, and if the two reviews are in agreement, then two reviews can be considered a sufficient basis for submitting a summary report and recommendation.

The summary report to the authors should be written in a form that allows the Editor to directly cut and paste it into the decision letter to the authors. The report should be impartial, to the point, and constructive. It should contain a brief summary of the paper, an analysis of the reviews and the AE’s own opinions, and the issues that the authors must address in a revision if the paper may receive a “revise and resubmit” or “conditionally accept” decision. The comments to the authors should not give the AE’s publication recommendation, since the Editor could issue a different decision.

The AE’s job is not simply to summarize the Reviewers’ comments or average their recommendations. AEs should use their critical and technical judgement when writing the report to offer a focused synthesis of the most important points and to provide clear feedback to the authors. They can, and are encouraged to, provide additional comments to the authors which are to be addressed by the authors.

In addition to the summary report, the AE makes a publication recommendation to the Editor. PaperPlaza codes for the common recommendation types are AR for Accept as Regular; CR for Conditionally Accept as Regular; RR for Revise and Resubmit as Regular; R for Reject; and RE for Editorial Reject. A summary of the manuscript evaluation decisions is given below.

4.1 Rejected manuscripts

Manuscripts that have substantial deficiencies, for example, with respect to their presentation or the state of the art should be rejected. Authors of rejected manuscripts are discouraged, but not prevented, from submitting a revised version. If authors submit a revised version of a previously rejected manuscript, they are expected to provide a statement of changes justifying the reasons for a resubmission. The relevant editorial members will carefully analyze resubmissions of previously rejected manuscripts and also consider an editorial rejection decision for such manuscripts.

4.2 Revised and Resubmitted Manuscripts

A manuscript should receive a “revise and resubmit decision” if it contains deficiencies that can be corrected within a reasonable amount of time. If the decision on a manuscript is “revise and resubmit” (RR), authors will be allowed to submit a revised version and a statement of changes. The revised manuscript should be formatted so that any changes can be easily identified by the reviewers, by using, e.g., colored or bold text to indicate revised passages. In addition to the largely revised version of a paper, the authors are required to also upload a single pdf file containing a reply to the comments provided by the reviewers and the list of changes made to the manuscript paper. After resubmission, the EiC will normally assign the manuscript to the SE and AE previously supervising the manuscript, unless they are retired in the meantime. A second “revise and resubmit” decision for such manuscripts should be avoided. Papers not reaching the bar for a “conditionally accept decision” could be rejected.

4.3 Conditionally Accepted Manuscripts

A manuscript should receive a “conditionally accepted decision” if it contains minor deficiencies that can be corrected within 60 days. In this case, authors will be allowed to submit a revised version and a statement of changes. The revised manuscript should be formatted so that any changes can be easily identified by the reviewers, by using, e.g., colored or bold text to indicate revised passages. In addition to the revised version of your conditionally accepted paper, the authors should also upload a single PDF file containing the authors’ reply to the comments provided by the reviewers and the list of changes made to the manuscript. The EiC will assign resubmissions of previously conditionally accepted manuscripts to the SE and AE supervising the previous version unless one or both of them have retired in the meantime. The evaluation of such a manuscript should take no longer than one month. The AE is expected to quickly evaluate the updated manuscripts optionally with the assistance of the reviewers assigned to the previous version. A second “conditionally accepted decision” should be avoided.

4.4 Accepted Manuscripts

Manuscripts fulfilling all requirements for a publication in the IEEE Transactions on Soft Robotics should receive an “accept decision”. Authors of accepted manuscripts are requested to prepare a final version of their manuscript strictly the indications provided in the reviews, if any. No other significant unreviewed changes (including to the bibliography and references) are allowed. The submission of the final version is due no later than 30 days from the notification date. When the final version of an accepted paper is received, the SE has the possibility to verify that all required changes have been made in the final version and may request the AE to provide support in this phase. Although rarely, an SE can withhold publication until all required changes are satisfactorily made. In case this can not be achieved by authors within 180 days from submission, the manuscript could be effectively withdrawn from publication.

4.5 Editorial Rejection

Editorial reject decisions are to be used mainly for incomplete or otherwise clearly unsuitable papers (see below the official IEEE policy for more details). All editorial rejections must be approved by the EiC. If the reason for editorial rejection is a lack of technical contribution, IEEE rules require that at least three editors concur in such a decision. For these cases, the EiC and at least two members of the Editorial board (usually the SE and AE) have to consent. If an AE comes to the conclusion that an assigned manuscript should be summarily rejected, the AE informs the corresponding SE with a sufficiently detailed justification. If an SE thinks that a manuscript should be summarily rejected, the SE assigns it to an AE asking for the AE’s opinion. If both the AE and the SE agree that the paper should be summarily rejected, they generate a sufficiently detailed decision letter (typically drafted by the AE and revised by the SE). They then inform the EiC about their proposed decision, provide the EiC with a decision letter, and ask for approval. If the EiC, the SE, and the AE agree, the SE issues the editorial reject decision. The decision should not be executed without approval by the EiC. An editorial reject decision should be issued no later than three weeks after the submission. If the EiC, the SE, and the AE disagree in their assessment of the manuscript, it should be sent out for full review.