IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOTECHNOLOGY
PROCEDURE MANUAL
Version 1.91, May 6, 2007
(Adapted from the T-ASE Procedure Manual, with thanks to Peter Luh)
PREAMBLE
This Procedure Manual is an evolving, working document to outline the scope of TNANO, its structure, manuscript and decision categories, detailed operating procedures, and long-term goals.
1. SCOPE
OF TNANO
The IEEE Transactions on
Nanotechnology (TNANO) publishes novel and important results on engineeering at
the nanoscale. It focuses on nanoscale devices, systems, materials and
applications, and on their underlying science. It is an interdisciplinary
journal that covers all areas of nanotechnology. The hardcopy version is
published bi-monthly, but accepted papers are published on the web as soon as
they are submitted in final form. Nanotechnology is evolving rapidly and swift
publication is necessary to ensure that authors submit their best work to the
Transactions. Fast publication is achieved through TNANO’s entirely electronic
submission and review process.
The following specific areas
are covered by TNANO: (1) nano and molecular electronics, (2) circuits and
architectures, (3) nanomagnetism and spintronics, (4) nanooptics,
nanooptoelectronics and nanophotonics, (5) nanorobotics and nanoassembly, (6)
nanosensors and nanoactuators, (7) nanomechanics and NEMS
(nanoelectromechanical systems), (8) nanobiotechnology aand nanomedicine, (9)
nanofabrication and nanolithography, (10) nanometrology and characterization, and
(11) computational nanotechnology. In addition, papers in other areas,
especially new or emerging areas, are also welcome.
Further information on TNANO’s
scope and covered areas is available on the journal’s web site http://www-lmr.usc.edu/~requicha/tnano .
2.
STRUCTURE OF TNANO
Overall
Structure. The TNANO has
an Editorial Board and a Senior Editors Panel.
Editorial
Board. The Editorial
Board is responsible for handling papers, from the time of their submissions,
throughout their review, to publication. It is a three-level system
consisting of an Editor-in-Chief (EiC) supported by an Editorial Assistant, a
small number (three to five) of Editors, and multiple (on the order of 20 to
30) Associate Editors (AEs). Editorial Board members are reputable
experts with the energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to make TNANO the premier
engineering journal on nanotechnology. Their collective expertise covers
the major areas of nanotechnology. While editorial board members normally
are members of a IEEE Nanotechnology Council (NTC)
sponsoring society, some will be invited to join from outside to encourage
submissions on non-traditional topics, and to handle these submissions in a
timely fashion and to high quality standards. These non-IEEE members will
be strongly encouraged to join the IEEE, to attend the NTC flagship annual
conference, and to submit papers to the conference and the Transactions.
Senior
Editors Panel. The
Senior Editors Panel consists of the current and past EiC, Editors, and the NTC
Vice President for Publications. Its responsibilities include evaluating AE
candidates, AE one-year checkpoint reviews, Special Issue proposals, and long
term strategic planning.
Editor-in-Chief. The EiC represents the TNANO in the scientific
and industrial communities; interfaces with the NTC, IEEE Publications and
other units, and other professional organizations; develops the Editorial
Board, manages related administrative issues, chairs Editorial Board meetings,
and sets long-term visions and strategies; solicits contributions, receives
paper submissions, assigns them to Editors, coordinates the review process, and
oversees the publication process; resolves conflicts, ensures the smooth
functioning of the TNANO, and is responsible for the overall success of TNANO.
The EiC is supported by an Editorial Assistant who handles the administrative
and daily operations of the TNANO. The EiC is appointed to a three-year
term, renewable once. (This requires By-Laws
change.) The EiC is recommended by the current EiC and the NTC
Vice President for Publications, and appointed by the NTC President with the concurrence
of the NTC AdCom. (This requires By-Laws change.) While not a requirement, the EiC is often
selected from those who have served as Editor.
