Research Papers

T-SRO publishes full-length research papers reporting innovative ideas, methodologies, and results in the field of soft robotics.

Full-length research papers are limited to 12 pages in two-column IEEE format (see Manuscript Preparation for detailed formatting requirements), including figures and references. No extra pages are allowed. The inclusion of supplementary text and images, multimedia materials, such as videos, datasets, source code, and CAD files, is strongly encouraged.

Accepted research papers may be invited for presentation at upcoming IEEE-RAS-sponsored or co-sponsored conferences, including IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), and IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

Review Papers

Review papers should critically examine recent advances, emerging trends, and open challenges in the field of soft robotics. Review articles are expected to provide a balanced and in-depth synthesis of the existing literature while offering clear perspectives on current research directions, technological gaps, and future opportunities for the community.

Review papers are limited to (to be determined) pages in two-column IEEE format (see Manuscript Preparation for detailed formatting requirements), including figures and references. No extra pages are allowed.

Tutorial Papers

Tutorial papers should provide comprehensive and accessible introductions to important methodologies, tools, or technologies in the field of soft robotics. These articles are intended to support knowledge dissemination and serve as educational resources for students, researchers, and practitioners entering the field.

Tutorial papers are limited to 12 pages in two-column IEEE format (see Manuscript Preparation for detailed formatting requirements), including figures and references. No extra pages are allowed.

Perspectives

Perspective papers present forward-looking viewpoints, emerging research directions, and thought-provoking discussions on topics of broad interest to the soft robotics community. These articles are intended to stimulate new ideas, highlight unresolved challenges, and provide informed opinions on future opportunities, technological trends, or interdisciplinary developments in the field.

Perspective papers should be concise and supported by relevant literature where appropriate, while not aiming to provide a comprehensive review of the field. They are expected to emphasize original insights, critical discussion, and emerging directions of potential significance to the community.

Perspective papers are limited to 8 pages in two-column IEEE format (see Manuscript Preparation for detailed formatting requirements), including figures and references. No extra pages are allowed.

All manuscripts should be submitted in the double column format of the IEEE style file. Instructions and templates (LaTeX or Word) are downloadable from the IEEE “Article Preparation and Submission” section of the IEEE Author Center, together with other useful tools for authors.

Initial submission

When using the IEEE style format, the first (title) page will contain the paper title and each author’s name (although anonymized by using either blank spaces or generic denominations such as “Author 1, Author 2, etc.”), and leaving room in the footnote for the full affiliation and full address (mailing address, email address, and fax number) for the final submission, the abstract (no more than 200 words for regular or survey papers, the keywords (index terms), and the beginning of the main text of the paper. The type of submission (regular paper, communication item, or survey paper) may be indicated in the page header. Note that the PDF will be stamped by the system upon submission, so it is better not to interfere with this by overloading footer and header.  Author biographies are required for final accepted papers but should not be included during the submission of new and revised manuscripts to maintain anonymity.

Figures, Tables, and References

All figures and tables must be numbered and cited in the text. 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.

To guard against citation manipulation, IEEE discourages the citation of articles that do not report original research and may not have been peer-reviewed, e.g., editorials, summaries, book reviews, interviews, columns, perspectives, in memoria, etc.

Referencing the authors’ work should maintain the full reference in the reference list and avoid stating that the reference is the authors’ own work. i.e. do not state “our previous work” when referring to a specific citation.

Keywords

Include a list of keywords on the first page of the submission. A list of significant keywords (also named index terms) should be included in the first page of each submitted paper. During one of the submission steps at the T-SRO PaperCept site you will have the opportunity to choose keywords.

Supplementary Materials

The use of supplementary materials is encouraged in T-SRO. Supplementary materials may include additional text, figures, tables, equations, references, datasets, detailed manufacturing procedures, experimental methods, or lengthy mathematical derivations that support the main manuscript but are not essential for understanding its primary contributions. All supplementary content should be compiled and submitted as a single PDF document.

The supplementary document should be organized using numbered and titled sections and subsections following the format S1, S1.1, S1.1.1, and so forth. Figures and tables should be numbered independently from those in the main manuscript using the prefixes “Fig. S” and “Table S,” respectively. All figures and tables must be cited in numerical order within the text.  As such any panel of Fig. S2 should not precede the first mention of Fig. S1.

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-SRO PaperCept site ras.papercept.net/journals/tsro. The minimum version of an acceptable PDF is currently 1.4.

Copyright and E-Copyright Form

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. 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 Soft Robotics should fill the electronic copyright transfer form (E-Copyright) at the time of final submission of the material for publication.

T-SRO allows multimedia attachments (typically videos or datasets) to accompany 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 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 Center.

In preparing this material, it is recommended to follow the general IEEE guidelines right from the initial submission.

• The paper should be self-contained, i.e., fully readable and understandable independently from the multimedia material.
• The video should be mentioned in the paper as “Supplementary Video N”
• See the RAS Video Submission Guidelines
• 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/tsro.
• Note: A video that does not play on a standard platform can be summarily rejected.

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-SRO page within IEEE Xplore next to the PDF of the paper.

The peer-reviewing process of the articles submitted to this journal fulfills the requirements outlined in the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual (https://pspb.ieee.org/images/files/files/opsmanual.pdf). Each published article was reviewed by a minimum of two independent reviewers using a double-anonymous peer review process, where the identities of the reviewers are not known to the authors and the identities of the authors are not known to the reviewers (see https://www.ieee-ras.org/publications/rules-for-the-double-anonymous-review-process).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

IEEE seeks to maximize the rights of its authors and their employers to post preprint versions of an article on the author’s personal website, on a server operated by the author’s employer, or on a preprint server operated by an approved not-for-profit third party such as ArXiv or TechRxiv. This allows rapid dissemination of the work for comment and establishes a time-stamp associated with the results. Once the paper is accepted, however, IEEE requires that the paper be replaced by the accepted version of the paper, with an acknowledgment that the paper will appear in the IEEE Transactions on Soft Robotics and the following copyright notice:   “© 20xx IEEE.  Personal use of this material is permitted.  Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.” The version posted on the preprint server should also include a link to the paper on IEEE Xplore and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) when they are available.  (Only the accepted version, not the IEEE-edited published version, may be posted to the preprint server.)

The use of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in an article (including but not limited to text, figures, images, and code) shall be disclosed in the acknowledgments section of any article submitted to an IEEE publication. The AI system used shall be identified, and specific sections of the article that use AI-generated content shall be identified and accompanied by a brief explanation regarding the level at which the AI system was used to generate the content.

The use of AI systems for editing and grammar enhancement is common practice and, as such, is generally outside the intent of the above policy. You can read more about RAS Generative AI Guidelines (https://www.ieee-ras.org/publications/guidelines-for-generative-ai-usage).

IEEE takes the protection of intellectual property seriously. Accordingly, all submissions will be screened for plagiarism using iThenticate CrossCheck software. By submitting your work you agree to allow IEEE to screen your work. For more information please visit: http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck/index.html.