TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
Some instructions for Associate Editors of the IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems – Part I
Term 2012-13
CAS Web Manuscript System
All paper processing will be done using the web interface at http://tcas1.polito.it , which
is maintained in Turin by Prof. Enrico Macii (Vice President Publications). The system
administrator is Mr. Alberto Grosso (CASS_SysAdmin@polito.it). If you have any
trouble with the system, please notify me (eic.tcas1@gmail.com) and TCAS-I editorial
assistant, Ms. AnnaLaura Simoni (arennie@arces.unibo.it), and we will let Alberto know.
Paper assignment to AE, reviewer and turnaround time
When I assign a paper to you (most of the time, I will assign the paper, but it may also
happen that the Deputy EIC, Prof. Shanthi Pavan will do so), you will receive a notification
message from the system. Please follow this procedure:
1. Log-in into the system as soon as possible and examine the paper. If you agree to
handle the review process, please click on Agree to Handle Paper. This is very
important, since only when you do this, the authors will be able to see that an AE is
assigned to the manuscript. Failure to do so will generate request for info and/or
complains from the authors to me (and then to you).
If the paper does not belong to your area of expertise, or you have good reasons for
refusing the assignment, please quickly reply to my invitation message, so that I can
reassign the paper to someone else in a timely manner. From this point of view,
please note that I will try my best to send you papers that are most suitable to your
interests, but please understand that it would be unrealistic to limit your paper
handling only to specific topics of your own current research.
2. Invite potential reviewers to review the paper by clicking on Invite a Reviewer. Once
a reviewer has agreed to review a paper (in a personal email message to you) you may
then assign him using the Add a Reviewer link. Alternatively, a reviewer can also
accept your invitation by clicking on a link in the email invitation. In this case, the
reviewer will be automatically assigned to the paper, saving you the burden to add
him/her by hand. In case something goes wrong, you can always use the Remove a
Reviewer link to un-assign the manuscript.
Note that when you Invite/Add a reviewer you should first check whether he/she is
already registered in the TCAS-I database. You may do so by using the lists that you
have at your disposal or using the searchable reviewers database that you can access
from the link Search Compatible Reviewers. You will be prompted a list of suitable
reviewers which have declared to be experts in the area defined by the paper EDICS
(Editors'
Information
Classification
Scheme,
see
http://tcas1.polito.it/Forms/kwlist.html for the list for TCAS-I). Let me stress that the
searchable database of reviewers is meant to be an aid for you to find names of
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
potential reviewers and does not substitute your judgment/ability to identify new
reviewers by scanning the recent literature, by considering the list of references in the
paper, or by personal knowledge.
In case the reviewer that you have in mind is not yet registered into the system, you
can add a username and the reviewer’s email address in the fields which you find
following the Invite a Reviewer link. Note that at this point the reviewer has not yet
been added to the system. When he/she has positively replied to your invitation, you
may then add him/her using the fields which you find following the Add a Reviewer
link. Note that the username does not need to be the same that you have used to invite
him/her, even if you want to do so to maintain consistency in your records. At this
point the reviewer receives an email containing instructions for completing the
registration. Only when the registration is completed he/she will be added to the
TCAS-I reviewer database and he/she can access the paper to be reviewed.
In case the reviewer is already present, you have to assign the paper using the account
the reviewer has and that you can find in the lists you will access following the Add a
Reviewer link. Or, again, he/she may accept your invitation by following the link in
the invitation email. The reviewer will receive a message containing instructions how
to access the paper.
Important: All papers need to be reviewed, in general, by at least 3 independent
reviewers. By independent we mean, e.g., that they cannot all belong to the same
institution, that they should have not significantly worked together with the author(s)
nor should be former students or alumni (both conditions are considered met if al
least 4-5 years has elapsed).
As a partial exception, you can decide upon a paper with just 2 reviews if they are in
agreement on a “clear accept” or a “clear reject” and entering your own opinion using
the “comments for the authors” field in the Submit/Edit your Recommendation
form.
My suggestion is that you assign more than 3 reviewers and decide upon the paper
when you have received the first 3 (or, depending on the situation, the first 2). In the
fortunate circumstance in which you will be in the condition to do so before the
deadline that you set to the reviewers, please be so kind to write to those who did not
submit the review yet, and communicate that you are in the condition to take a
decision on the paper but you are willing to await their input (until the deadline) if
they still wish to do the review. My advice is to always follow this procedure if you
have a “clear reject” paper. If you have a clear accept, then just wait till the deadline:
if the paper is good, more comments may simply improve it
In any case, please remember to remove the reviewers which decided to not complete
their job from the list of those assigned to the paper.
Important: As an AE you can also assign the paper to yourself and submit a review
as a reviewer.
Very Important: If the paper contains obvious flaws, or according to your
opinion/knowledge is similar to other published work, or (and these should be
exceptional cases) is obviously trivial and not significant given the current status of
research in the field, you may propose to reject the paper upfront. However, in these
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
cases you are requested to write an extended comment to the authors so that they will
receive a reasonable feedback from the Editorial Board.
There are many submissions that can go into other IEEE Transactions. I will try to
judge if a paper is suitable to appear in TCAS-I myself, and I will ask your input by
assigning the paper to you. Conversely, an AE can also propose to the EIC to return
without any review a paper that is deemed to be in an area outside of the scope of TCASI. In any case, such actions should be taken quickly.
We need to keep the average first decision time for TCAS-I to 1 month!! This means
that the review time is 3 or 4 weeks maximum. This will leave us 1 week for the
overhead work, i.e.
