INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS OF ELECTRONIC PAPERS

The electronic section of IEEE Transactions on SMC part B began November 1, 1999.  All submissions are now electronic. It is important to remember that the paper will appear in print after the electronic version is posted.  An author should prepare a paper that will read clearly when printed with appropriate pointers to electronic attachments.  For the review process, a paper which has electronic attachments should include a statement such as, please see the attached mpeg file or java applet, etc., at the point where the reader will benefit from viewing the referenced attachment.

For example:

Figure 1 shows a robot in the process of avoiding an object in an indoor hallway together with its navigation map.  Mpeg attachment 1 shows a sequence of the robot avoiding several moving obstacles under different lighting conditions during a single experiment.

Code attachments that consist of multiple files should be zipped into a single file and then uploaded as one file.  It is important to include a readme file to explain how to compile and run any code attachment.  Please remember that papers will be reviewed on a variety of computers, if you want the referees to benefit from viewing attachments they must be portable. How to upload attachments using a wrapper file is explained on our ManuscriptCentral web site:  http://smcb-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com/

Papers published in the transactions must meet the highest standards of originality and significance.  All claims need to be supported through experimental analysis or theoretical analysis.  Experiments should be described in enough detail to be re-created.  Papers need to clearly indicate what the contribution described is and why it is significant.  It is important for authors to clearly acknowledge previous work in the area and it is important for the literature survey to cover the most recent, related work from the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Part B as well as other related conferences and journals.

Work submitted to this transactions cannot be under consideration or about to be under consideration for any other journal and cannot be under review in any other place.  We expect that work that has been previously published in a conference clearly labels the conference publication and has been improved and extended.  As noted above, we do encourage submission of attachments.  Below are syntactic guidelines for submission.

Your portable document format (pdf) or postscript (ps) file should be formatted as follows.

1. Double space the manuscript for readability. Consider a font size of at least 11 points and ideally of 12 points. Make sure it prints correctly on 8.5 x 11 inch paper!

2. Regular papers are normally about 12 Transactions pages in length, or shorter. Technical correspondences are generally no more than 6 Transactions pages in length. Please see the discussion on excess page charges for charges that are imposed when manuscripts exceed 12 and 6 pages.

3. 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.

4. Provide an informative 100 to 250 word abstract at the head of the manuscript; provide an abstract of not more than  100 words for Correspondences.  This will also be required in ascii text when you submit your contact information.

5. Provide a  cover page with the title of the paper and the authors affiliations and email addresses.

6. References should appear in a separate section at the end of the paper, double-spaced, with items referred to by numerals in square brackets. References must be complete and in IEEE style: Style for 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). See any issue of the Transactions for examples.

7. Provide  a separate page listing all figure captions, attachments and footnotes.  Please list the page number on which each particular attachment is first referenced. For code attachments, please indicate how to run them on this page.  If necessary, please upload a data file with the necessary information on using an attachment.

8.  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 IEEE 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.

9. For further instructions see "Information for IEEE Authors," available on request from the IEEE Editorial Department, 345 East 47 Street, New York, NY 10017. This and other information may be obtained at the WWW site http://www.ieee.org.

Style for Illustrations

1. Originals for illustrations (including tables) should be sharp, noise-free, and of good contrast.

2. If an illustration is to be reproduced in color the author is responsible for the incremental cost of printing in color.

Hints for creating a portable pdf file

Use scalable fonts where possible.  Use fonts that are not proprietary to your document processing system.  The times font has proved to provide good readability.   Choose the option to embed fonts. When you convert your document to pdf look for a portability option and if it exists choose it.  Most document/word processors can produce postscript output (print to a file after choosing a postscript style printer). Postscript can be converted into pdf with the public domain
  ghostscript/ghostview software (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/) .
Adobe is now offering a free conversion service to pdf at:
 http://createpdf.adobe.com/

Electronic Details after Acceptance

You will receive formatting instructions upon final acceptance of your paper.  You will submit the appropriate document files and associated attachments to the site indicated in the acceptance letter.  These will be posted on the IEEE  Xplore web site for the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics Part B within two weeks of receipt of the corrected page proofs from the author. The copyright form (see below) must be received prior to posting.

Print Details after Acceptance

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 is their payment a prerequisite for publication. The author will receive 100 free reprints without covers if this charge is honored. A mandatory over length page charge of $175 is required for each page in excess of 12 pages for a regular paper and 6 pages for technical correspondences. Authors who are concerned with these latter 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 IEEE is now able to set galley proofs directly from a MS-DOS, or Macintosh formatted disk. Most word processing formats are supported to some extent but TeX, LaTeX, or Troff are the preferred formats. A floppy disk should now accompany submission of final manuscripts that have been accepted for publication. The contents of the floppy must agree with those on the hardcopy of final manuscripts as both are used in the copy editing process. If this does not occur, significant delays in publishing your material will result. This material may be submitted by electronic mail. A floppy disk is still needed, however. Further details are contained in manuscript acceptance and final manuscript received letters.

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.  The form is available on the Web.  This form returns to authors and their employers full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes. Authors must submit a signed copy of this form with their final manuscripts.