The International Journal of Robotics Research
A leading peer-reviewed journal in its field for more than two decades, The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) was the first scholarly publication on robotics research.
IJRR offers incisive and thought-provoking original research papers and articles, perceptive reviews, and lively editorials on ground-breaking trends issues, technical developments, and theories in robotics by the outstanding scholars and practitioners in the field. The Journal covers more than just narrow technical advances-it embraces a wide variety of topics. IJRR only publishes work of archival value, which is produced to advance science and technology in this field, and stays valuable in time. To do so the work must be original, solid, and useful for others to build upon.
Consistently ranked in the top 3 in its category of the Thomson Scientific JCR, IJRR publishes scholarly articles that provides engineers, researchers, and scientists with the very best of current research on robotics research - from applied mathematics to artificial intelligence to computer science, to psychological, cognitive and behavioural sciences, to electrical and mechanical engineering.
IJRR exclusively operates on the basis of peer reviews, with no professional editor external to the research community judging on scientific matters. All submitted manuscripts are reviewed by at least two expert reviewers of appropriate standing in the field of robotics research, in a single-blind scheme (reviewer names are concealed from the submitting authors).
There is no page limit for IJRR submissions. The rule is however that a paper should be as long as necessary, and no longer: conciseness is highly valued.
IJRR also publishes high quality, peer reviewed datasets, accompanied by adequate text material to illustrate them and their usage in the form of a regular manuscript.
Multimedia (mostly video or data) extensions are most welcome parts of an IJRR paper, as they concur to illustrate and demonstrate its results.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
All issues of IJRR are available to browse online.
It is the policy of The International Journal of Robotics Research to encourage the application of theoretical advances to real problems and data in Robotics, intended here in its broadest meaning, as per Sir M. Brady’s definition: “the intelligent link between perception and action”. Results should represent a significant rather than incremental advance, and should be verified appropriately according to the topic. Experimental results are strongly encouraged. There should be an up to date literature review, and meaningful comparisons with previous work to demonstrate any proposed advance. Advancements must be rigorously demonstrated by all relevant and applicable scientific means - be it mathematical proofs, statistically significant and reproducible experimental tests, field demonstrations, or whatever may be needed to convince a duly skeptical, critical scientist.
The five fundamental questions implicitly asked to IJRR authors are: "Why is this problem important?", "Why wasn't it solved before?", "What's the key idea in the solution?", "How do you show that it really works?", and "How can others use your results?"
| Antonio Bicchi | Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and University of Pisa, Italy |
| John Hollerbach | University of Utah, USA |
| Sir J. Michael Brady | University of Oxford, UK |
| Richard Paul | University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Arash Ajoudani | Italian Institute of Technology, Italy |
| Timothy Barfoot | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Kostas Bekris | Rutgers University, USA |
| Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco | Universidad de Almería, Spain |
| Rebecca Kramer- Bottiglio | Yale University, USA |
| Luca Carlone | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA |
| Manuel Catalano | Italian Institute of Technology, Italy |
| Greg Chirikjian | National University of Singapore, Singapore |
| Margarita Chli | University of Cyprus and ETH Zurich, Switzerland |
| Matei Ciocarlie | Columbia University, USA |
| Antonio Franchi | Twente Univ., NL, and Sapienza Univ. of Rome, Italy |
| Dongjun Lee | Seoul National University, Korea |
| Max Likhachev | Carnegie Mellon University, USA |
| Huaping Liu | Tsinghua University, China |
| Elena De Momi | Politechnic of Milan, Italy |
| Jun Morimoto | Kyoto University, Japan |
| Christian Ott | TU Wien, Austria |
| Jamie Paik | EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland |
| Jaeheung Park | Seoul National University, Korea |
| Ioannis Poulakakis | University of Delaware, USA |
| Carla Seatzu | University of Cagliari, Italy |