 EIC assignment of papers to AE
 AE reviewers invitation and assignment
 AE decision
 EIC final decision
The web-system will send automatic reminders to the reviewers (with Cc. to you) two
weeks and one week before the deadline and will keep reminding them every 3 days for 2
weeks after the deadline. Nevertheless, according to my experience, such automatic
emails are ignored by the reviewers. I would therefore appreciate if you could send
personal reminders to the reviewers yourself.
Possible decisions and target acceptance
The possible decisions for a paper submitted to TCAS-I are:
1. Accept and recommend for a best paper award Please, do not be shy . If you
think that the paper you are handling is a good one, then write a brief explanations in
your comment to the EIC field, and do not hesitate to recommend the paper for an
award. This is very important since, every year, only few recommendations (5-10) are
received for both the CASS Darlington and Guillemin-Cauer Awards (best paper
awards for TCAS-I and TCAS-II). In any case, please keep track of the best papers that
you are handling since by the end of the year we will request to make some nomination
for the awards.
2. Accept as is Please note that also for an accepted paper minor modification can be
requested to the authors before the final submission. In this case the AE will not be
able to check the paper, so that the required modifications need to be extremely minor
3. Resubmit after a minor revision This decision should be used for allowing the
authors minor corrections on the papers that require 3 weeks or less to be completed.
On the contrary, if you feel that the paper requires extensive modifications or even a
full rewriting you should recommend a major revision. Note that a paper subject to a
minor revision should be sent back to the reviewers only in particular circumstances
(i.e. the AE should decide him/herself on the revised version of the paper, based on
his/her own opinion of the paper and the reply letter written by the authors). Note that
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
4.
5.
6.
7.
while in the past reviewers were given a month to evaluate a revised paper after this
type of recommendation, now their final review will be due after 2 weeks from the
date on which the re-submission has been done. Be alert! Since this is a major
change, reviewers won’t necessarily pay attention to the tight deadline. It is your duty
to give them a heads up as soon as they receive the revised paper.
Resubmit after a major revision This decision should be taken when significant
changes are required in a manuscript which received reasonably good comments and
which, in your opinion, may eventually be accepted. Note that if the reviewers are not
satisfied with the revised version of the paper, then the paper should be rejected, i.e.,
we should not allow two consecutive major revisions. In other words the only
acceptable decisions for a paper resubmitted after a major revision are only
acceptance and minor revision. Note that in the past authors were given 10 weeks to
submit a major revised version. This time is now being shortened to 8 weeks. If YOU
think that more than 8 weeks will be required then you can allow a small extension
(say 2 more weeks max) using your AE account, or you should seriously consider
rejecting the paper. Note also that while in the past reviewers were given a month to
evaluate a revised paper after this type of recommendation, now their final review
will be due after 2 weeks from the date on which the re-submission has been done. Be
alert! Since this is a major change, reviewers won’t necessarily pay attention to the
tight deadline. It is your duty to give them a heads up as soon as they receive the
revised paper.
Reject To reject a paper it is sufficient to have at least a convincing recommendation
of reject and one of major revision or even two very serious recommendations of
major revision only. In other words, do not recommend a major revision for a paper
of whose quality you have some doubts. It is of paramount importance that you
elaborate on the reasons why you are rejecting a manuscript in your feedback to the
authors. Remember that while keeping our standards of quality very high is one of
our top responsibilities to the journal, it is also crucial that we are fair and clear to the
authors that have put their time and effort in their manuscript and deserve to know
why it is being rejected and why they shouldn’t come back to us appealing to this
recommendation.
Reject (but encourage resubmission). This last type of recommendation is fairly
self-explanatory and should be used very sparingly. From a procedural point of view
this works similarly to a “resubmit after a major revision” (i.e. both the original AE
and the original reviewers will be automatically re-assigned once the authors submit
their new manuscript; moreover the authors need to accompany that with answers to
the original objections and explaining how the manuscript have addressed them).
However this should only be used in extreme cases in that, effectively, it lengthen the
overall review process and it is not the duty of the editorial board to give guidance
and improvement to a paper trough successive refinement until it is accepted for
publication. After a “reject but encourage resubmission” the only two options are
“accept” or “reject”. No further review cycle is allowed.
Submit to another IEEE journal. This is tantamount to a rejection. It can either be
used when the paper’s topic is outside the scope of TCAS-I (in this case you need to
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
suggest one or more alternate journals and explain why these would be a preferable
venue for the topic of the paper) or when the paper is within the scope of TCAS-I but
it does not justify a long paper and that could as well be written, without loss of
clarity or completeness, into a five pages long manuscript. In the latter case the
authors need to be communicated clearly that they should re-write their manuscript
into a considerably more concise format and re-submit that to TCAS-II.
Note: In case you recommend that a paper is subject to a minor or (even more important)
major revision, you may want to emphasize (in your comment from the AE to the
authors) the importance of a good rebuttal letter. If the letter is carefully prepared it will
save a lot of your time (and of the reviewers, if their opinion is needed in the second
round).
Note 2: Once the revised manuscript has been submitted by the authors, you will receive
an automatically generated message indicating that the paper has been assigned to you
and that you are expected to handle this paper, except for extraordinary circumstances.
Likewise, the original reviewers will also be automatically added as reviewers for it,
unless you decide to remove them manually (for example, you could do that for the
reviewers that have previously recommended accepting the paper and therefore may not
need to be bothered to see it once again). Just remember that if you don’t want to
automatically re-assign some specific reviewers to another review cycle, you will need to
manually remove them after you’ve recommended another revision and before the
authors submit their revised manuscript.
TCAS-I is experiencing a large number of submissions (more than 2000 in the last 2
years including special issues). The acceptance rate has been relatively constant during
this period at approximately 21%. Please try to adhere to an average acceptance rate of
20%.