Editor. Editors are the interface between authors and
the review process. The handling Editor of a submitted paper is thus
always known from the beginning to the authors. Editors are required to
work closely with AEs to manage papers in their general areas of expertise in a
timely fashion and to high quality standards. Target turn-around times are
approximately 1 month for Research Letters and 3 months for Regular Papers. Editor’s
tasks include assigning papers to AEs, deciding the dispositions of papers
based on AEs’ recommendations and their own evaluations, directly communicating
with authors about the decisions and responding to questions that the authors
might have, and serving as Editors for Special Issues. They guarantee
fairness, quality, and timeliness of the overall review process, balance the
relevance of contributions according to general areas of interests, and resolve
conflicts that may occur in the review process. The workload of an Editor
is expected to be around 100 papers per year. As a member of the Senior
Editors Panel, an Editor will have the right and the obligation to evaluate AE
candidates, will conduct AE one-year checkpoint reviews, and evaluate Special
Issue proposals. Editors are selected by the Senior Editors Panel, often
from present or past AEs to ensure the highest standard of quality and
familiarity with procedures. Editors are appointed by the NTC VP for
Publications with the concurrence of the Council’s President, and upon the
recommendation of the EiC. The initial term is for one year. A one-year
checkpoint review is conducted by the current EiC and the NTC Vice President
for Publications. If the results of this review are positive the term will be
extended for two more years without reappointment. Another one-year
extension may be granted in cases of special needs.
Associate
Editors. Associate
Editors are the core of the service of TNANO, and are responsible for complete
(originality, relevance, technical correctness, paper organization and
presentation, references) and fair reviews of papers in a timely fashion, and
upholding high quality standards. Upon the assignment of a paper, an AE
should judiciously select three reviewers. (Optionally, securing four reviewers
may help increase the likelihood of obtaining three substantial reviews.)
After reviews are obtained, the AE should analyze their
ratings and comments, and combine them with AEs’ own comments to prepare a
recommendation to the handling Editor. More will be said below
about securing reviewers, the preparation of recommendations, and the
associated time frame. AEs are kept anonymous until the publication of
papers where a footnote is provided identifying the handling AE. The
workload is expected to be around 2 or 3 papers per month. In a more
proactive way, AEs should beat bushes to invite top quality papers and submit
their own papers, promote nanotechnology, network with experts in the general nanotechnology
areas, and grow professionally within NTC. Associate Editors are selected
by the Senior Editors Panel, and are appointed by the NTC VP for Publications
with the concurrence of the Council’s President, and upon the recommendation of
the EiC. (This requires By-Laws change.) Their
selection is based on scientific quality, international reputation, commitment
to service, reliability, and the needs of the Editorial Board. It is also
important that AE candidates have shown their active involvement in the
scientific life of the NTC. The initial term of an AE is one year. A one-year
checkpoint review is conducted by the Senior Editors Panel. If the results of
this review are positive the term will be extended for two more years.
While another one-year extension may be granted in cases of special needs, it
is normally required that a person take a break for at
least a year before serving a second term as an AE. This is to provide an
opportunity for other members of the scientific community to participate in the
editorial process and to avoid having the Transactions become a province of a
small group of people.
Editorial
Board and Senior Editors Panel Meetings. The Editorial Board and the Senior Editors
Panel shall meet once per year, in conjunction with the IEEE International
Conference on Nanotechnology (IEEE NANO, the NTC’s annual conference).
Urgent matters shall be communicated, coordinated, and decided by email.
3. PAPER
AND DECISION CATEGORIES
Paper
Categories. TNANO
publishes Research Letters, Regular Papers, and Correspondence Items. Research
Letters report on important and often time-sensitive results, and must not
exceed three printed pages. They are subject to the same thourough review
process as regular papers, but receive prioritary treatment. A Research Letter
that is accepted without major revisions is expected to be published on the web
within 4-6 weeks of its initial submission. Regular Papers normally are 4 to 8 Transaction
pages in length, and take longer to process than Research Letters. Manuscripts
of a tutorial or review nature are welcome, and treated as Regular Papers.
Potential authors of reviews or tutorials are advised to contact the Editor-in-Chief
(EiC) before submission, to ensure that the topic is judged timely and
desirable by the TNANO Editorial Board. Correspondence Items are short manuscripts,
not exceeding two Transaction pages, which typically comment on previously
published papers or present preliminary research results of wide interest.
Correspondence Items undergo an expedited review process by the Editorial
Board, which may solicit external reviews when appropriate.