| Adriana Tapus | ENSTA Paris, France |
| Jake J Abbott | University of Utah, USA |
| Ruzena Bajcsy | University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Aude Billard | EPFL, Switzerland |
| Oliver Brock | Technical University Berlin, Germany |
| Henrik Christensen | UC San Diego, USA |
| Peter Corke | Queensland University of Technology, Australia |
| Dieter Fox | University of Washington and NVIDIA, USA |
| Robert Howe | Harvard University, USA |
| David Hsu | National University of Singapore, Singapore |
| Seth Hutchinson | Georgia Institute of Technology, USA |
| Lydia Kavraki | Rice University, USA |
| Oussama Khatib | Stanford University, USA |
| Vijay Kumar | University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Alessandro De Luca | Sapienza University of Rome, Italy |
| Matt Mason | Carnegie Mellon University, USA |
| Yoshihiko Nakamura | The University of Tokyo, Japan |
| Paul Newman | University of Oxford, UK |
| Allison Okamura | Stanford University, USA |
| Nicholas Roy | MIT, Boston, USA |
| Daniela Rus | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA |
| Tim Salcudean | University of British Columbia, Canada |
| Giulio Sandini | Italian Institute of Technology, Italy |
| Davide Scaramuzza | University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| Alin Albu- Schäffer | DLR, Germany |
| Siddhartha Srinivasa | University of Washington, USA |
| Russell H Taylor | Johns Hopkins University, USA |
| Dawn Tilbury | University of Michigan, USA |
| Robert J. Webster III | Vanderbilt University, USA |
| David Abbink | TU Delft, Netherlands |
| Siddarth Agarwal | Ford Motor Company, USA |
| Pulkit Agrawal | MIT, USA |
| Kostas Alexis | NTNU, Norway |
| Daniel Aukes | Arizona State University, USA |
| Kim Ayoung | Seoul National University, Korea |
| Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee | Cornell University, USA |
| Joydeep Biswas | University of Texas at Austin, USA |
| Hermann Blum | ETH Zurich, Switzerland |
| Laura Blumenschein | Purdue University, USA |
| Davide Brugali | University of Bergamo, Italy |
| Jessica Burgner-Kahrs | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Roberto Calandra | Facebook AI Research, USA |
| Berk Calli | Worcestershire Politechnic Institute, USA |
| Angelo Cangelosi | University of Manchester, UK |
| Danilo Caporale | Technology Innovation Institute, UAE |
| Raffaella Carloni | University of Groningen, Netherlands |
| Stephane Caro | CNRS, France |
| Henry Carrillo | Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia |
| Nilanjan Chakraborty | Stony Brook University, USA |
| Georgia Chalvatzaki | TU Darmstadt, Germany |
| Kevin Chen | MIT USA |
| Andrea Cherubini | LIRMM, France |
| Tat-Jun Chin | University of Adelaide, Australia |
| Pakpong Chirarattananon | City University of Hong Kong, China |
| Han-Lim Choi | KAIST, Korea |
| Sanjiban Choudhury | Cornell University, USA |
| Jen Jen Chung | University of Queensland, Australia |
| Javier Civera | University of Zaragoza, Spain |
| Neil Dantam | Colorado School of Mines, USA |
| Cosimo Della Santina | TU Delft, Netherlands |
| Mehmet Dogar | University of Leeds, UK |
| Eric Eaton | University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Nima Fazeli | University of Michigan, USA |
| Francois Ferland | University of Sherbrooke, Canada |
| James Forbes | McGill University, Canada |
| Guillermo Gallego | University of Berlin, Germany |
| Andrej Gams | Institut Jožef Stefan, Slovenia |
| Animesh Garg | Georgia Tech, USA |
| Junyi Geng | Carnegie Mellon University, USA |
| Igor Gilitschenski | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Giorgio Grioli | IIT and University of Pisa, Italy |
| Giorgio Grisetti | Sapienza University of Rome, Italy |
| Roderich Gross | University of Sheffield, UK |
| Heredia Guillermo | University of Seville, Spain |
| Christoffer Heckman | University of Colorado, USA |
| Enrico Mingo Hoffman | Leonardo, Italy |
| Genya Ishigami | Keio University, Japan |
| Benoit Iung | Lorraine University, France |
| Edward Johns | Imperial College London, UK |
| Robert Katzschmann | ETH Zurich, Switzerland |
| Majid Khadiv | Max Planck Institute, Germany |
| Marc Killpack | BYU, USA |
| Hyoun Jin Kim | Seoul National University, Korea |
| Minjun Kim | KAIST, Korea |
| Wansoo Kim | Hanyang University, Korea |
| Laurent Kneip | ShanghaiTech, China |
| Seong Young Ko | Chonnam National University, Korea |
| Oliver Kroemer | Carnegie Mellon University, USA |
| Yuichi Kurita | Hiroshima University, Japan |
| Jinoh Lee | DLR, Germany |
| Stefan Leutenegger | TUM, Germany |
| Minas Liarokapis | The University of Auckland |
| Giuseppe Loianno | New York University (NYU), USA |
| Shengnan Lyu | Behang U (BUAA), China |