With this, I hope to maintain the quality of the papers appearing in the journal and to
reduce the backlog of papers that will appear in print, which is unfortunately still in
excess of a year from acceptance! Note, accepted papers will be rapid posted via IEEE
Xplore
much
earlier
(~6
months
from
acceptance)
.
See,
e.g.,
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocpreprint.jsp?isnumber=4358591&Submit3=View+Articl
es&punumber=8919.
(Self-)Plagiarism
As an implementation of IEEE wide policy against plagiarism, CAS society has
instituted an informal policy that all submissions should have at least 30% new content as
compared with its conference versions or previously published versions. Submissions
falling short of this requirement will not be published, or even reviewed.
Imporant: The link EDICS Statistics has been added to both the AE and reviewers
accounts which allows them to see the title of the papers which have been submitted (for
the reviewers only accepted) in each particular EDICS category. This can be used to
identify previously submitted papers by the same authors (if any) or related papers and
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
can be used also as a simple aid in the review process to suggest relevant references. Note
that accepted papers can be downloaded.
English/Poor Quality/Direct Paper Rejection
Papers which do not meet a minimum standard with respect to English can be returned
without review. Often, very weak papers from a Technical point of view are also written
in very poor English. Please stress both these facts in the “AE comments for the authors”
field when you wish to reject a paper directly without sending it to the reviewers. In these
cases, if you feel that this is appropriate, authors should be encouraged to resubmit the
paper once they have improved it from a Technical point of view and have improved the
English quality by seeking the assistance of an English native speaker or they have used a
professional proofreading service.
References and Journal Impact Factor
As you may know, there are several bibliographic indexes that are used to evaluate the
impact on the scientific community of the articles published by several journals. They are
assuming an increasing impact on the journal reputation, on the authors’ careers, and
therefore, on their choice of the journal where the most important results should be
published.
The most important one is the Impact Factor (IF) as computed each year by the ISI
Journal of Citation Reports. It is defined as
Impact Factor: For a given journal IF(n) for year n is computed as
Sum of citations in year n of articles published in year n  1 and n  2
IF(n)=
Number of articles published in year n  1 and n  2
IF for TCAS-I is currently 1.97.
Personally I am not convinced that IF is a real indicator of the quality of a journal, but
since IF is more and more used for determining the author’s careers, we need to try to
increase its value further for TCAS-I. The best way to do that is actually fundamental in
nature: accept high quality papers, reject mediocrity.
Boston, November 16, 2012
Gabriele Manganaro, Ph.D.
Analog Devices Inc.
804 Woburn Street, MS-623
Wilmington MA 01887-3494, U.S.A.
Gabriele.manganaro@ieee.org
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
Appendix: Scope, Policies, Statistics
A. SCOPE OF TRANSACTIONS
1.
Scope of TCAS-I
The official scope of TCAS-I approved by TAB in 2003 and reported in the journal page on
IEEEXplore is:
The theory, analysis, (computer aided) design, and practical implementation of circuits, and
the application of circuit theoretic techniques to systems and to signal processing.
Additionally (as reported in the instruction for authors) the specific technical content of submitted
papers is expected to have a clear connection to the general theme of Circuits and Systems. The
contents of papers submitted need to either substantially advance the state of the art in either
theory, or to demonstrate a performance advantage over prior work (those accompanied by
measured results are particularly encouraged), or to substantiate meaningful impact in practical
existing applications or in emerging systems that are quickly gaining momentum.
2.
Overlap of scope with other IEEE Transactions.
There is some overlap between TCAS-I and many other journals, primarily:
 The Journal of Solid State Circuits
 The Trans. on Signal Processing
 The Trans. on Automatic Control
 The Trans. on Power Electronics
 The Trans. on Communication
 The Trans. on CAD
 The Trans. on VLSI
Topics to be covered are specified by means of Editors' Information Classification Scheme
(EDICS) system for TCAS-I reported at http://tcas1.polito.it/Forms/kwlist.html.
Only regular papers should be submitted to this Transaction. Short contributions (less or equal 5
pages if formatted according to the 2-colums IEEE style file) should be submitted to the IEEE
TCAS-II. For areas which may contain subjects at the borderline with the domain of competence
of other IEEE Societies, such as
COMM - Circuits and Systems for Communications
CTRL - Control Theory topics in Circuits and Systems
SIPRO - Signal Processing
it is expected that the authors submit to TCAS-I papers which focus also on the impact that a
particular signal processing or communication algorithm, and/or control theoretical result may
have on the design /implementation /performance of the corresponding circuit or system. In a
similar way, for papers which belong to EDICS category:
POW - Power Systems and Electronic Circuits
we expect to receive papers which clearly exploit circuit theoretic methodologies in their
analysis/design or present significant results in the integrated circuit implementation.
B. EDITORIAL POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
Editor-in-Chief (EIC) selection and training, and terms/term limits.
As specified by the CAS Society Constitution under section VIII.3, the EiC must have been a Society
member in good standing for at least 2 years prior to the appointment. The editorial term of Editors-inChief is two years and can be renewed once without lapse. As specified by CAS Society Bylaws under
section VI. 5. The EiC is selected by the EiC Selection Committee, which is a Standing Committee
chaired by the Vice-President Publications and consisting of the President, the Vice-President
Publications, the Vice-President Technical Activities and two more members appointed by the
President in consultation with the Vice-President Publications and Vice-President Technical Activities
They may include the outgoing EiCs or any other member of choice, such as Past President or others.).