Decision Categories. Decision categories include: Accept, Conditionally Accept, Revise and Resubmit, and Reject. Accept and Reject are straightforward. For a paper that was Conditionally Accepted, the revised manuscript has to be submitted within 60 days from the date of decision. It retains the same paper ID number, and the review clock continues without re-start. The AE and Editor in charge may decide to accept the paper without further review if the revisions are straightforward, or send it to an additional review cycle, which should be short. Revise and Resubmit is an encouraging way to say that a paper may contain publishable results after a major revision. The authors are encouraged to revise the manuscript based on reviewers’ comments and specific instructions provided by the AE and the Editor. A revised manuscript will be assigned a new paper ID number, is treated as a brand new submission, and has to go through a full review process. The reference to the old paper ID number is provided to facilitate the new review process, and, if possible, the same set of reviewers will be used as in the initial submission.
4. PAPER SUBMISSION, COPYRIGHT, AND ETHICAL ISSUES
Style
of Manuscript and Paper Submission Procedure
1) A valuable IEEE
link for helping authors in their manuscript preparation is “Tools for Authors” http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/
.
2) Paper submission and
review are through Manuscript Central Version 3 at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tnano . Instructions for authors are provided on-line at
the site.
3) To facilitate review,
manuscripts should be submitted with the main document as a single file, with
the figures and captions inserted in the text, and preferably using either
Adobe pdf or Microsoft Word doc formats. Adobe Postcript format (ps) is also
acceptable. Authors are strongly encouraged to read the section titled
“Preparation of Final Versions of Manuscripts for Publication” below, and to
pay special attention to figure requirements. Creating acceptable figures may
take non-negligible time and slow down the final submission process if the
manuscript is accepted. Note that publication-quality figures are not required
for manuscript review.
4) Manuscripts should be
submitted in a double column format using an IEEE style file. Templates are
available from http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/
. Regular papers are limited to eight Transactions pages, with mandatory page
charges imposed on extra pages (see Page Charges below). Excessively long
papers may be rejected without review. Research Letters are limited to three
Transactions pages, and Correspondence Items to two.
5) Uploaded information: A
cover letter, an abstract (up to 200 words for Regular Papers and 50 words for
Research Letters and Correspondence Items), keywords, the type of paper
(Regular Paper, Research Letter, or Correspondence Item), and technical area
(see above for a list). Please indicate the area in the cover letter.
6) All figures must be
numbered and cited in the text. Use consistent font and size in all figures and
tables, and choose sizes that will allow the text to be scaled to 8 points at
final printed size. Otherwise, an entire figure may be enlarged so that the
smallest size is scaled to 8 points for readability.
7) References must be in a
separate reference section at the end of the paper in IEEE style, with items
referred to by numerals in square brackets. For journal articles: Author
initials followed by last names, title in quotation marks, periodical, volume,
inclusive page numbers, month and year. For books: Author initials followed by
last names, title, location, publisher, year, inclusive pages if appropriate.
For conference papers: Author initials followed by last names, title in
quotation marks, conference, location, month and year, and inclusive page
numbers.
8) For a paper that was
previously reviewed by TNANO, the old paper number should be included, and a
separate response file should be submitted describing how reviewers' comments
were addressed.
9) If it is felt that a paper
is beyond the scope or capability of TNANO, the corresponding author will be
notified within one week of submission by one of Editors or the EiC.
10) If you have difficulties,
please contact Editorial Assistant Kusum Shori (kusum “at’ usc.edu) or the
Editor-in-Chief, Ari Requicha (requicha “at’ usc.edu)
.
Preparation
of Final Versions of Manuscripts for Publication
Authors of accepted papers should submit the final
version for publication by e-mail directly to the production services of the
Transactions at d.l.henson@ieee.org .
Hardcopies or CDs are not acceptable. The e-mail should list as subject the
manuscript ID. The following is a summary of the requirements. More detailed
information is available in the IEEE Guidelines for Author Supplied Electronic
Text and Graphics, at http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs/pubs/transactions/eic-guide.pdf
.
1) The Author’s Center of an accepted paper will
show the paper under “Manuscripts with Decisions” and will have a link to
“Create ECF”. Click on this link and follow the instructions to sign
electronically the IEEE Electronic Copyright Form (ECF). You will receive by
e-mail a copy of the signed form. Please e-mail this form immediately to d.l.henson@ieee.org and the EiC. This is
important to avoid delays because production will not process a manuscript
without a signed ECF.
