Journal of Field Robotics Instructions to Authors Manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Field Robotics should describe work that has both practical and theoretical significance. Authors must clearly articulate claims, and support them by empirical evidence from relevant experiments. Results that are limited to simulation and/or laboratory experiments will not be sufficient; experimental validation in the field is necessary. Submissions must be original. The research described cannot have previously been published or pending publication in another journal, and submissions cannot be under review in any other forum. JFR will publish work that has previously been reported in conferences or workshops. If the work has appeared in a conference, the submission must substantively extend the conference publication. Four types of manuscripts are accepted for publication: Articles are full-length papers reporting original research. Research notes are brief monographs that extend or evaluate previous articles. Survey articles are tutorials or literature reviews that contribute an analysis or perspective that advances our understanding of the subject matter. Field reports describe interesting and new implementations of known methods and discuss their performance in the field, or present innovative field robots and analyze their performance. Field Reports emphasize experimentation and experimental results rather than a rigorous analysis of underlying principles. Authors should specify one of the above categories when submitting a paper to JFR. The Editors may, under some circumstances, publish a submission under a different paper category than the author originally requested, with the consent of the author. HOW TO SUBMIT AN ARTICLE FOR REVIEW All manuscripts should be submitted electronically via Manuscript Central (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rob). All correspondence concerning manuscripts under review should be emailed to the Managing Editor, Dale James: dale@cs.cmu.edu. Although manuscripts may be submitted in any format for review (PDF is preferred), final versions for publication must meet specific requirements as detailed below. Please Last updated 11/15/07 1
include complete contact information (including mailing address and telephone number) for the corresponding author in the text of the message accompanying any submissions. STYLE (INITIAL SUBMISSION) Please use simple text formatting and a legible font of at least 12 point size. It is easiest to review in a single column, single line spaced format. Pages, equations, figures and tables should be numbered sequentially. Figures and tables must also have captions. Figures and tables should appear in the body of the text as opposed to at the end of the document. Figures may be submitted in black and white, grayscale, or color. The references should be gathered together after the end of text under the heading "References." Authors are required to supply complete information for references. Sample LaTex templates are available at: http://journalfieldrobotics.org/templates Use of these templates are not required but will help speed up the final submission process. Use of these templates is encouraged from the start. If MS Word is used, please attempt to approximate the formatting shown in: http://journalfieldrobotics.org/templates/jfrexample.pdf STYLE (FINAL SUBMISSION) Format: Final papers must be submitted electronically via Manuscript Central. The authors must submit a pdf file of the finished paper with figures inline. The final document should be in single column, double line spaced, format. Please also submit the source text file in MS Word or LaTeX. It is important that the LaTeX file be a single, monolithic file as opposed to multiple component files. All image files need to be uploaded individually, but you may now upload a zipped file containing all of the above (image files and the text file). WinRAR (http://www.rarlab.com/) and WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/) work well. Manuscript Central will unpack the archive automatically when you select the unpack zip files box, but you will need to specify what the individual files are (i.e., image file or main document, etc.) one-at-a-time via pop-up windows that Manuscript Central presents you. Numbering: Section Numbering: Use section numbers for the first three levels of headings: 1., 1.1., 1.1.1. Figures Chapter or section numbers should not be reflected in the figure numbering; figure numbers should be sequential from the first image in the article to the last. Last updated 11/15/07 2
All illustration files must be in TIFF, EPS (with preview), or Postscript formats and must be uploaded to Manuscript Central. Please use the paper # in each file name. The figure file names should include the paper number and the figure number as it appears in the paper (e.g., 06-0100fig1.eps). Images that comprise a multi-part figure should be named to indicate that fact, e.g., 06-0100fig2a.eps, 06-0100fig2b.eps, etc. All file names should be given the 3-letter extension that identifies the file format used (i.e.,.txt,.doc,.tif,.eps). Journal quality reproduction will require color or grayscale files at resolutions yielding approximately 300 ppi. Bitmapped line art should be submitted at resolutions yielding 600 1200 ppi. These resolutions refer to the output size of the file; if you anticipate that your images will be enlarged or reduced, resolutions should be adjusted accordingly. Please advise us of any figures which you wish to reproduce in color in the printed version of JFR. The production company will contact you about pricing. You must agree in writing to any color reproduction fees before JFR will print your figure(s) in color. In general, one color figure on a page is $850. Each additional figure on that page would cost an additional $150. The Journal's printer converts color images to grayscale for print when the authors are unwilling to pay for color reproduction. The images will appear in color in the