The process of EIC selection starts with an open call for EiC nominations to the entire CAS
membership, which is issued before May 1 in the last year of the current editorial term. It includes the
request for CV and positions statements of nominees. (Selection criteria to be used: High international
publication standing [as measured by the number of publications in IEEE and other international
journals], Previous editorial experience [The committee should use any objective data that could be
collected on past performance]. The Deputy Editor-in-Chief (DEiC) is proposed by the EiC during the
nomination process. Both EiC and Deputy EiC are selected by the Selection committee and appointed
by the President.
The selection of the incoming EiC is usually ended six months before the end of the term of the current
EiC (December 31). The incoming EiC is, during this period, trained by the current EiC in his/her
duties and the proper use of the CAS Society Manuscript web submission systems (“Manuscript
CAS”). This involved several skype meetings between the incoming and outgoing EiC and DEiC. The
process has going so well in the past 2 terms that CASS has currently decided to document the
involved best practices In terms for instance of procedures for selecting Editorial board members in a
short manual which is currently prepared by the VP Publications
Associate Editor selection and training, and terms/term limits.
The Associate Editors are proposed based on discussions between the Editor-in-Chief, the Deputy
Editor-in-Chief, and VP Publications. Also considered are recommendations by the Technical
Committee Chairs, former EiCs, and leading researchers in various fields. As per Section V.4 of the
CASS Bylaws (see Section C.1), the list is approved by the CAS Society Publications Activities
Division. To be selected as an Associate Editor, a candidate should be well respected or a rising star in
his/her field, should have published and/or patented with high impact in the CAS field and have
achieved visible recognition within the IEEE, should be known to be highly responsible and
committed, and should be an expert in a technical area within the scope of TCAS–I. In the selection of
the AEs, the EiC also pays attention to demonstrated high ethical standards of the candidates.
Secondary selection criteria relates to the Editor-in-Chief’s goal to balance the Editorial Board with
respect to the diversity in terms of gender, geographical location and role
(industry/academia/government). An AE is generally appointed for two years, with a one-term
reappointment possible in cases of good performance The EiC closely monitors the performance of all
AEs on a weekly basis. In the case of particularly poor performances and prolonged unresponsiveness
to reminders, AEs will the confronted and asked to go back on track or resign the position. Associate
Editors duties are described in a detailed document prepared by the EiC and the VP Publications. The
document is sent to each AE after his/her appointment as the initial part of the training. Further
training, as needed, is provided through extensive email and phone/skype contact with the Editor-inChief. An additional occasion for discussion and training via best-practice sharing may be during the
annual in-person meeting of the Editorial Board which happens every year in conjunction with the
IEEE International Symposium of Circuits and Systems (ISCAS). Alternatively the EiC may choose to
hold an internet based conference with the editorial board.
C. QUALITY
This describes the handling of papers from submission to publication. It includes a thorough
description of the paper peer review process. (For example, who reviews the first submission?
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
How are papers distributed for review? To how many reviewers is each paper sent? Is there a
summary review prepared by the editor? How many reviews are needed, at the minimum, to
reach a decision? How are special issues handled, particularly with regard to Guest Editors?).
Please also comment on the policy (if any) or practice for “Administrative Returns” and
“Editorial Rejections” (that is, return of manuscripts without review).
Before we report about the process, we must emphasize that the key quality issue rests with the
Editorial Board. We have a team of dedicated and experienced associate editors who are recognized
experts in the field. Furthermore they select the reviewers to be equally qualified to express an opinion
on the subject matter of the paper. The selection of AEs and reviewers has been extremely careful and
meticulous.
All submissions are made electronically and the whole review process is carried out using the
“Manuscript CAS” system, a web based system that allows managing the storage, handling and
confidential access to the manuscripts by its users, depending on permissions established by the Editor
in Chief, the system administrator and the members of the editorial board as appropriate. The authors
can also monitor the progress of the review process using this system.
The Transaction currently publishes two kinds of papers: regular papers and invited papers. The
regular type is submitted, through the Manuscript CAS system, to the EiC by an author with no prior
contact by a member of the Editorial Board. The solicited/invited type of papers is encouraged by a
member of the Editorial Board prior to submission. Both types receive the same review process and a
decision is taken on the basis of at least three reviews as arranged by a member of the Editorial Board
or the Editor-in-Chief.
The following steps take place once a paper is submitted:
 When a paper is submitted, a notification email is automatically sent both to the EiC and the
Editorial Assistant. Papers are first verified (manually) for printability and conformance with
the TCAS–I submission guidelines (14 pages maximum prepared in the standard double
column IEEE Transactions style), for minimum English quality. If the manuscript is found
deficient, it is returned to the authors without review. The authors are also notified about the
problem(s) identified in their manuscript and asked for a possible resubmission after revising
the manuscript accordingly. After passing this first phase, the manuscript is then checked for
its adherence to the scope of the Transactions. This involves discussions between the EiC the
DEiC and at least one additional “senior”AE (i.e one of those having more editorial
experience). In the case the paper is found to be out of scope the manuscript is returned to the
authors with the indication of the reasons for the decision and advices of more suitable IEEE
journals where the paper could be submitted. A similar procedure is also adopted for the (very
limited cases) where the manuscript has obvious flaws or is extremely weak or outdated in
terms of technical content. For papers passing this first screening, an email acknowledgement
is sent to the authors. The email is automatically created by the system.
 The EiC then invites a qualified Associate Editor to handle the manuscript by sending the title
and abstract. If the AE accepts the invitation, the system automatically assigns the paper to the
AE. An email is automatically generated and sent to the AE informing him/her that the new
paper has been assigned. This paper is then added to the list of the other papers being handled
by the AE. If the invited AE is unable to handle the paper, the EiC selects another AE.