2) A “readme” file explaining what is being
submitted, plus information on the operating system and software, including
version numbers, used to create the various files.
3) An editable document with the text of the
manuscript, preferably in Microsoft Word or LaTeX, and including: abstract,
index terms, body of the text, footnotes, figure captions, references, and, for
Regular Papers, author biographies.
4) Figures, each on a separate file. Acceptable
formats are tiff, ps, eps, pdf, and Microsoft ppt, doc or xls. Note that jpeg
is acceptable only for the authors’ photos. Figure files should be named with
lower-case figure numbers and the appropriate extensions, e.g., fig1.tif,
fig2.doc, fig3.ppt. Please verify that the figures are acceptable by using the
IEEE Graphics Checker at http://graphicsqc.ieee.org
.
5) A pdf version of the complete manuscript, in lieu
of a hardcopy. This should have the figures and captions inserted in the text.
Production will use this file to ensure that the printed version corresponds
exactly to your pdf. It is essential that all fonts be embedded and subsetted
in the pdf document for correct reproduction. Detailed instructions and
downloads of Adobe Acrobat settings are available at www.ieee.org/confpubcenter .
6) The final version you supply must include in the
first-page footnote (where the affiliations of the authors are listed) the
following sentence (without the quotes and replacing “Year” by the current year, e.g., 2007): “Copyright (c) Year IEEE. Personal use of this material
is permitted. However, permission to use this material for any other other
purposes must be obtained from the IEEE by sending a request to pubs-permissions@ieee.org .”
Without this your paper’s publication as a preprint on the web, through IEEE
Xplore, will be significantly delayed.
Color
on the Web
As a part of IEEE's ongoing
efforts to create tools to make the publication process easier for authors and
to reduce costs, IEEE has developed the ability to accept color figures in
journals for web-only publication. That is, an author may now submit a
color figure with instructions to use the color for display in IEEE Xplore
while publishing a black and white figure in the print issue. When a
color figure is processed for web-only publication, there is no expense
associated with the figure; therefore, the author will not be charged for
color. However, color costs will still apply to figures processed for
color print publication. The IEEE Publication Office converts the submitted color
images to graytone or black and white for harcopy publication. For detailed
instructions on the preparation of color images see the guidelines available on
line at http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs/pubs/transactions/eic-guide.pdf
.
Submission of Multimedia Material (TNANO is not yet supporting multimedia. This is for future
reference.)
TNANO is (not yet) accepting multimedia materials 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 such
as Excel to manipulate them). Such material is intended to enhance the
contents of a paper, both in clarity and in added value. Please follow
IEEE general guidelines for the preparation and submission of multimedia,
including the format, description of content, user requirements, the way this
material should be referenced to in the body of the paper, etc. See the documentation
under “Multimedia Materials” within the “Author Tools” page at http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/ . In addition, TNANO requires that a paper be
self-contained, i.e., fully readable and understandable independently from the
multimedia material; and only freely available media players (e.g., QuickTime,
RealPlayer, Microsoft Windows Media Player) should be required by users.
Multimedia materials should be submitted with a “ReadMe” file describing the
minimum requirements for a user, and should contain a brief description of the
multimedia content. 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 on the TNANO page within
IEEEXplore ( http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=7729 ), back to back with the pdf file of the paper.
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
Authors of accepted papers
can complete the electronic copyright form (ECF) directly on Manuscript Central
by going into their Manuscripts with Decisions, then clicking on ECF in the
right column for the accepted paper. The ECF will go directly to the IEEE.
Page Charges
A voluntary page charge form
($110/page) is sent to the authors of accepted papers 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. A mandatory overlength page charge is imposed on all regular
papers whose length exceeds eight Transactions pages, including
illustrations. This charge is $175 per page of each page over the first eight
based on the final typeset length and not on manuscript length, and is a
prerequisite for publication.
Ethical Issues
Manuscripts should be original, previously unpublished work not currently submitted to any other publication. 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.
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 briefly indicate how the new submission offers substantively novel contributions beyond those of the previously published work(s). Extended versions of preliminary papers that have appeared in conference proceedings are acceptable, provided that they satisfy the conditions mentioned just above (i.e., citation and substantial novelty).