| Martin Magnusson | Örebro University, Sweden |
| Cristian Mahulea | University of Zaragoza, Spain |
| Ann Majewicz | The University of Texas at Austin, USA |
| Anirudha Majumdar | Princeton University, USA |
| Ivano Malavolta | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
| Monica Malvezzi | University of Siena, Italy |
| Joshua Mangelson | Brigham Young University, USA |
| Joshua Marshall | Queen's University, Canada |
| Roberto Martin | The University of Texas at Austin, USA |
| Daniel Martins | UFSC, Brazil |
| Takamitsu Matsubara | Nara Institute of Science and Tech, Japan |
| José M Martínez Montiel | University of Zaragoza, Spain |
| Patricia Pena Nascimento | Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil |
| Sao Mai Nguyen | Telecom Paris, and Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France |
| Gennaro Notomista | University of Waterloo, Canada |
| Calogero Oddo | Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy |
| Miguel A Olivares-Mendez | University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg |
| Cagdas Onal | Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA |
| Takayuki Osa | University of Tokyo, Japan |
| Lionel Ott | ETH Zurich, Switzerland |
| Michael Otte | University of Maryland, USA |
| Claudio Pacchierotti | CNRS, France |
| Hae-Won Park | The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea |
| Luka Peternel | TU Delft, The Netherlands |
| Florian Pokorny | KTH, Sweden |
| Francois Pomerleau | Universite Laval, Canada |
| Marija Popovic | University of Bonn, Germany |
| Georg Rauter | University of Basel, Switzerland |
| Ioannis Rekleitis | University of South Carolina, USA |
| Federico Renda | Khalifa University, UAE |
| Michela Robba | University of Genoa, Italy |
| Matthew Robertson | Queens University, USA |
| Paolo Rocco | Politecnico di Milano, Italy |
| Hugo Rodrigue | Sungkyunkwan University, Korea |
| David Rosen | Northeastern University, USA |
| Loris Roveda | DSIA-SUPSI/USI, Switzerland |
| Sheila Russo | Boston University, USA |
| Lorenzo Sabattini | University of Modena Reggio Emilia, Italy |
| Hamid Sadeghian | TUM, Germany |
| Mahmut Selman Sakar | ETH Zurich, Switzerland |
| Maria Sakovsky | Stanford University, USA |
| Oren Salzman | Technion University, Israel |
| Evren Samur | Bogazici University, Turkey |
| Guillaume Adrien Sartoretti | National University of Singapore, Singapore |
| Matteo Saveriano | University of Trento, Italy |
| Cristian Secchi | University of Modena Reggio Emilia, Italy |
| Shen Shaojie | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China |
| Masahiro Shiomi | Advanced Telecommunication Research (ATR), Japan |
| Enrico Simetti | University of Genoa, Italy |
| Harold Soh | National University of Singapore, Singapore |
| Shuran Song | Columbia University, USA |
| Koushil Sreenath | University of California, USA |
| Cynthia Sung | University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Mahdi Tavakoli | University of Alberta, Canada. |
| Evangelos Theodorou | Georgia Tech, USA |
| Federico Tombari | TUM, Germany and Google |
| Rudolph Triebel | DLR, TUM, Germany |
| Ryan Truby | Northwestern University, USA |
| Barkan Ugurlu | Ozyegin University, Turkey |
| Abhinav Valada | University of Freiburg, Germany |
| Cristian-Ioan Vasile | Lehigh University, USA |
| Jorn Vogel | DLR, Germany |
| Weiwei Wan | Osaka University, Japan |
| Chen Wang | State University of New York at Buffalo, USA |
| Wang Wei | Hanyang University, Korea |
| Fei Wen | Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China |
| Patrick Wensing | University of Notre Dame, USA |
| Sebastian Wolf | DLR, Germany |
| Britta Wrede | Bielefeld University, Germany |
| Helge Wurdemann | University College of London, UK |
| Danfei Xu | Georgia Tech, USA |
| Heng Yang | Harvard University, USA |
| Shenli Yuan | SRI International, USA |
| Wenzhen Yuan | University of Illinois, USA |
| Andrea Zanchettin | Politecnico di Milano, Italy |
| Fumin Zhang | Georgia Tech, USA |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: The International Journal of Robotics Research
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijrr to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
1.4 Paper Submission Steps and Timeline for Authors
1.5 Proposing a Review Paper
1.6 Proposing a Special issue - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research Data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Novelty statement
4.3 Mathematics
4.4 Style for illustrations
4.5 Multimedia
4.6 Data papers
4.7 Page length
4.8 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.9 Supplementary material
4.10 Reference style
4.11 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), please ensure you have read the journal’s Aims & Scope.