 Despite this never happened in the current EIC term, following the tradition in the IEEE CAS
Society, the submission of a manuscript (co-)authored by the EIC would be immediately
assigned to the Deputy EIC, which would replace the role of the EIC for the review process of
this particular manuscript. By so doing, all the further steps of the process would be made
transparent to the EIC, that is he/she would not be able to access any information concerning
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
his/her manuscript. After completion of the review process, the Deputy EIC would make
his/her final recommendation, and the EIC would therefore be notified and a normal author.
 If the AE agrees to handle the paper, he/she assigns a paper to qualified reviewers, making
sure that there are no conflicts of interest involved and requesting that the review process be
completed within 4 weeks. The choice of reviewers which are competent with the subject
matter of the manuscript is probably the most important factor for ensuring the thorough,
timely, and efficient review process of a manuscript and, consequently, for increasing the
level of satisfaction among authors and the scientific quality of the journal. To speed up the
process, all AE have, in addition to their personal knowledge also a database of reviewers
which are searchable on the basis of EDICS attached to the manuscript at submission time
and/or by free keywords. Authors of accepted papers are automatically added to the database.
Furthermore, at the end of the review phase, the AE is requested to evaluate the performance
of the reviewer(s) on the basis of their timeliness and review quality, an information which
will be available to other member of the editorial board in the future.
 AEs are instructed to take their decision on the basis of 3 reviewers’ reports. In particular
circumstances, and to avoid unnecessary delays, AEs are allowed to make a recommendation
of a reject decision on the basis of two (consistent) external (i.e. not including the AE, the EiC
or the DEiC) reviews. When the reports form the reviewers have been received, the
recommendation is submitted electronically and the EiC is notified by email upon receipt of
an AE recommendation.
 The EiC reads all the AE's recommendation, reviewers’ comments, and the papers itself (if
necessary). If problems arise in the recommendation submitted by the AE, the EiC sends
comments back to the AE and resets his/her decision, which can be resubmitted (in a possibly
amended version) once a proper explanation of the apparent inconsistencies have been given.
The decision is finally sent to the authors by email. Email messages are also sent to the reviewers
and the AE thanking them for their efforts with the review process.
There are five possible outcome of the review process: i) Accept, ii) Resubmit after Minor
Revisions, iii) Resubmit after Major Revisions iv) Reject, or v) Submit to another IEEE
publication. In case of decision ii) the authors are given 3 weeks to review the manuscript and 8
weeks in case of a major revision. In case of particular circumstances an extension of 2-3 weeks
can be obtained.
The outcome of the second review cycle however can only be “Accept”, or “Reject” or “Resubmit
after minor revision”. A “major revision” is not allowed after the second cycle (in other words, we
do not allow two “major revisions” in a row). However, after yet another subsequent review of a
revised manuscript (third review cycle), the recommendation can only be to accept or reject
(possibly with encouragement for re-submission) the manuscript. Therefore, the review process of
a paper will arrive to a final acceptance or rejection after, at most, three full review cycles. There
are a few cases (approximately 10-15% of the rejected manuscripts) in which even if the paper is
rejected the AE and the reviewers indicated that the paper contains the seed of a potentially good
manuscript. In this case, the authors are encouraged to continue their work, following the technical
suggestion of the reviewers and, if they decide to do so, resubmit a new paper to TCAS-I in the
future. In the case that authors decide to do so, when the new manuscript is submitted, the authors
are requested to provide anyway an accompanying letter addressing the changes they have made
and how they have followed the reviewers suggestion. Upon reading all this material, the EiC will
decide whether or not to assign the paper to the same AE and, possibly, to (some) of the original
reviewers.
When a paper is accepted, the Editor-in-Chief will schedule it for publication in the next available
issue. All the necessary materials will be requested from the authors. The materials will then go to
the IEEE Production editor for layout design and formatting according to the magazine style.
When the proofs are available, authors will be given a 48-hour window to make the last
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
adjustments for any minor necessary changes. The papers will finally appear on IEEEXplore,
followed by the dispatch process which is provided by IEEE.
Case which are handled in a slightly different way at submission time are the following:
 If the authors, upon submission, declare that their paper has been previously rejected by
another journal, we do request the authors to provide us with a copy of the review from the
other journal and a written description of how each issue previously highlighted has been
fully addressed in the present revision of their article.
 If the paper contains material that has been previously published (at either conferences or
elsewhere) we do expect that the submitted manuscript contains at least 30% additional, nontrivial, unpublished material. Previously published content is, by definition, not original and
therefore does not count towards the level of originality expected for our articles.
 If the submitted manuscript is a revised version of a manuscript that has been previously
rejected by TCAS-I without explicit encouragement to re-submit then the authors would need
to first obtain the authorization from the EiC to submit their article. Such authorization can be
obtained provided that the authors (1) accompany their new submission with a rebuttal letter
that rationally and factually proves that their new manuscript should be re-considered.
Moreover they would need to document that they (1) have fully addressed all previously
raised issues and (2) the new manuscript contains at least 30% additional, non-trivial,
unpublished material. If any of the previous instances is not met then the EiC will return or
reject (“Editorial Rejection”) the manuscript without further consideration or review. This
decision is reached after the EiC has consulted with the AE that originally rejected the paper
and with another AE competent on the topic and possibly with the EiC
Special Issues/Sections are also published, where the responsibility of organizing the review lies with
the Guest Editors. In the past TCAS-I has published thematic issues on emerging topics for the
community. After the creation of the IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and
Systems (JETCAS), TCAS-I only publishes a yearly special issue on selected papers from ISCAS and
a special section 5-8 papers on the Custom Integrated Circuit Conference (CICC), which is sponsored
by the SSCS and technically co-sponsored by CASS. We are particularly proud of this cooperation
with a Sister Society. The Guest Editors are nominated by the Editor in Chief on a special issue/section
basis (usually the TP Chair of the conference or other members of the TP committee delegated by
them) These don’t necessarily are all members of the Editorial Board. Furthermore, usually one of the
Guest Editors is the DEiC or another member of the editorial board of TCAS-I as an additional way to
control and keep consistence of quality and standards with the regular papers. The review process for
these papers is identical to the other manuscripts, as described above.