Multiple submissions to different journals are unacceptable. This applies to the entire period in which a paper is under TNANO review. It is the responsibility of the authors to clearly spell out the differences of their submitted papers with similar content, and any common part should be clearly indicated. If in doubt, please contact the EiC.
5.
OPERATING PROCEDURES
Paper Handling. IEEE journals have a highly structured and
efficient review process, and the publication policies are available at http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/iportals/aboutus/whatis/policies/index.html (Section 6, including IEEE copyright
policies, grievance policies, and the review process). For TNANO, after a
paper of any category is received, it is given a Paper ID. It is routed
to an Editor on the basis of the area indicated by the author. The handling
Editor then assigns it to an appropriate Associate Editor, who in turn recruits
reviewers. The Associate Editor is asked to read the paper, assimilate
the reviews, and make his/her recommendation to the handling Editor. The
Editor then analyzes the recommendation and the reviews, makes the final
decision, and communicates with the Corresponding Authors. Although most
decisions are consistent with the AEs’ recommendations, this is not always the
case. The Editors also serve as trainers for the AEs, and interact with
new AEs on quality of the reviews and their interpretation. Research
Letters are subject to the same thourough review process as regular papers, but
receive prioritary treatment. Correspondence Items are also given Paper IDs,
but are normally reviewed internally, although outside reviews may be solicited
if that is deemed appropriate. The target durations for these various
steps are as follows.
Regular Papers:
Assignment of a paper to an
Editor: automatic, upon paper submission.
Assignment of a paper by the Editor to an AE: one
week.
Assignment of a paper by the
AE to reviewers: 2 weeks.
Reviewers: 4 weeks.
Recommendation from AE to
Editor: 2 weeks.
Decision by Editor: 1 week.
Total: 10 weeks.
Research Letters:
Assignment of a Research
Letter to an Editor: automatic, upon paper submission.
Assignment of a Research
Letter by the Editor
to an AE: 3 days.
Assignment of a Research
Letter by the AE to reviewers: 5 days.
Reviewers: 10 days.
Recommendation from AE to
Editor: 5 days.
Decision by Editor: 3 days.
Total: 26 days.
Assigning
a Paper to an Editor. The assignment of a paper to an Editor is done
automatically based on the area declared by the author at submission time. Papers
with no declared area or with “other” selected as area are assigned to one of
the Editors. (Hopefully this will happen infrequently.) The revised version of
a conditionally accepted or revised and resubmitted paper is assigned to the
original Editor, who knows well the amount of changes to the original paper
that were needed and therefore can also set locally a deadline for the AE in
case his/her intervention is needed.
Editor
Assigning a Paper to an AE.
In assigning a paper to an AE, the handling Editor should consider AEs’ primary
and secondary areas of expertise and their workload. Although authors normally
select the area that best characterizes their papers, the selection may not be
perfect and a paper may not lie within an AE’s main areas of expertise, especially
for papers on new topics or interdisciplinary papers. In addition, an
Editor does not necessarily read an entire paper before assigning it to an AE
and abstracts and index terms may be misleading. A resubmitted paper is usually
assigned to the original AE since the authors have revised the paper in
compliance with his/her recommendation.
