ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS)
Editorial Charter
TAAS
is
a referred journal aimed at disseminating high quality scientific and
technological research results in the area of autonomous adaptive
systems, as defined
in the aims and scopes section.
Authors
submitting papers to this journal should support their arguments via
performance
evaluations, logical proofs, and statistical data or usability tests –
depending
on what applies to the specific case. Also, authors are encouraged to
demonstrate novelty with respect to the state of the art.
Tutorial
and survey papers are welcome, provided that they are of high quality,
and which may serve the purpose of informing researchers,
professionals,
and students about emerging areas within the remit of this journal.
Purely
speculative papers, papers that claim research results without
supporting them with appropriate validation arguments, or tutorial and
survey papers that reduce to a list of known techniques without
apparent rationale are not of interest to this journal.
We
expect that the first volume (year 1) of the journal can also contain a
limited number of general, introductory, “magazine style” papers,
devoted to assess the scope of the journal and to encourage a wider
readership (including
non-experts).
Articles
submitted to TAAS must be original, and must not have been published
(or been/being submitted for evaluation) elsewhere. Extended versions
of papers from conference and workshop proceedings may be acceptable,
provided that the TAAS version notably extends prior publications with
new results and discussion. Authors are required to clearly state where
this is the case
when they submit their paper to TAAS.
Articles
must be in English, they should have an introductory part
comprehensible by a non-expert, and they should reference related
up-to-date literature.
TAAS strongly
suggests a length limit of 12000 words for papers, although it does not
consider this a strict constraint. Papers exceeding 12000 words may be
published, provided that the reviewers and the editors explicitly
consider
such a length a necessary requirement for the paper to be complete and
self-contained.
TAAS reserves
the right to impose the revision of, or if necessary to refuse, a paper
– despite its scientific and technical quality – whenever its content
is explicitly unethical or if it supports racism, sexual or religious
discrimination, illegal activities or terrorism; similarly an article
may be refused if the editors deem that it might harm the political or
religious sensitivity of interested readers in any manner.
At the
moment of its creation, the editorial board of TAAS is composed of an
Editor
in Chief (EIC), a Vice Editor in Chief (VEIC), and 16 Associated
Editors
(AEs). In addition, a Steering Committee of 4 members is elected from the AEs.
The
EIC
is in charge of directing the general editorial guidelines of the
journal
in concert with the publisher and with the AEs. In particular, the EIC
is
responsible for receiving submissions and of taking final decisions
regarding acceptance or rejection of papers.
The
work of the EIC will be supported by the collaboration of the VEIC.
Furthermore, the VEIC will substitute the EIC in the case of temporary
unavailability.
The
AEs
collaborate with the EIC to assist him/her in managing the selection of
papers
for publication, according to the guidelines in the “Reviewing Process”
Section,
in soliciting submissions from colleagues and in encouraging Special
Issues
that address emerging themes.
The
members of the editorial board are selected from representative
researchers in
the Complex Autonomous Systems community. They should have a relevant
background of research in one or more of the areas covered by TAAS. It
is useful,
but not necessary, for the EIC to have a relevant background of
editorial
activity.
The
AEs
will be selected in a manner that would ensure that the Editorial Board
represents all relevant competences and communities in the research
areas covered
by TAAS. Geographical coverage will also be considered to keep the
editorial board balanced.
New
members of the AE board can be proposed by existing AEs, the EIC, the
VEIC, or
by direct application from interested persons should a call for
editorial
board membership have been issued. A subsequent voting process will
eventually decide which candidates are suitable for obtaining
membership in the editorial board.
The
members of the editorial board commit to serve the journal for a
minimum of two years. It is intended that new AEs will be appointed
periodically to encourage new input, and address new and emerging
themes in the area.
To
support proper turnaround of the editorial board the duration is
limited. The
EIC and the VEIC can serve in that position (after election following
nomination by another editorial board member or their application) for
an initial period of three years. At the end of their service (or at
any
other time during their service that they wish to) they should step
down
and they will not be eligible for reapplying or for been nominated to
the
same position for the next three years. They will then serve as AEs.
They
could serve a consecutive three year period, as EIC or VEIC, only after
direct invitation and agreement of the total number of the existing
editorial
board members. AEs can serve in that position for a maximum of eight
years.
At the end of their service, they can reapply for their position, and
the
selection process will be applied as for new AEs.
The
Steering Committee consists of four AEs members. It assists the
EIC-VEIC team for strategic or management issues related to the
journal, and may raise concerns in case it considers that the
management of the journal does not follow
the initial objectives of this editorial charter. The
Steering Committee is subject to change every four years, or to be
re-elected.
Authors
should submit their articles to the EIC or, should the EIC be
temporarily
unavailable, to the VEIC.
Upon
reception of a new article, the EIC will examine it for suitability and
content
relevance and he/she will directly reject it if it is clearly
out-of-scope
or in a state not suitable for consideration for publication in a
scholarly
journal).
Subsequently,
the EIC will assign the submitted article to an AE for review. The AE
will be selected based on competences with respect to the content of
the
paper. When an article falls into multiple categories a suitable AE
related
to any of the relevant the categories can be selected.
AEs
are
required to declare any conflict of interest concerning the assigned
article
to the EIC who may proceed to reallocating it to another suitable AE.
Upon
assignment the AE recruits appropriate referees administers the
reviewing process
and summarises the reviews received and
recommends an action (acceptance or rejection) to the EIC. The EIC is
in charge of the final decision.
In
particular, the AE should ensure that each paper gets reviewed by at
least 4 independent referees.
The AE
has the duty of encouraging referees to send their reviews on time, to
ensure that a “reasonable” turnaround time (time from submission to
publication) can be achieved and that the reviews are of a high
scientific standard, and to provide adequate information to the authors
to help them improve
and update their contribution prior to publication.
Reviewers
should be independent and should accept to review a paper only in the
absence of any conflict of interest. Types of conflict of interests
include:
belonging to the same institution or research group of the author(s),
having collaborated with the authors in the past 3 years, being
relatives
or personal friends of the author(s), being in a situation in which the
reviewer would take some personal or professional advantage in
accepting
or rejecting the paper, as well as any other situation that would
prevent
the reviewer to judge the quality of a paper in purely scientific and
technological
terms.
TAAS does
not have a pre-defined review form. Referees will be asked to
thoroughly analyse the paper and report
on: relevance
to the journal, originality, clarity, technical soundness, quality of
reported results, appropriateness of references and of related work. In
addition, reviewers should provide suggestions about how the author(s)
can improve the paper. Eventually, reviewers should suggest to the TAAS
editor one of the following actions: reject the paper, accept after a
major revision,
accept after a minor revision or accept without any changes.
TAAS tries
to enforce a very quick review process.
The
EIC
will commit to assign a paper to an AE within two weeks from its
reception.
The AE must commit to send back his/her report to the EIC within three
months from the original reception of the paper. Reviewers must commit
to send back reviews to the AE within six weeks.
Although
the editorial board cannot prevent unforeseen delays in the above
process, papers submitted to TAAS are expected to receive a notice
about the outcome of the review process within four months.
The
AEs
can (and are encouraged) to submit articles to TAAS. In this case, the
AE
selected for managing the paper should not be one of the authors of the
article.
The
EIC
can also submit papers to TAAS, in which case selection of reviewers
and
the final decisions about it must be delegated to the VEIC.