IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2015 - 4

from the editorS' Desks

Navigating the New RAS
Publications Landscape
By Antonio Bicchi, Ken Goldberg, Eugenio Guglielmelli, Allison M. Okamura, and Frank C. Park

A

s we welcome the recently
launched IEEE Robotics and
Automation Letters (RA-L)
into the IEEE Robotics and
Automation Society's (RAS) portfolio
of publications, members of our community will understandably have
questions about the new IEEE RAS
publications landscape. This article,
authored by the editors-in-chief of the
five major society publications-IEEE
RA-L, IEEE Transactions on Robotics
(T-RO), IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE),
IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (RAM), and the IEEE International Conference on Robotics &
Automation (ICRA) proceedings-is
intended to help our members navigate this new landscape, to offer guidance on where to submit papers, and
to clarify the vitality and respective
roles of the RAS publications.
RA-L is a peer-reviewed, electroniconly journal that began receiving submissions in June 2015 and will publish
its first issue in January 2016. RA-L was
established in response to the evolving
needs of our community, among them
the recent and rapid growth of our Society and the increasing importance of
journal publications in professional
evaluation. The distinguishing feature of
RA-L is rapid publication (six months
from submission to publication, including revision and rereview). High-quality,
original papers reporting on archival
contributions that can be communiDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2015.2495788
Date of publication: 10 December 2015

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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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cated in six pages (up to two additional
pages will be allowed subject to page
charges), are most appropriate for RA-L.
A second distinguishing feature of RA-L
is that for papers submitted within a designated time window, the authors of
accepted papers will have the option of
presenting their work at ICRA. This
year, the window was 1 July-31 August,
in which 335 manuscripts requesting
this option were submitted. If you have a
result of archival value that can be communicated in six (maximum eight)
pages, and also wish to present the same
work at ICRA, then RA-L is the natural
destination for your paper.
It is important to emphasize that
T-RO and T-ASE will continue to be
the primary destinations for highquality, high-impact research papers,
especially those that benefit from additional time and space. It is often the
case that significant results benefit
from feedback from peers at workshops and conferences as well as from
manuscript reviewers. These papers
may also require more space for thorough presentation of experimental
results, proofs, analysis, and comparison with prior work. For papers that
have undergone the refinement process but can be presented concisely,
T-RO and T-ASE will continue to
accept short papers. T-RO and T-ASE
strive to provide initial decisions
within 90 days of submission.
RAM will continue to be the destination of choice for peer-reviewed archival
articles of broad interest that report on
breakthrough research developments
with clear evidence of experimental vali-

DECEMBER 2015

dation in real application scenarios,
recent trends in robotics and automation,
articles of a tutorial or survey nature, general, nontechnical articles, and works oriented toward the robotics and automation practitioner that complement those
works published in T-RO, T-ASE, and
RA-L. RAM also strives to provide initial
decisions within 90 days of submission.
For papers that report on research
not yet ready for journal publication,
but has the potential to evolve into a
journal publication, ICRA should be the
natural destination. When deciding
whether to submit one's work to ICRA
directly or through RA-L, it is important
to keep in mind that a paper submitted
through RA-L will go through a more
thorough review process, possibly
including a revision and resubmission
cycle. RA-L is an archival journal, and as
such, material appearing in RA-L
papers cannot be reused in another
journal paper, while this can be done
with papers published only in conferences under the evolutionary publishing
paradigm.
We thank Raja Chatila, Alessandro
De Luca, Seth Hutchinson, and Peter
Luh for feedback and advice on this editorial. As this is the first year of the
launching of RA-L, some adjustments in
the operating procedures of our five
publications can be expected in the
coming years. For example, we are hoping to increase the page lengths for
RAM, T-RO, and T-ASE, to explore
ways for some accepted RAM, T-RO,
and T-ASE papers to also be presented
(continued on page 163)
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - December 2015
