Information for Authors

[Guidelines for Manuscripts]
[Author Information: Rights and Responsibilities]
[Submission Guidelines]
[Authorkit for Accepted Papers]
[Journal Production Staff]

Guidelines for Manuscripts

• IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials is targeted for the generalist throughout the field of communications and communications networking. Intended readers include those involved in research, development, deployment, or instruction in fields related to communications.
• All articles, both tutorials and surveys, should be tutorial in nature and should be written in a style comprehensible to readers outside the specialty of the article. Distinctions between tutorials and surveys are given below.
• Typically, mathematical equations should be kept to a minimum, and not be used unless they are vital to the presentation. Articles intended to instruct in a mathematical area should be presented at a level comprehensible to readers with appropriate backgrounds, and the appropriate background should be carefully delineated in the introductory section of the article.
• Tutorial. A tutorial article in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials should be designed to help the reader to become familiar with and learn something specific about a chosen topic. The specific topic of the tutorial, its objectives, and the background required by the reader should be clearly identified at the outset. Where appropriate, references for obtaining the background should be provided. The objective of citations in a tutorial should be to provide the reader with references where concepts can be studied more deeply, and these should be selected carefully rather than comprehensively. Indeed, the bibliography should be more appropriately titled "Selected references."

  As an example, a tutorial may have the title "Developing Communications Applications using C++." Such an article may have the objective of having the reader understand how C++ is appropriately used, possibly illustrating philosophical differences between object-oriented and procedural programming and explaining the role of class libraries in developing good programs. Code sections that illustrate concepts might be given. Such an article might contribute significantly to the quality of programs that might be developed by practitioners in the communications field, especially novices. The article might also help those using some other language to decide whether to make the change to C++.

• Survey. The term survey, as applied here, is defined to mean a survey of the literature. A survey article in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials should provide a comprehensive review of developments in a selected area, covering its development from its inception to its current state and beyond, and illustrating its development though liberal citations from the literature. Such citations would naturally lead to an authoritative and comprehensive bibliography. The objective is to provide the reader with a sense of the history, development, and future of the topic area, including its interactions with other areas, and enough information to comprehend the development and identify the major players.

  As an example, the article "A survey of markup languages" might discuss a number of markup languages, such as WML, XML, HTML, CHTML, and voiceXML. The article might define the term "markup language" and describe some general features and objectives by way of introduction. The article might then provide a time-line of events leading to the advent of markup languages, citing major milestones and breakthroughs. From there, the article might describe the markup languages in chronological order, showing how previous languages developed from previous ones through liberal citations to the literature. The article might conclude by giving the author's well-thought-out opinions on the future.

• References must be numbered sequentially, not alphabetically. The basic reference format is: [#] L. Brakmo and L. Peterson, " TCP Vegas: End to End Congestion Avoidance on a Global Internet," IEEE JSAC, vol. 13, no. 8, Oct. 1995, pp. 1465-80.
• Authors must clearly state the category of the article in the abstract and again in the introductory section and also clearly state the scope of the article. For example, there must be a statement of the form "This article surveys the literature over the period 1990-2001 on turbo codes as they apply to wireless communications."
• Authors are encouraged to consider inclusion of multimedia materials in cases where such material would substantially improve the value of the article to the reader.
• Figures and tables should be used liberally.  

Author Information: Rights and Responsibilities

• Original Work
  Manuscripts submitted for publication to IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials should be original work submitted exclusively to the journal, should not have been published before, and should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
  
• Clearance
  IEEE assumes that material submitted to its publications is properly available for general dissemination to the readership of those publications. It is the responsibility of the authors, not IEEE, to determine whether disclosure of their material requires the prior consent of other parties and, if so, to obtain it.
• Content
  Statements and opinions given in works published by the IEEE are the expressions of contributors. Responsibility for content of published papers rests with the authors, not the IEEE.
• IEEE Copyright
  It is the policy of the IEEE to own the copyright to technical contributions it publishes on behalf of the interests of the IEEE and its authors and their employers, and to facilitate the appropriate reuse of this material by others. To comply with IEEE policy under the U.S. Copyright Law, authors are required to sign an IEEE copyright transfer form before publication. This form returns to authors and their employers, full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes.
  