The International Journal of Robotics Research publishes
- Original articles of archival value, produced to advance science and technology in the field, and stay valuable in time. The work must be original, solid, and useful for others to build upon;
- Review articles on selected topics of broad interest. Review articles are normally solicited by the Editorial Board. Proposals of an unsolicited review article should be preliminarily sent to the Editor in Chief for pre-evaluation;
- Special Issues on research areas of high interest. Special issues are normally solicited by the Editorial Board. Proposals of special issue should be preliminarily sent to the Editor in Chief for pre-evaluation;
- Data papers of high quality, accompanied by adequate text material to illustrate the datasets and their usage in the form of a regular manuscript;
- Multimedia extensions (mostly video or data) are most welcome parts of an IJRR article, concurring to illustrate and demonstrate its results.
There is no page limit for IJRR submissions. The rule is however that a paper should be as long as necessary, and no longer: conciseness is highly valued.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
1.4 Paper Submission Steps and Timeline for Authors
After authors submit their MS (day 0), they should expect to receive a first decision within ca. 3 months from submission (more precisely, by day 97). Possible decisions at this first stage are “Accept”, “Conditional Accept”, “Revise and Resubmit”, or “Reject”.
- If the first decision is “Accept” authors must send in the final version of their manuscript within two weeks (i.e., by day 111). The production process is started.
- If the first decision is “Conditional Accept” authors submit a minor revision of their manuscript along with a letter of response to review comments within two weeks (i.e. by day 111). The revised manuscript undergoes an editorial check. After this check, a second decision is issued (by day 137), which can only be “Accept” or “Reject”.
- If such second decision is Accept, authors must send in the final version of their manuscript within two weeks (by day 151), and the production process is started.
- If the first decision is “Revise and Resubmit”, authors submit a major revision of their manuscript along with a letter of response to review comments within a month (i.e. by day 127). The manuscript undergoes a second review round, involving the previous Senior and Associate Editors and Reviewers, and possibly new experts as needed. After this second review round, a second decision is issued within two months (by day 186), which can only be “Accept”, “Conditionally Accept”, or “Reject”.
- If the second decision is Accept, authors must send in the final version of their manuscript within two weeks (day 200), and the production process is started.
- If the second decision is Conditional Accept, authors submit a minor revision version of their manuscript along with a letter of response to review comments within two weeks (i.e. by day 200). The manuscript undergoes an editorial check. After this check, a third decision is issued (by day 219), which can only be “Accept” or “Reject”.
- If such third decision is Accept, authors must send in the final version of their manuscript within two further weeks (by day 233), and the production process is started.
Those who would like to propose a Review Paper to be published in IJRR should send an email to the EiC in advance, who will discuss with the Senior Editorial Board. The proposal of a RP should include:
- The topic and tentative title of the review paper and the proposed submission deadline
- The author(s), their background and qualifications. Typically we expect authors of review papers to be authoritative scholars in the field, with a strong track record of well-cited publications in the area
- A motivation for timing: why a review on this subject is timely?
- A list of other surveys on similar topics that appeared in IJRR or other journals in the past 10 years, and a discussion of differences: why do we need a new RP on this topic?