Securing
Reviewers. When a paper
is assigned to an AE by an Editor, the AE has three workdays to decline in view
of heavy workload (e.g., “already handling too many papers”) or if the topic is
out of the AE’s primary and secondary areas of expertise. Otherwise, the
AE should glance over the paper to roughly understand what the paper is about,
its potential contributions, who are the leading experts in the topic area,
etc. For a very weak paper, the AE may write a review and send it to the
Editor, who then writes a rejection letter to the authors. By not
assigning the paper to reviewers, this would save reviewers’ time for future
papers. The practice, however, should be used judiciously. For
other papers, the AE should secure three reviewers per paper and get their
agreement to review the paper by showing them the abstract, and request that
the reviews be sent back within a given period of time (4 weeks for Regular
Papers and 10 days for Research Letters). Selecting appropriate reviewers
is critical to having a timely review process and high quality. Candidate
reviewers may include leading researchers in the topic area, colleagues who are
familiar with the topic, authors of papers on the reference list, and authors
of relevant papers that have been previously accepted. A good mix of
senior and junior reviewers is desirable as they provide reviews from different
perspectives and at different levels of detail, and a mix of reviewers from
different geographical regions is also desirable. A key idea to secure
reviewers is to align the interest of reviewers with ours: the paper is on a
topic that they would really like to see or to say something about. Having
reviewers who are interested in going over the manuscript would alleviate the
need of repeated sending of reminding messages, and avoid the need for AEs to
write detailed comments themselves to supplement shallow and not-to-the-point
reviews. Generally, it is not recommended to ask other AEs to be
reviewers unless they are directly involved in the subject matter, and it is
not recommended either for the handling AE to serve as a reviewer. On the
contrary, AEs should constantly look for new reviewers whom they may not know
personally. The Web is a powerful tool for doing this, e.g., using
IEEEXplore ( http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/DynWel.jsp
) to identify relevant researchers, and then using search engines such as Yahoo
or Google to locate their institutions and email addresses. Manuscript Central
also has useful facilities for searching for reviewers within the AE Center and
AEs should familiarize themselves with such facilities.
Content
of a Good Review. The
following are suggested questions requiring reviewers to comment:
· Does the
introduction state the purpose of the paper?
· Is the literature review complete?
· Is the paper technically sound? If not, why not?
· Does the
author explain the intellectual merit of the method?
· Does the
author explain the significance of the results?
· What is the overall contribution of the paper?
· Are the
references relevant and complete? Supply missing references.
· Is the paper clearly written and well organized?
· If the paper is too long, how can it be shortened?
Also ask reviewers to provide
any information to authors that will be useful in revision, in enhancing the
appeal of the paper, or in convincing them of the mistakes. 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 specifically
indicated. If the paper should be rewritten, specific suggestions should
be given regarding which parts to delete, amplify, or modify. To avoid
confusion, the reviewer's specific acceptance or rejection recommendation
should not be included in the comments to the author. Sometimes papers
are passed on to senior graduate students for review. Some excellent
reviews may result from this. It is important, though, that the quality
and professionalism of the review be maintained, and the originally assigned
reviewer should check the review personally before submitting.
Double
Submissions. The
submission system states clearly that an author that submits a paper to TNANO
represents that the paper is original, previously unpublished, and not being
considered for publication by any other journal. TNANO will not consider
papers that are under review or have been accepted by another journal. If
a reviewer reported that he/she recently reviewed the same or a similar paper
by the same set of authors for a different journal, the AE should report the
case to the handling Editor with information as detailed and specific as
possible. The Editor should then verify with the corresponding author and
possibly with the EiC of the other journal. If the paper is indeed under
review by the other journal, then the paper shall be rejected, and the authors
should be warned that this is an unacceptable practice. Otherwise, the
review process should proceed as normal.
AE
Recommendation Letters.
When reviews are due, reviewers will need to be reminded. This is
normally done automatically by Manuscript Central. Depending on the tightness
of time, the AE may want to wait for more reviews or act immediately. In
any case, the AE should be able to act after receiving two solid and consistent
reviews. Combining reviewers’ comments and AE’s own reading of the paper,
the recommendation should be impartial, to-the-point, and constructive.
In the recommendation, the AE is asked to provide a general summary of the
paper, the recommended disposition (accept, conditionally accept, revise and resubmit,
or reject), the analysis of reviews, justification of the recommendation, and
the specifics that the authors should follow in a revision. AEs need to
be very specific about reviewers’ comments, and clearly indicate which comments
must be fully addressed, and which
only need to be discussed. If the paper should be cut short, the
indication of which parts to cut, and on how the paper should be re-organized
for better reading should be given. The AE may also want to comment on
the relevance of the problem, the adequacy of simulations, numerical testing,
or experiments, the clarity in conveying the contributions, etc. It is
important to justify the recommendation since the authors may come back to
argue against specific points. In preparing the recommendation, AEs
should be aware that the material will be processed by the Editor before going
to the authors. In doing so, anonymity of the reviewers and of the AE
will be preserved. After the decision is made by the Editor, the Editor’s
decision, the AE’s recommendation, and the comments by the anonymous reviewers should
be made available to all the reviewers. The system
should them generate email messages to the reviewers thanking them for their
effort in evaluating the paper, and indicating that the decision and comments
are available on the web.
