Information for Authors

The bimonthly Transactions publishes Regular Papers, Short Papers, and Letters:

  • Regular Papers publish significant research and development in the technical areas listed on the home page.
  • Short papers usually describe a single result, experiment, or technique of general interest for which a short treatment is appropriate.  
  • Letters are brief technical notes, comments on published papers and corrections to papers.
  • Review/Tutorial Papers cover emerging research topics in Mechatronics or have a tutorial or review nature of sufficiently large interest to Transactions audience.  These papers may be solicited, but authors of proposed unsolicited submissions should contact the Editor-in-Chief before submitting.

Manuscripts submitted for consideration should report on new results. Authors should pay particular attention to documenting their work in relationship to the known literature, and should limit paper length to eight TRANSACTIONS pages without impairing quality. Readers are encouraged to submit Letters to the Editor-in-Chief. Letters are typically summaries of important results to be published later at greater length; remarks on, or extensions to, material already published, or problem challenges.  Submission of material will be construed as indicating that the material has not been copyrighted or published, and not simultaneously under consideration for publication elsewhere, unless explicit notice to the contrary is given.  

The articles in this journal are peer reviewed in accordance with the requirements set forth 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 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. When a paper is accepted for publication, the author will be asked to furnish the text of the final manuscript electronically to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tmech-ieee; the originals of all figures and tables; list of figure captions; a signed IEEE Copyright Form; and a biography and photograph of each author.

Experimental Verification is required

IEEE/ASME TMECH is an application oriented engineering journal. It is therefore expected that all submissions will contain experimental verification of the novel theoretical concepts given in the paper. Papers not containing experimental results should therefore not be submitted since they will be subject to an “Immediate Reject” decision. An experimental rig, which must be used by the authors for verification, must contain hardware components other than a PC/laptop. Please note that the editors will check whether the papers satisfy this requirement.

TMECH's Scope

The IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics publishes high quality technical papers on technological advances in mechatronics. A primary purpose of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics is to have an archival publication which encompasses both theory and practice. Papers published in the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics disclose significant new knowledge needed to implement intelligent mechatronics systems, from analysis and design through simulation and hardware and software implementation. The Transactions also contains a letters section dedicated to rapid publication of short correspondence items concerning new research results.

Manuscript Submission

Submit the PDF file of the manuscript to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tmech-ieee with abstract, references, and illustrations, to the Editor-in-Chief of the TRANSACTIONS. Indicate on the cover page whether your contribution is primarily a regular or short paper, which technical area you prefer for review, and from three to five keywords. The Editor-in-Chief will forward the manuscript to one of the Technical Editors. The reviewers, as designated by the Technical Editor, will complete the review process of the manuscript. Each copy should be accompanied by the complete set of (not the original) figures, and regular papers are limited to eight Transactions pages and short papers four Transactions pages. To accommodate for the likely increase in content and material associated with the review/revision process, manuscript submission for regular papers exceeds 11 IEEE two-column pages (including all references and authors bios) will be returned without review. Also, refer to Information for Authors, found at http://www.ieee-asme-mechatronics.org  (or in China, use http://engineering.purdue.edu/TMECH/)