D. TIMELINESS
The table below is a status report (a “slice in time”) of all actions for the past 5 years, as of the
time in current year when the table was completed (August 2012). This table is year driven; each
entry describes the requested information for the column year under review, not the year in
which the paper was first submitted.
Year for report period
2012
2011
2010
2009 2008
(12/08/31)
1
Papers submitted in the given year
2
Papers sent for peer review in the given year
745
983
937
972
904
650
854
803
828
709
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
3a
Papers accepted in given year (A)
3b
Papers rejected in given year (R)
3c*
221
281
256
220
321
475
530
489
571
610
Papers returned by EiC as “Administrative Returns”
for administrative reasons, including “Out of
Scope”, style problems, page count, language, etc. 74
(It is recommended that “Out of Scope” decisions
be made by the EiC)
104
99
115
170
Papers rejected as “Editorial Rejections” for
technical content reasons (ER). Please address in
comments (It is recommended that 2 add’l ‘pairs of
eyes’ such as AEs, special reviewers, can identify 21
the reasons for such rejections w/o the full review
cycle)
25
35
29
25
3e
Accept Rate for given year (Accept Rate =
A/(ER+R+A))
0.31
0.34
0.33
0.27
0.34
4
Papers in given year taken out of the review cycle
(explain in comments below; withdrawals,
expirations)
11
39
42
36
60
For papers accepted in given year: Average time in
2.02
months from submission to first review
2.05
2.17
2.25
5.41
5b
For papers accepted in given year: Average time in
4.92
months from submission to final decision
5.86
5.62
5.61
9.89
6
For papers rejected in given year (both ER and R):
Average time in months from submission to final 1,74
decision
For papers published (electronically) in given year:
Average time in months from submission to e-pub 8,77
Check one: Preprint____ Fully edited__X__
1,78
1,81
1,84
2,49
8,04
8,35
10,89
13.75
3d*
5a
7a
7b
For papers published (in print) in given year:
Average time in months from submission to
13,96
13,06
14,90
18,11
19.65
publication
3c,3d*- Depending on how the publication is set up, the EiC may not be able to specifically split these
reasons. PRAC is asking, if possible, to produce a realistic division. If it is not possible, please explain in
the comments section below.
COMMENTS:
To explain the trend in timing of the table, one needs to consider the status of TCAS-I at the end of 2007
(time of transition between the old and the new EiC). The journal had about 450 open papers (not including
papers under review currently reworked by the authors), of which 330 had no first decision, and 160 had no
reviewers assigned. Of those papers, 220 were open since more than 3 months, of which 179 were open by
more than 4 months, of which 80 by more than 6 months. To this difficult situation one needs to add that
the journal had a long backlog (for sure more than 12 months).
The large number of paper with no first decision at transition time as well as the accumulated delay of
many open papers explains the large average first decision and final decision time for accepted paper in
2008. To make the situation worse, as mentioned, the backlog of the journal at the time was critically large.
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
To cope with this, and to acknowledge the strenuous work of the TCAS-I editorial board to improve the
journal timeliness, CASS made the effort of publishing in 2008 about 750 more pages than planned.
Starting from 2009, the effort in streamlining the review process resulted in decreasing by almost half the
time from submission to first decision and the time from submission to final decision for the accepted
papers. Unfortunately, despite such an improvement, the time from submission to print publication
remained quite large also for 2009 due to a mistake in planning for the 2009 page budget. In fact, IEEE
publication cycle requires society to present the page budget by April of the previous calendar year. As
such, given the uncertainty in the actual journal status and in the real technical quality of the submission
received, TCAS-I page budget was chosen in a very conservative way, actually reduced for 2009 wrt what
originally planned for 2008. A subsequent page count increase during 2009, fixed this to the same level as
the original 2008 budget, making a further moderate reduction of the journal backlog, even if less
aggressive than necessary. A slight increase in the number of publishes pages in 2010 and 2011, paired
with a constant level (and a recent slight decrease) in the average submission to acceptance time for
accepted papers, as well as with an almost constant acceptance rate (about 32%/year), resulted in the actual
average submission to publication time of about 14 months. This is a value which is reasonable per se, but
which has certainly room for further improvement given the fairly low average time from submission to
acceptance of about 5 months.
Papers in row 4 are those withdrawn by the authors for several reasons or taken out automatically from the
review cycle in the cases in which the authors, after having received several reminders of being late in
resubmitting their manuscript for review (after a decision of major/minor revision), did not contact the EiC
to ask for an extension. In fact, in case there is no contact between authors and EiC, the resubmission of the
revised version of the manuscript is automatically blocked 6 weeks after the deadline for manuscript
resubmission. The largest value in 2008 is due to the fact that several manuscripts were discovered to be in
the authors hands for review since more than one (and even two) year(s). In these cases authors were
confronted and, if no response was given, the manuscript was considered as withdrawn.