If encouraged by the Editorial Board, the author will prepare the final version of their Review paper and submit it as a regular IJRR manuscript., undergoing the regular review process.
Those who would like to propose a Special Issue (SI) to be published in IJRR should send an email to the EiC in advance, who will discuss with the Senior Editorial Board. The proposal of a SI should include:
- The topic and tentative title of the SI and the proposed submission deadline
- The Guest Editor(s), their background and qualifications. Typically we expect GEs to be authoritative scholars in the field of the SI, with at least few well-cited paper in the area
- A motivation for timing: why now? A motivating event could be e.g. a successful workshop, a particularly hot debate ongoing in the community, etc.
- A list of other Special Issues on similar topics that appeared in IJRR or other journals in the past 10 years, and a discussion of differences: why do we need a new SI on this topic?
- A list of perspective authors
- At least six letters (emails are OK) from authors explicitly committing to contribute a manuscript to the proposed SI by the deadline, with title and abstract.
If accepted, a SI submission channel will be open in IJRR submission system and a deadline set. Guest Editors are introduced in the Review Management system, and they will participate in paper assignment and review, under the supervision of an IJRR Senior Editor.
If the outcome of the review process finally produces at least 5 accepted manuscripts for the SI, the Special Issues goes in production containing the manuscripts and a Guest Editorial Article provided by the Guest Editors
If less than 5 manuscripts are finally accepted, the Special Issue is not retained. Accepted manuscripts will be published as regular manuscripts in regular IJRR issues.
The International Journal of Robotics Research exclusively operates on the basis of peer reviews, with no professional editor external to the research community judging on scientific matters.
Submissions to the journal are assessed by at least two independent expert referees of appropriate standing in the field of robotics research, who make recommendations on the suitability of the articles for publication. Articles are also assessed by an Associate Editor, a Senior Editor, and the Editor in Chief before a final decision is made.
Our refereeing process is single-anonymize, that is, the referees remain anonymous and their identities are not released to authors. The referees, however, are informed of the authors’ names and affiliations.
We are committed to providing timely assessment of articles and authors are informed of the publication decision as soon as possible. Our target submission-to-decision time is 90 days in average, and 240 days in the worst case (including author’s revisions).
According to policies by the Committee on Publication Ethics, IJRR does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web based submission system or in other communication.
Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.
The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:
- Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
- Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
- Approved the version to be published,
- Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
2.3.2 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
The International Journal of Robotics Research requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of The International Journal of Robotics Research to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
The International Journal of Robotics Research and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication=
Material which has been previously published in archival publications is not generally acceptable for publication in a SAGE journal. Please refer to the guidance on the SAGE Author Gateway.
However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication.
- Preprints
IJRR welcomes posting of preprint versions of an article on the author's personal or institutional website or on community preprint servers such as ArXiv. Preprints are not regarded as prior publication. Authors should disclose details (DOI, licensing terms) of preprint posting in the Novelty Statement accompanying the submission.
Should authors post or update a preprint version of a manuscript that was revised after receiving feedback from the IJRR Board, it is expected that they acknowledge it in the preprint. When a manuscript is accepted and published in IJRR, it is required that the authors update the pre-print with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the journal website.
- Conference proceedings
IJRR also accepts submissions containing material previously appeared in conference proceedings. In this case, the IJRR submission should provide a substantial extension of results, methodology, analysis, conclusions and/or implications over the conference proceedings paper. An extension is considered substantial if it offers new research results, methodology, analysis, conclusions and/or implications. The mere inclusion of more details, experiments, or discussion is typically considered not substantial. The final decision on what constitutes a substantial extension will be made by the Editorial Board.
Details of previous submissions (including the DOI and licensing terms) must be openly disclosed in the Novelty Statement accompanying the submission to IJRR, and all necessary permissions to re-use previously published material and attribute appropriately must be obtained by authors. Failure to disclose previously submitted material does not comply with IJRR’s code of ethics and will lead to exclusion from review.
The manuscript submitted to IJRR must contain a statement offering an open discussion of the differences with previous conference version(s), and explicitly cite the reference(s). The conference version(s) must be uploaded as accompanying material along with the journal submission.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
The International Journal of Robotics Research offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is LaTeX. Word is also acceptable.