Length & Style of Regular and Short Paper Manuscripts

  • Manuscripts should be submitted in a double column format using an IEEE style file (downloadable from http://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/create-your-ieee-article/use-authoring-tools-and-ieee-article-templates/ieee-article-templates/templates-for-transactions/).
  • Regular papers are limited to eight Transactions pages and short papers four Transactions pages, with mandatory page charges (US$200/page) imposed on extra pages beyond eight pages up to twelve pages for regular papers and beyond four pages up to six pages for short papers.
  • Manuscript submissions for regular papers that exceed the 11 IEEE double column page limit (including all references and authors bios) will be returned without review.  The authors should not change the template fonts size or line, paragraph, equation, figure/table, and section spacings to meet the required page limit.
  • Papers requiring significant major revisions will be rejected. If the author resubmits an appropriate revision within six weeks, the paper retains its original submission date.
  • The first manuscript page should contain author name(s), affiliation(s), and a corresponding author’s address, phone/fax number, and e-mail address. If the corresponding author will be away for a length of time, please include an alternative contact.
  • The paper should be written in correct English, and convey ideas of importance to the mechatronics community. Please write the paper so it can be useful to both the expert and neophyte. The references should help the neophyte expand his knowledge of the field.
  • Provide a carefully worded abstract of a maximum of 200 words including what is the problem or topic discussed; what is the scope of its treatment; and what is the author’s unique approach or important contributions. Original prints for photographs, figures, and tables are required for an accepted paper. They should be black on white paper and heavy enough to remain legible after reduction.
  • Succeeding pages should contain, in order, the body of the paper, acknowledgements, references, biography, and figure captions on separate sheet. All pages should be numbered with the first page being the title-abstract page.
  • References should be complete and follow IEEE style: Style for Papers: Author (with initials first), title, journal title, volume number, inclusive page numbers, month, year. Style for Book: Author, title. Location of publisher: year, page, or chapter number, if desired.

Letter Submission

All the above apply to correspondence items with the following exceptions:  Letters are limited to two Transactions pages, with mandatory page charges (US$200/page) imposed on extra pages beyond two pages up to three pages.  Letters should not contain more than three figures, and should have an abstract of not more than 80 words.

Review/Tutorial Submission

All the above apply to Review/Tutorial items with the following exceptions:  Authors must submit a proposal to the Editor-in-Chief prior to manuscript submission.  This proposal should address:

  • Potential audience
  • TMECH relevance
  • Analysis of any existing survey papers on the general topic
  • Summary of the authors’ qualifications
  • Proposed bibliography

The Review/Tutorial proposal is subject to approval by the EiC, in conjunction with the TMECH Senior Editors, prior to submission. 

Review/Tutorial papers must follow the Transactions format for the final version. Mandatory page charges (US$200/page) are imposed on each page beyond 8, up to a maximum of 16 pages.  The initial submission may total 15 Transactions pages.

Page Charges

A mandatory over-length page charge of US$200.00 per page will be imposed on each page over the first eight pages for Regular papers, on each page over the first four pages for Short papers, and on each page over the first two pages for Letters.  The page count is using the final print typeset pages not the manuscript pages. This mandatory over page charge is a prerequisite for publication.

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 a US$2,345 OA fee if your manuscript is accepted for publication in order to enable unrestricted public access. Any other application charges (such as over- length 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.

Word Choice

We prefer that authors use inclusive language. For example, please use non gendered terms when possible, and replace the terms “master” and “slave” with “parent” and “child” or “primary” and “replica.”

Copyright

It is the policy of 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 transfer form before publication. This form, a copy of which appears annually in the first issue of this Transactions, returns to authors and their employers full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes.

Final Submission in Electronic Form

The following are the general guidelines for submission of electronic media by authors whose papers have been accepted.

  • A source file of the main document and figures must be uploaded.
  • Acceptable source file formats for the main text are Tex, LaTex and Word.
  • Color figures in print cost a flat fee of $275.00 per figure including subfigures.  Color on IEEE Xplore (greyscale in print) is free of charge. Generally, we assume that an author with color figures is choosing color on the web only unless they specify.  Acceptable source files for figures are tiff, ps, eps, ppt, excel and Word. You do not need to submit separate figure files if you have submitted a Word file with the figures embedded as your main file, as long as the figures are publication quality.  
  • JPEG files are permitted for author photos ONLY. Any figures submitted in JPEG or PNG cannot be processed.
  • Additionally, a PDF of the manuscript that exactly matches the source files should be uploaded. Please try to submit pdfs created with Acrobat v6 or lower.
  • Any changes made to the manuscript after acceptance must be incorporated into your final files. All final file submissions should be correct and complete; you will not be able to modify the submission after it has been submitted.
  • All author and co-author information should be updated in Manuscript Central prior to the submission of final files. Failure to provide complete and accurate author information in the system may result in publishing delays.
  • The accepted style of this Transactions should be followed as much as possible. An IEEE LATEX style file, IEEEtran.sty, is obtainable by authors who e-mail a request to help@ep.ieee.org. Style guidelines can also be found in the tools for authors on the IEEE website at http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/index.html.