online version at no cost. If you elect to pay the color reproduction charges, figures will appear in the print version and in the online version of the Journal exactly as you submit them. If your color images will not convert to grayscale clearly (our printer uses an "RGB color" setting to convert the figures to grayscale), we recommend that you convert your figure into monochrome. NOTE: If you use Matlab to generate your figures, you can use a color scale that provides a monotonic luminance for simultaneous color and gray-scale publications. For an explanation, see: http://blogs.mathworks.com/steve/?p=57 The function ColorSpiral can be found in: http://bsp.pdx.edu/software/colorspiral.m References: Authors should attempt to use a reference style as close to the style used by the Journal. The latex template files mentioned above will create the appropriate reference styles. The format for citations in text and for bibliographic references follows the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5 th ed., 2001). Alphabetize the reference list and cite references by author and date in the text; for example, (Johnson, 1983), (Hogan & James, 1995), (Manfred et al., 2003). When a work has two authors, always cite both names every time the reference occurs in text. When a work has three, four, or five authors, cite all authors the first time the reference occurs; in subsequent citations, include only the surname of the first author followed by et al. and the year if it is the first citation of the reference within a paragraph. When a work has six or more authors, cite only the surname of the first author followed by et al. and the year for the first and subsequent citations. (If two references with six or Last updated 11/15/07 3
more authors shorten to the same form, cite the surnames of the first authors and of as many of the subsequent authors as necessary to distinguish the two references, followed by a comma and et al.) References should include relevant information as follows. 1. Books: Authors last names and initials, year, title, city, publisher; e.g.: Gelb, A., Kasper, J., Nash, R.A., & Price, C.F. (1974). Applied optimal estimation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2. Chapters in a book/papers in published proceedings; Authors last names and initials, year, title of chapter/paper, editors initials and last names, title of book or proceedings, page numbers (if any), city, publisher. Pomerleau, D. A. (1990). Neural network based autonomous navigation. In C. Thorpe (Ed.), Vision and navigation: The Carnegie Mellon Navlab (pp. 83-92). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic. 3. Journal articles: Authors last names and initials, year, title of article, name of journal, volume number, issue number, page numbers. Kumar, R. V., Waldron, K.J., & Tsai, M.J. (1986). Geometric optimization of serial chain manipulator structures for working volume and dexterity. International Journal of Robotics Research, 5(2), 91-103. 4. Conference papers: Authors last names and initials, year and month of conference, title of paper, name of conference, location of conference. Mason, M., Pai, D., Rus, D., Taylor, L.R., & Erdmann, M. (1999, May). A mobile manipulator. Paper presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA '99), Detroit, MI. 5. Technical Reports: Authors last names and initials, year, title of report, report number, city, name of institution. Pantofaru, C., & Hebert, M. (2001). A comparison of image segmentation algorithms (Tech. Rep. CMU-RI-TR-05-40). Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute. 6. Theses: Author s last name and initials, year, title of thesis, identification of paper as thesis (e.g., Ph.D. thesis), name of institution, city, state (if not part of institution name) or country. Debevec, P.E. (1996). Modeling and rendering architecture from photographs. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley. References in languages besides English may be used to an extent, as appropriate; please note, however, that such references may be inaccessible to readers, and excessive reliance on non-english sources, especially for references that are central to the article, may impair a paper s chance of acceptance.} Last updated 11/15/07 4
COPYRIGHT TRANSFER AGREEMENT A copyright transfer agreement (CTA) executed and signed by ALL authors, is required with each manuscript submission. If the article is a work made for hire, the agreement must be signed by the employer. The form to be used can be downloaded in PDF format at http://www.journalfieldrobotics.org/forms/copyrighttransfer.pdf. No manuscript can be considered accepted until a signed copyright transfer agreement has been received. It is the author s responsibility to obtain written permission to reproduce material that has appeared in another publication. Such permission must be submitted with the signed copyright transfer agreement before publication can proceed. The signed CTA should either be scanned & emailed to Dale James (dale@cs.cmu.edu), or, should be faxed to: +1-925-666-2811 PROOFS Authors will receive a password via email providing access to PDF versions of proofs to check the accuracy of typesetting. Unless otherwise specified, authors will be charged for any alterations to the proofs beyond those needed to correct typesetting errors. Proofs must be checked and returned within 48 hours of receipt. Authors may request that hard copies be mailed to them instead. REPRINTS Please complete the Reprint Publication Order Form that accompanied your proofs and return with your corrected proofs, regardless of whether or not you are ordering reprints. This form needs to be returned via fax or mail in order to keep track of reprint orders and waivers to orders. Reprints ordered pre-publication are subject to a pre-publication price, and will be shipped approximately four to six weeks after journal publication. Reprints ordered after journal printing are subject to the regular price, which is substantially more expensive. Last updated 11/15/07 5