• IEEE Copyright-related Information
  Completed and signed copyright form must be on file prior to publication. For information on IEEE copyright policy please visit the IEEE Intellectual Property Rights page.

Submission Guidelines: Manuscripts for Consideration for Publication

• Submission of articles to IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials is via the ManuscriptCentral website at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/comst-ieee.
• During preparation of the article for submission, prospective authors may wish to consult the guidelines for manuscripts and the Author Kit applicable to authors whose papers have been accepted. Time may be saved by paying careful attention to those instructions at an early stage.
• Also, potential authors may wish to consult the guidelines used by the referees in reviewing manuscripts and preparing comments and critiques to authors. While each referee will have an additional set of considerations, the general guidelines are used by ALL referees, so authors may save considerable time by considering those guidelines.
• Potential authors should note that the primary difference between submission for review and submission of the final manuscript for publication is that the publisher needs original text in order to be able to lay out the journal while the reviewer needs only a clean, readable version.

Author Kit for Accepted Papers

Timeline

• Manuscript due at IEEE: The beginning of the month prior to the quarter in which the article will appear. For example, all materials for an article in the Second Quarter issue are due at the ComSoc office by March 1.
• Request for review of on-line file sent to contact author: Prior to publication date, IEEE will ask the author to check the page proofs for the article to assure that the article is, in fact, the final version for publication.
• Approval returned to IEEE: Within two weeks of receiving the page proofs, the author will report to IEEE that the article is, in fact, ready for posting. If the article has problems, the author needs to report any corrections at that time.
  
• Rapid Posting in IEEE Xplore: Articles that are received by the Production Staff well ahead of their scheduled published issue will be posted in IEEE Xplore as soon as the article can be processed.

Submission of Materials
Only articles that have been accepted by the Editor-in-Chief following the review process may be submitted to the journal's Production Staff. When submitting the final version of the article, the following materials must be included:

• Electronic files for the manuscript via ftp (instructions for accessing the ftp site are included in the letter to authors once their article has been accepted). If you are unable to load to the ftp site, contact the pubs office to determine how to proceed. IEEE Surveys and Tutorials is published as an IEEE journal. As such LaTex is used to prepare the issues for printing. Please send your article using the LaTex structure. Include the compiled pdf, figures (as eps files with fonts embedded), bios and photos in the final article, keywords, and abstract. The IEEE LaTeX style file (IEEEtran.cls) can be obtained by e-mailing: help@ep.ieee.org or visiting the CTAN website: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/. You can also download a pdf of instructions on how to use the IEEEtran class from the same page. (Note: For the best presentation of your article's entry in IEEE Xplore, do not include equations in the abstract.)
• Completed and signed copyright form. In addition, The U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulation page should be viewed by authors who are submitting military- or defense-related material, and:
  • Are U.S. nationals (including green card holders); or
  • Work for a U.S.-based organization, regardless of where they are physically located; or
  • Work at a U.S. location of a non-U.S.-based organization.
  All authors must ensure that they are in compliance with ITAR and the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control regulation as outlined in the above page. If you have any questions on these two regulations, please contact the email address listed on that page. The signed copyright form and any additional permission forms may be included in the article package when submitting files to the IEEE production staff. If you need to mail a hard copy, contact the pubs office for instructions.

  For information on the following items, please see the IEEE Intellectual Property Rights page:

  • IEEE Copyright FAQ
  • IEEE Policies and Guidelines
  • Information on obtaining permission to reuse IEEE copyrighted material
  • Electronic preprints or posting your article on your own server

• Contact author's emailing address suitable for delivery of page proofs, telephone and fax numbers. Include the e-mail address for each co-author if available.

Place all files into one folder and compress using zip, stuffit, tar, or other compression format. Upload the compressed file to the ftp site. Instructions were sent to you in your acceptance letter. Contact the pubs department if you have any questions or problems.