A final important comment can be made for the initially large and now reduced (but still on the high side)
number of out-of-scope manuscripts received by TCAS-I. As it has been mentioned above, the scope of
TCAS-I is quite broad and has a partial overlap with several more focused IEEE journals. This is both a
blessing and a course. On the one hand, in fact, it may give TCAS-I the opportunity to attract top-level,
interdisciplinary papers which can be of great interest for members of several IEEE societies or offer the
occasion to have special section out of conferences mainly sponsored by Sisters Societies of CAS (as it is
the case for the special section from CICC mentioned later). On the other hand, however, this contributed
in attracting many borderline-to-out-of-scope submissions, very often resubmission of papers rejected
somewhere else. Without proper authors instructions and a careful control by the EiC, the risk for the
journal is to strongly reduce its focus, lose the interest of its readership and to become the “dumping
ground” of rejected papers of JSSC, TAC, TNN, …Indeed, at the end of 2007 the journal was unfortunately
following a path leading this scenario. To cope with this EDICS were introduced by the middle of 2008,
helping authors to find out if the manuscript could be a good fit for TCAS-I or not. Such an introduction
was partially successful even if the number of paper out-of-scope stull reaming larger than desirable (and
maybe endemic to the situation).
Geographical distribution of authors (percentage of total) of published papers in the year of
publication (not year of submission).
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
Region of author affiliation
Regions 1 – 6 (U.S.A.)
Region 7 (Canada)
Region 8 (Europe/Africa,
Middle East)
Region 9 (Central/South
America)
Region 10 (Asia/Pacific)
2012 (8
months)
%
33
2
32
2011
2010
2009
2008
%
31
9.5
34.5
%
30
5
33
%
23
8.5
27
%
28
6
32
1
1
1
1.5
1
32
24
31
40
33
COMMENTS:
While the number of paper submissions from Asia/Pacific (notably China, India and Taiwan) is
slightly growing over time, a notable percentage of these submissions do not meet the quality standards
of the Transactions and therefore, after regular review, result into several rejections. Furthermore we
register a significantly higher percentage of scholarly ethical problems associated with submissions
from Region 10 (and confirmed from the list of banned authors). This data should not be
misinterpreted, particularly given that, in a significant number of cases, this issue can be found to be
associated with a generalized misunderstanding from these authors of the IEEE publication policies,
specifically
those
regarding
duplicate
submissions
and
plagiarism
(http://www.ieee.org/documents/opsmanual.pdf).
E. NOTABLE FEATURES
Each year (usually in the May issue), since 2009 this Transaction publishes a special issue on the IEEE
International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) of the previous calendar year. The authors
of the about 40 papers which have received the best reviewers comments among the approximately
2000 submitted to ISCAS are invited to submitted a follow-up full paper for possible publication on
TCAS-I. Having gone through such a really selective review process, all these papers are generally of
very good quality.
Furthermore, the authors of the two best tutorials held at ISCAS are invited each year to submit a paper
version of their tutorial. These papers have been always very much appreciated by the readership. For
instance, the paper “Design of millimeter-wave CMOS radios: A tutorial,” authored by Prof. B. Razavi
after his very successful tutorial at ISCAS2008 is, according to Scopus, the second most cited paper
published in TCAS-I in 2009 as well as the 4th most downloaded paper published that year in TCAS-I.
This had also a positive reflection on the number and quality of the tutorial proposals submitted every
year at ISCAS: the possibility to write an invited paper on TCAS-I seems to be very attractive for the
community.
Furthermore, each year TCAS-I publishes also a special section (6-8 papers) on the IEEE Custom
Integrated Circuit Conference (CICC) which complements, with more system oriented papers, the
Special Issue on the conference published every year in the IEEE Journal on Solid State Circuit. In our
opinion, this is a very good example of cooperation among Sister Societies severing their communities
on area which largely overlaps in terms of interest allowing useful cross-fertilization.
Lastly, taking also advantage of the large participation of industry members in the editorial board,
starting from this coming year (2013) we expect to begin publishing at least two invited papers, from
recognized industry technical leaders in topics within the scope of this Transaction, that provide insight
and vision on important research topics actively pursued with high priority in the industrial arena. A
first such manuscript is, in fact, presently in the conclusive phases of its peer review process. The
reasons for this initiative are many and include, besides the obvious scientific relevance and interest,
the intent to provide suitable pointers to important topics that academia often seeks from industry and
values in order to re-focus some their engineering research.
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
Needless to say that anyone of the above mentioned invited papers are regularly reviewed just like
anyone of the unsolicited regular paper submissions. There is no difference whatsoever in the level of
scrutiny, or the standards of quality or confidentiality or any potential resemblance of conflict of
interest. While inviting papers has merits in giving or facilitating access to topics of special interest for
our readers is, by no means, a preferential avenue for papers with lower than average quality or a
special treatment for the individual authors.
F. JOURNAL’S FIGURES OF MERIT
JCR indices available for the past 5 years starting from the most recent year: Impact Factor with
and without self-citations, Citation Half-Life, Immediacy Index, Eigenfactor and Article Influence
Score for this periodical.
Year
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
Impact Factor
(regular, with
self-citations)
1.970
1.580
1.420
2.043
1.204
Impact
Factor (w/o
self-citations)
1.387
1.077
1.007
1.656
1.069
Citation
Half Life
Immediacy
Index
Eigenfactor
6.7
6.7
7.1
6.4
6.4
0.227
0.221
0.086
0.053
0.053
0.02639
0.02490
0.02573
0.02313
0.02352
Article
Influence
Score
1.066
0.961
0.930
0.870
0.848
Articles
Published
256
272
232
304
243
IEEEXplore usage in terms of total yearly “Usage” (or paper “Downloads”) and IEEE downloadbased ranking for this periodical.