The following points are important to remember when submitting electronic manuscripts (compuscripts) in TEX or LATEX: Include all macros (\def) that are required to produce your document; IEEE TRANSACTIONS style dictates a 21-pica (3.5-in) column width. If in doubt, don’t hesitate to ask help@ep.ieee.org.  The instructions for uploading the final files will be sent in the acceptance email letter.

Abstract Description and Specification

The abstract must be a concise yet comprehensive reflection of what is in your article. In particularn order for an abstract to be effective when displayed in IEEE Xplore® as well as through indexing services such as Compendex, INSPEC, Medline, ProQuest, and Web of Science, it must be an accurate, stand-alone reflection of the contents of the article. To assist you authors with writing good abstracts, IEEE provides an Abstract Description and Specification.  Please download and follow this specification when submitting final manuscript.

Graphical Abstract Description and Specifications

In an effort to enhance IEEE Xplore®, a Graphical Abstract can be displayed along with traditional text. The Graphical Abstract should provide a visual summary of the findings of the article by means of an image, animations, movies, or audio to help make clear the point of the article. To assist authors with providing graphical abstracts to be displayed with their articles, IEEE provides a Graphical Abstract Description and Specification.  Please download and follow this specification when submitting your manuscript.

ORCID

All IEEE journals require an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) for all authors.  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.

Follow these steps to link a ScholarOne account to a registered ORCID:

  • Login to ScholarOne and click on your name in the top right corner of the screen.
  • Click E-mail / Name in the dropdown menu.
  • In the ORCID section at the top of the page, click the appropriate link to either register for a new ORCID or associate the account with an existing ORCID.
  • A new page will open to create and/or validate your ORCID.  Once the validation is complete, the new page will close and you will return to ScholarOne.
  • Save the changes to your ScholarOne user account.

Authors who do not have an ORCID in their ScholarOne user account will be prompted to provide one during submission.

Questions related to Published Conference Papers

Papers in both conference proceedings and journals are now widely available on line. To cope with this rapidly changing trend, many societies and journals introduce new policies to discourage multiple submissions including re-publishing conference papers in journals. Questions related to published conference papers were discussed in AIM2009 TMech Editorial meeting. In general, TMech follows the IEEE guidelines on this:

The guidelines recognize that it is common in technical publishing for material to be presented at various stages of its evolution. As one example, this can take the form of publishing early ideas in a workshop, more developed work in a conference and fully developed contributions as journal or transactions papers. This publication process is an important means of scientific communication. At the same time, however, the IEEE requires that this evolutionary process be fully referenced by the author.

A new TMech submission for which an earlier version appears in the previous proceedings should be substantially different from a previous conference publication. At a minimum, the difference might be in the form of additional explanation, experiments, and discussion. In the case that the conference and journal publishers are different; the author should be sure that the first copyright agreement to allow the material to be reused. If it does not, the author should get the required permission from the conference publisher to reuse text

Referencing Recently Published and Forthcoming TMECH Papers

Before submitting your (original, revised or resubmit) paper, please review recent and forthcoming papers published in TMech, and include relevant references that are appropriate in your paper.  When referencing an accepted forthcoming paper (without pagination) in your paper for review purposes, please cite the DOI number and the first publication date of the paper.  Once your paper is accepted, please revise your references to include the pagination of previously cited forthcoming paper before submitting your final manuscript.  It is important to TMech that all papers refer recent articles to establish the context of latest research contributions; this will better serve our community of mechatronics.  Recent and forthcoming TMech papers can be found at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=3516

Author Names in Native Languages

IEEE supports the publication of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) author names in the native language alongside the English versions of the names in the author list of an article.

Questions

All technical correspondence related to publications should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief.

For administrative inquiries, contact Kara McArthur, Managing Editor.

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 a US$2,345 OA fee if your manuscript is accepted for publication in order to enable unrestricted public access. Any other application charges (such as over- length 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.