IEEE SMC: Systems, Man, & Cybernetics Society

Information for Authors

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS is published monthly. Each submitted paper is subjected to a thorough review procedure. Review management is generally under the direction of an associate editor and the publication decision is based on the recommendations of the reviewers. Our goal is to provide review results in approximately three months. Often, the process takes longer, and it requires an additional few months to complete the publication process.

Posting Preprints to Non-IEEE Servers

Authors should disclose postings on approved preprint services when submitting papers to SMCS Journals.

Consult relevant sections posted here.

The following statement must be included on the initial page of the paper on the preprint site: “This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.”

Upon acceptance of the article by IEEE, the preprint article must be replaced with the accepted version, as described in the section “Accepted article.”

Process for Submission of a Technical Paper

  1. All papers should be submitted electronically in Portable Document Format (PDF). The paper should print correctly on 8.5 x 11 inch sheet, with 1 inch margin.
  2. A text version of your abstract is required.
  3. Please utilize our manuscript submission system at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/systems
  4. While each paper should be self-contained (i.e., fully readable and understandable independently from the multimedia material), we encourage the submission of attachments with the paper. An attachment (video, animations, applets, code, data, etc.) should be referenced in the text of the paper and enhance the presentation. We currently accept avi files (PowerPoint animations), MPEG video files, Java applets, code with specific compilation instructions and execution instructions and machine-specific information, and data sets with a description of the data format. More information can be found at: https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/create-your-ieee-journal-article/. IEEE supports the publication of author names in the native language alongside the English versions of the names in the author list of an article. For more information, please visit the IEEE Author Center https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/.
  5. Our primary objective is to publish technical material not otherwise available. If any portion of the manuscript has been presented, published, or submitted for publication elsewhere, please include a description in the cover letter. In addition, cite the original publication in the manuscript.

Style for Manuscript

  1. Authors should use IEEE journal format (two-columns) for their manuscript according to https://template-selector.ieee.org. Regular papers are normally about 12 Transactions pages in length, or shorter. Two additional pages are allowed, provided the authors pay the corresponding page surcharge. Regular papers over 14 pages in the two-column format will not be considered. Review papers can be up to 18 pages long, provided the authors pay the surcharge above 10 pages.
  2. Since the Transactions publishes only in English, contributors for whom English is not a native language should consult a colleague who is familiar with the English language, prior to submitting the paper, for the purpose of editing the original manuscript.
  3. Provide an informative abstract of 100 to 250 words at the head of the manuscript.
  4. The abstract must be a concise yet comprehensive reflection of what is in your article. In particular, the abstract must be: 1) self-contained, without abbreviations, footnotes, or references; 2) written as one paragraph, and should not contain displayed mathematical equations or tabular material; 3) should include three or four different keywords or phrases for easy identification; it is important to avoid over-repetition of such phrases as it can result in a page being rejected by search engines.
  5. Acknowledgement of financial support is placed at the end of the first footnote.
  6. References should appear in a separate section at the end of the paper, with items referred to by numerals in square brackets. References must be provided in IEEE style; see papers published in the Transactions. Style for cited papers: Author, first initials followed by last name, title in quotations, periodical, volume, page numbers, month, year. Style for books: Author, title, location, publisher, year, chapter, and page numbers (if desired).
  7. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to supply a head and shoulders photograph of themselves and a technical biography. The biography should be in the form used in Transactions, consisting of three paragraphs of information: name, where and when born, degrees earned, field(s) of study, school, city, state; chief employment dates, organizations, positions held, type of work, responsibilities, present position; and professional society membership, offices, awards.

Graphical Abstracts

This journal accepts graphical abstracts and they must be peer reviewed. For more information about graphical abstracts and their specifications, please visit the following link: https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/create-your-ieee-journal-article/prepare-supplementary-materials/.

Style for Illustrations

  1. Originals for illustrations (including tables) should be sharp, noise-free, and of good contrast, as they will be photographed or electronically scanned. We regret that we cannot provide drafting or art service.
  2. On graphs, show only the coordinate axes, or at most the major grid lines to avoid a dense hard-to-read result.
  3. All lettering should be large enough to permit legible reduction of the figure to column width, sometimes as much as 4 to 1. There should only be one illustration per page and only illustrations should be included in the set of illustrations. Please be very sure that your lettering is sufficiently large such that it will be readable after photo-reduction.
  4. If an illustration is to be reproduced in color, the author is responsible for the incremental cost of printing in color.

Open Access

This publication is a hybrid journal, allowing either Traditional manuscript submission or Open Access (author-pays OA) manuscript submission. Upon submission, if you choose to have your manuscript be an Open Access article, you commit to pay the discounted $2,495 OA fee if your manuscript is accepted for publication in order to enable unrestricted public access. Any other application charges (such as overlength page charge and/or charge for the use of color in the print format) will be billed separately once the manuscript formatting is complete but prior to the publication. If you would like your manuscript to be a Traditional submission, your article will be available to qualified subscribers and purchasers via IEEE Xplore. No OA payment is required for Traditional submission.

Voluntary Page and Excess Page Charges

After a manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author’s company or institution will be requested to pay a voluntary charge of $110 per printed page to cover part of the cost of publication. These page charges, like those for journals of other professional societies, are not obligatory nor are their payment a prerequisite for publication. A mandatory overlength page charge of $175 is required for each page in excess of 10 pages for a regular paper. Authors who are concerned with these charges are encouraged to estimate the length of their manuscripts prior to submission. Detailed instructions on payment of these charges will accompany the page proof.

Electronic Publishing

The final version of the manuscript must comply with IEEE Periodicals requirements for text and graphics processing. The author must submit final files electronically through the manuscript submission system at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/systems. Details and procedures are provided to authors upon final acceptance of their paper.

ORCID ID

All IEEE journals require an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) for all authors. ORCID is a persistent unique identifier for researchers and functions similarly to an article’s Digital Object Identifier (DOI). ORCIDs enable accurate attribution and improved discoverability of an author’s published work. The author will need a registered ORCID in order to submit a manuscript or review a proof in this journal. To create an ORCID, please visit: https://orcid.org/register.

Copyright

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 the U.S. Copyright law, authors are required to sign an IEEE Copyright Form before publication, found at http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/copyrightmain.html. It returns to authors and their employers full rights to reuse the material for their own purposes.

Peer Review

The articles in this journal are peer reviewed in accordance with the requirements set forth in the IEEE PSPB Operations Manual. Each published article was reviewed by a minimum of two independent reviewers using a single-anonymous peer review process, where the identities of the reviewers are not known to the authors, but the reviewers know the identities of the authors. Articles will be screened for plagiarism before acceptance. Papers with less than 75% original material are rejected.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS: SYSTEMS

ROBERT KOZMA Editor-in-Chief
Department of Mathematics, FedEx Institute of Technology
University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152 USA
Email: [email protected]

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