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
SUM by Pub
609,431
539,497
525,881
503,227
558,879
RANK in Periodicals
18/290
17/284
19/269
18/238
18/215
Note that to compute the SUM by pub, the downloads of all legacy titles have been summed up with
the current periodical (i.e. the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – Part I: Regular Papers, the
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – Part I: Fundamental Theory and Applications, the IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems and the IRE Transactions on Circuit Theory) and the new rank
has been determined accordingly.
COMMENTS
TCAS-I, given its tradition ranging back to the IRE Transactions on Circuit Theory and then to the
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, can certainly be considered as the flagship publication of
the CAS Society. It has a well definite audience of interested scientists and practitioners as shown by
the almost constantly increasing value in the number of downloads and in the constant position in
rankings among IEEE periodicals.
This is also indicated by the fact that the number of submission which has been increasing by about
10% in 2008, and after a few years at almost steady state in the period 2009-2011 in the range 9001000 fresh papers/year, is increasing again and is projected to reach more than 1100 submissions by
the end of the year.
In terms of bibliometric indicators, despite we are fully convinced that they may only partially capture
both the quality and the interest in a journal, the situation is also quite satisfactory. Both the IF and the
IF w/o self-cites has been almost constantly increasing since 2007, with the exception of 2008 which,
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
to the best of our knowledge, has been an anomalous year (in a positive way) for several journals due
to the change of Thomson data base size for that year (especially in terms of conferences). Note also
that another of the reasons for the drop in IF from 2008 to 2009 is due to the fact that in 2008 the
journal published 71 more papers than in 2007 and that, due to the fact that they were the result of a
page budget increase during the year, they were published mainly in the last 4 months of the year. As
such the “time to attract citations” was minimized, and thus the probability to increase the numerator
of the IF formula, while increasing the denominator for the 2009-2010 IF. This was predicted, but it
was felt that the service to the authors could pay off this expected decrease in bibliometrics.
Particularly satisfactory is the behavior in terms of Article Influence, which has been constantly
increasing since 2007 and reflect that the citations for TCAS-I comes from highly prestigious sources.
An almost similar comment can be made for the Eigenfactor. Interesting enough, as it can be seen in
the table below the ranking positioning is slightly increasing over the year for EF and AI and
fluctuating in the same range for the IF.
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
Rank in IF
52/245
64/248
80/246
53/229
66/227
Rank in EF
26/254
26/248
27/246
29/229
32/227
Rank in AI
36/254
32/248
36/246
42/229
40/227
The percentage of papers accepted has been fairly constant at about 30-32%. Our priority is of course
to keep the highest standards of quality of the journal and not to directly control the acceptance rate,
which is, for us, mainly a tracking statistical figure. Despite this, we feel that the above figure is fairly
reasonable. Despite the good picture above, there are 2 problems that we cannot ignore: First, the
present publication backlog has still room for improvement. This I partially due to too conservative
budgeting in 2009 where the EiC at that time decrease the page budget wrt to 2008, since planning
ahead in early 2008 with a very difficult situation inherited was rather difficult. As a result the
situation, after a few page-budget increase and despite it is (greatly) better that (the correct estimation )
at the end of 2007, as said, the backlog has certainly room for further improvement. At present it takes
less than 5 months from manuscript submission to acceptance. But it takes about 9 months from final
decision to publication in print. Even though accepted papers are electronically pre-published in
IEEExplore before being published on actual journal issue, it still takes 3 to 4 months to be in
IEEExplore from when they are accepted, which is also on the large side with respect to IEEE average.
CASS is aware of the backlog problem and striving to put efforts to solve this issue. Second, the
number of papers submitted each month is gradually increasing. Presently that is short of 100 paper
submissions per month and growing. A lot of the increment comes from more papers submitted from
Region 10 (Asia/Pacific). As discussed above, more of these papers, compared to their western
counterparts, do not always meet the standards of quality of this journal and end up being rejected.
This EiC has mitigated some of the aspects associated to the problem by hiring more AEs than in the
past and hence allowing a greater processing capability. That has certainly helped in controlling some
the issue. On the other hand the pool of competent reviewers is not essentially broadened too much and
so, to some extent, we can conjecture that this could move the problem elsewhere. In conclusion, the
above two issues are not trivial. Constant acceptance rates suggest that the quality of the publication
should be holding well. However reassuring, we cannot downplay the possible downsides of
“mechanizing” a process to cope with an overwhelming flow of submissions. As a personal note, this
EiC would like to highlight that despite the highest rigor that goes into the review process, there is still
a meaningful human component in the review process that can lead, for example, to errors or to
TCAS-I-Editorial Board instructions and 2012important information 13
accidental dismissal/oversight of important results that do not fit into the “normal distribution”. While
a sure-fire solution isn’t obvious, the problem should not be underestimated.
“Best Practices” of processes in place
Publishing a special section on CICC papers helps the journal to reach out also the SSCS community and
help cross-fertilization between the 2 societies.
Publishing review papers from most successful ISCAS tutorials is both appreciated by the journal and
contributing in increasing the quality of the conference itself
Publishing visionary papers from well-regarded authors from industry helps dispelling the purely academic
image of the journal and its readers as well as providing insight to important open problems and technical
direction on theme that are of critical engineering importance.
Not only our Manuscript CAS system helps streamlining and making efficient the whole review process. It
also provides a mean for authors to stay up to date with the status of their manuscripts under review and
supports the AEs with a searchable a growing database of reviewers. The system also guides the AEs (and
the reviewers) through the possible decisions along the review process and helps insuring seamless
consistence and adherence to the policies of the journal.