Editor Decision Letters. Based on the reviews, AE’s recommendation, and
Editor’s own reading of a paper, the Editor decides the disposition of the
paper and communicates with the Corresponding Author. The Editor needs to
justify the decision, gives specific revision instructions, and provides
resubmission information as appropriate – the authors should not just submit a
revised manuscript, but should also state how the comments were addressed in a
separate responses file, and the deadline for resubmission for a conditionally
accepted paper is 60 days from the date of the decision. The identity of
the reviewers should be kept strictly confidential, and the AE should also
remain anonymous until the publication of the paper where a footnote is
provided identifying the AE. Generally the acceptance rate is expected to
be around 30%.
Handling Resubmitted
Papers. Conditionally accepted
papers have to be resubmitted within 60 days from the date of decision.
Depending on the decision made during the previous review cycle, a revised paper
may be reviewed by the Editor only, by the Editor and the AE only, or also
using one or two reviewers of the previous cycle, typically those who have
special requests. The review cycle is generally fast (a few weeks).
The resubmission of a revise and resubmit paper is not bounded by the 60 day
limit. The same original Editor and Associate Editor are usually selected,
and the paper has to go through a full review cycle preferably using the old
reviewers, but possibly with a few new ones. For both conditionally
accepted and revise and resubmit papers, authors should provide a separate
document detailing the list of changes and how the previous comments were
addressed.
Monthly
Load Report. A Monthly
Load Report is issued at the end of each month by the EiC and the Editorial
Assistant on the status of papers currently under review. The report (in
the format of an Excel sheet) is sent to all current members of the Editorial
Board, to Guest Editors of Special Issues in process, and to past-term
Editorial Board members with assigned papers still in review. The Excel
sheet includes Paper ID, date of manuscript submission, the name of the
assigned AE, the name of the handling Editor, and the status of the paper
within the Review Cycle. Included also within the Load Report are the
resubmitted papers that were conditionally accepted in the previous review
round. Upon receiving the Monthly Load Report, all Editors, AEs, and
Guest Editors should check if there is anything that is not consistent with their
own records. AEs should work with reviewers on papers that were assigned
to an Editor more than 90 days ago, and try to wrap them up within the
following two weeks. Editors should prepare their decision letters as
soon as possible for papers on which the AE recommendation is already
available. Note that only papers either still in the review process or
that have not yet had a final decision by an Editor are
listed in the Load Report. If a paper is authored by a member of the
Editorial Board, our “privacy policy” dictates that the paper be listed under
the Editor's name rather than under the AE’s name.
Special
Issues. TNANO encourages
the publication of Special Issues. A proposal for a Special Issue should
be submitted to the EiC, with a well-articulated unifying theme that reflects
the best work in a particular area of significant importance. Typically,
the topics of Special
Issues are either areas that are just reaching significant maturity, or
important emerging areas in which research is likely to be significantly helped
by the publication of a collection of excellent papers. Special Issues also
serve to show the community that the Transactions welcomes papers in an area in
which it has not previously published significantly, and therefore attract
future papers in that area. A Special Issue proposal should indicate why the
theme is appropriate, who are the guest editors and their qualifications, how
many papers are expected, which papers will be invited, if any, and other
information that may be judged helpful for the proposal review. The proposals
are reviewed and approved by the Senior Editors Panel. The editorial
procedures are generally the same as those for regular issues except that Guest
Editors may play the role of AEs, and an Editor will
be assigned to carry out the standard Editor’s functionalities. A
proposal for a Special Issue may end up only as a Special Section if the number
of accepted papers is not sufficient to warrant an issue.
6. BEST
PAPER AWARDS
At the beginning of each year, T-NANO selects a paper that appeared in the Transactions during the previous calendar year for its Best Paper Award. Candidate papers are nominated by members of the Editorial Board, and the nomination process is simple: Just let the Editorial Assistant know the paper title, authors, issue number, and page numbers. The Editorial Assistant will then compile the reviewers' comments, AE's recommendation, and Editors' decisions from file. Evaluation is done by members of the Senior Editors Panel, with criteria including technical merit, originality, potential impact on the field, clarity of presentation, and practical significance for applications. The award includes a certificate for each of the co-authors, and a check of $1000 to be divided among the co-authors. The award is presented at the Award Ceremony at the annual IEEE International Conference on Nanotechnology.