(La)TeX guidelines
We welcome submissions of LaTeX files. Please download the Sage LaTex Template, which contains comprehensive guidelines. The Sage LaTex template files are also available in Overleaf, should you wish to write in an online environment. If you have used any .bib or .bst files when creating your article, please include these with your submission so that we can generate the reference list and citations in the journal-specific style. If you have any queries, please consult our LaTex Frequently Asked Questions.
Microsoft Word guidelines
There is no specific template provided to submit your manuscript in Word. However, please ensure your heading levels are clear, and the sections clearly defined. The final appearance of the manuscript should resemble the two-column style typical of IJRR printed papers.
For further instructions please see the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
During the submission process authors will be required to provide a novelty statement to accompany their submission to IJRR. Compliance is essential.
As part of the submission process please include a short statement of no more than 80 words summarising the contributions made by the paper including the reasons your paper is novel and of specific relevance to IJRR’s Aims & Scope. The purpose of this statement purpose is different from the paper’s abstract. This novelty statement will be considered by the Editors when assigning your paper for peer review and only papers with justifiable novelty statements will be moved to the next stage of the peer review process.
In case the submitted material contains parts which are already public – e.g. previously appeared in conference proceedings or in public repositories, such as arXiv – authors must include in the Novelty Statement all details (including DOI and licensing terms), along with a clear discussion of the original contribution of the submitted IJRR paper. Notice also that all necessary permissions to re-use and appropriately attribute previously published material and must be obtained by authors.
Type mathematical copy exactly as it should appear in print. Journal style for letter symbols is as follows: variables, italic type; constants, roman text type; matrices and vectors, boldface type. Indicate best breaks for equations in case they will not fit on one line.
A sharp image and good contrast are essential for quality reproduction. Keep in mind that most illustrations will be reproduced in a 3" column width. Show only essential information on charts and graphs, for example, coordinate axis, major grid lines, and lines on points of interest.
Provide captions for all illustrations. Label them clearly and concisely (Fig1a, Fig10, etc.).
Multimedia (mostly video, data, or code) extensions are most welcome parts of an IJRR paper, as they concur to illustrate and demonstrate its results.
For video extensions, authors should provide material which: i) convey a clear message related to the paper and are explicitly cited in the manuscript; ii) are of reasonable length (2 min. max. recommended); iii) have a title frame with the sentence “Extension to the IJRR manuscript titled:”, the paper title, and the authors; iv) make the material available to reviewers in the format recommended in the submission site.
For data extensions, similar guidelines as for data papers apply. Notice however that data provided as extensions are intended to reinforce the scientific/technological value of a manuscript, not as the main object of publication per se (as is the case for Data papers).
Instructions on how to submit Multimedia Extensions can be found here: Multimedia Extension Submission Guidelines.
An example of video to appear as IJRR Multimedia extension can be found here: Example IJRR video.
IJRR also publishes high quality, peer reviewed datasets, accompanied by adequate text material to illustrate them and their usage in the form of a regular manuscript. A data paper published in IJRR must be placed in the context of current research making it clear which research field it applies to. Authors are strongly encouraged to reference related work and describe which existing community would benefit from the data. Authors should demonstrate the legibility and usability of their datasets, and provide adequate guarantees as to availability of data in repositories for a minimum of ten years.
Papers accompanying data sets are short submissions that support and summarize a substantial archival data set. Both the data set and the paper are peer reviewed with the same diligence that regular submissions receive. The contribution is expected to be in the quality and utility of the data to the robotics community.
Instructions on what is defined as a Data Paper and how to submit can be found here: Data Paper Submission Guidelines.
The normal length of an IJRR paper is 12 pages in the final, two-column format. Substantially shorter or longer submissions may be considered only if they are of sufficient merit.
There is no page limit for IJRR submissions. The rule is however that a paper should be as long as necessary, and no longer: conciseness is highly valued.
4.8 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.
The International Journal of Robotics Research adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
Please note: While observing Harvard reference style, we do ask that you include all names in the references. ‘Et al’ should not be included in any references.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file.
4.11 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
The International Journal of Robotics Research is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijrr to log in and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to The International Journal of Robotics Research editorial office at ijrr.admin@sagepub.co.uk.