7.
THINGS TO WATCH
Conflict
of Interest. Conflict of
interest should be avoided by not asking a person to review a paper who was a
student/advisor of one of the authors; who has collaborated with one of the
authors within the past four years on a project or co-authored a paper; who
works in the same institution as one of the authors; or who has had a public
disagreement with one of the authors within the past four years. Such an
issue should be clarified when securing reviewers. Similarly, when an AE
(or an Editor) is assigned a paper with which he/she has a conflict of interest
as described above, he/she should let the Editor (respectively, the EiC) know
the situation and request that the paper be re-assigned.
Intellectual
Property Rights. IEEE
Policy requires that members of the Editorial Board and reviewers treat the
contents of papers under review as privileged information not to be disclosed
to others before publication. It is expected that no one with access to a
paper under review will make any inappropriate use of the special knowledge
gained by the access to the paper. If a member of the Editorial Board is
very much interested in the work, the correct procedure is to directly
communicate with the author (as a researcher, not as a member of the Editorial
Board) and check if he/she has recent results on a particular topic, and if
he/she is willing to share the results.
Communication
Protocol. Efficient
communication among members of the Editorial Board is important. Upon
receiving a request, please respond as soon as possible, even during a
trip. If additional time is needed to provide an answer, the right
protocol is to respond immediately with a message informing the inquirer when
to expect the answer. Don’t leave the loop open for too long.
Reporting Difficulties Early. If difficulties arise in finding appropriate reviewers, in getting a review from a particular reviewer who already agreed to review a paper, having too many papers to handle, or having a family emergency or major professional commitment (e.g., eight months before a major conference for which a major responsibility is involved), Editorial Board members should report the difficulties to Editors and the EiC at an appropriate stage. It is much better to anticipate and report difficulties and obtain help than to simply stop communication while letting papers pile up for major disasters to occur. Similarly, if plagiarism is identified, report the case to the handling Editor and the EiC with specific supporting documentation.
8.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Beat the Bushes. (This is not a political statement…) As TNANO
is a relatively new journal, and the competition for good papers is intense, we
need to beat the bushes to invite top quality papers. Courses of action
may include sending current Calls for Papers to our colleagues via email,
bringing printed copies of the CFPs to conferences, posting our full-color
flyer at conferences and exhibits, and making personal requests to colleagues
for submissions (without guarantee of acceptance). Authors of good or
award-winning papers from relevant conferences, symposia, or workshops should
be encouraged to upgrade their papers and submit them to TNANO. Please
also submit your own good papers.
The
Roles of the Editorial Board.
With the advance of the Internet, everyone can post his/her papers on the
web. The value of a journal is no longer for dissemination of information
only. Rather, the more important aspect is the Seal of Approval for
quality. Consequently, enhancing the quality of a journal is more
important than ever. Members of the Editorial Board play a key role in
this process. It is, therefore, important for us to have a service
mentality for quality and timeliness. Our responsibilities are not just
for the acceptance or rejection of papers, but for improving paper quality by
having a constructive and cultivating review process for better papers as the
end product. It is our goal to establish TNANO as the flagship and most
cited engineering journal devoted to nanotechnology by publishing original,
significant, and visionary papers describing theory, experiments and new
applications. The enthusiasm and dedication of the members of the
Editorial Board will be key factors in achieving this goal.
Inquiries
Our home page is at http://www-lmr.usc.edu/~requicha/tnano . All technical correspondence relating to a specific paper should be sent to the appropriate Editor handling the paper, or to the Editor-in-Chief, Ari Requicha, Gordon Marshall Chair in Engineering, University of Southern California, Laboratory for Molecular Robotics, 941 Bloom Walk, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781, Phone + 1 (213) 740-4502, Fax (213) 740-7512, and email: requicha “at’ usc.edu. For administrative inquiries, please contact Editorial Assistant Ms. Kusum Shori at the same address with phone 740-7286 and email: kusum “at’ usc.edu.