Rules for Publication of Manuscripts From Society Sponsored Conferences

Statement of Policy

Overview and Statement of Policy. This document describes i) the process of peer review and ii) handling of papers from conferences sponsored by the IEEE Magnetics Society. These two activities are described in this document in two sections.

The international magnetism community benefits greatly from archival documentation of scientific and technical information presented at conferences sponsored by the IEEE Magnetics Society. Publications of the IEEE Magnetics Society, i.e., the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics (TMAG) and the Xplore Digital Library of Conference Proceedings, contain conference-related papers concerning basic and applied magnetics. These conference-related papers must (a) conform to high standards, (b) have undergone technical peer review, and (c) have been recommended for publication on the basis of such peer review.

To avoid the proliferation in the literature of multiple versions of the same paper, conferences should not require participants to submit manuscripts for publication as a condition for their participation. However, papers that are not actually presented at the conference (no-shows) may not be published. Because conference-related papers have the same status, from the perspective of the Transactions, as regular papers, conferences must allow authors at least four journal pages to give them sufficient space to adequately develop their ideas. Conferences may allow more than four pages, depending on their budget and expected number of accepted papers. Invited papers should be allowed more pages than contributed papers. Conferences should not specify a minimum number of pages. Regular Transactions articles sometimes include author biographies at the end. However, most conferences do not ask authors to include biographies.

Section I: Peer Review Mechanics (for both TMAG and Xplore Digital Library Publications)

A. Peer Review.

A major point of IEEE and Magnetics Society editorial policy is that all manuscripts submitted for publication must be peer-reviewed. The inclusion of a presentation in the conference program does not guarantee publication of a paper in the Transactions. The full manuscript, not just the abstract, must be thoroughly reviewed by at least two independent technical referees. The full manuscript reviews are in addition to the initial review of the abstract or digest by the Conference Program Committee. After manuscripts are reviewed, it is the responsibility of the conference Publications Committee to interpret the referees' reports and decide whether to accept the paper as submitted to TMAG, to require revisions and reconsider the paper, to recommend that the paper be published in the Xplore Digital Library of Conference Proceedings or to reject the paper. 

Targeted manuscript acceptance rates for the Transactions are 30% for contributed manuscripts and 50% for invited manuscripts, but a lower acceptance rate may be exercised at the discretion of the Conference Organizers. It is advisable to include in the Call for Papers the statement, "All papers, invited as well as contributed, will be evaluated by peer reviewers to determine their suitability for publication."

B. Peer Review Mechanics.

There are usually strict time constraints placed on the review process for conference-related papers to achieve timely publication. All conference-related manuscripts must be handled by the web-based submission and peer review system, IEEE Author Portal, described in more detail in Section D.   

The Publications Committee, conference session chairs, or other individuals in charge of reviewer selection must ensure that referees are qualified, technically competent and have agreed to review the paper. They must be provided sufficient time to perform a thorough review. It is recommended that the referees have a good command of English and be willing to make reasonable grammatical corrections. In specific:

1. Referees must be contacted in advance. Obtain their agreement to review the papers and communicate to them the expected time frame for the review.
2. Referees should not be overloaded. For typical conferences, no referee should be responsible for the review of more than three conference papers. However, as an allowable alternative, some conferences use a select editorial board to review conference papers. Each board member reviews up to 12 papers with no distractions over the course of several days. Each paper must receive at least two reviews.
3. The identity of the reviewers should not be disclosed to the authors of the papers.
4. A paper's author should not be placed in a position to select the reviewers for his or her own paper, as in the case, for example, of session chairs charged with the task of selecting reviewers for their sessions.
5. Referees should not be asked to review papers at the conference itself, except in special, individual circumstances, such as to help arbitrate a difference in opinion or if a promised review is missing.
6. The conference Publications Committee must pay close attention to the details and the mechanics of the review process. It is a good idea for the Publications Committee to work closely with the Program Committee in arranging for reviewers. Session chairs, often relied upon to arrange for reviewers, should be completely informed of their responsibilities. 
7. Overduplication refers to excessive use of previously-published results, ideas, data and figures in a submission. Editors should use the information on the IEEE Author Portal site and tools provided by IEEE to ensure that all conference submissions conform to the society's standards for original work, and to report any potential problems or concerns to the TMAG Editor-in-Chief. Information concerning the IEEE position on plagiarism may be found at http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/plagiari…. The Cross-Check tool allows comparisons of submitted manuscripts against a very large database of published technical papers to provide editors with a summary report that highlights the similarity to previously published work. A free IEEE CrossCheck webinar may be found at https://ieee-elearning.org/CLE/course/view.php?id=187.

C. Editor Designations.

This section refers to several different editors: Publications Chair, Editors, IEEE TMAG Conference Editor, and IEEE Associate Editor. These positions are described below.

Each conference will have one publications contact who is responsible for the conference-related papers. This individual is referred to as the Publications Chair. The Publications Chair will coordinate various matters related to the publication of papers in the Transactions. Most conferences have several Publications Committee members (or "Editors") to help process the papers. About 100 papers is the maximum a single Editor should handle; 60 papers is the recommended number. Each Editor should be thoroughly familiar with the paper-preparation instructions. The conference program committee or conference organizer should provide the conference Editors with a list of the confirmed session chair and reviewer names (names, addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses). An Editor should not be responsible for processing a paper for which he or she is an author, and the identity of the paper's reviewers should not be disclosed to such an Editor.

Manuscript review and handling will be carried out using the web-based submission and peer review system, IEEE Author Portal. The IEEE Magnetics Society has arranged to provide free individual tutorials in the use of S1 for conference publications chairs and editors. These tutorials provide specific information on how to handle the manuscript review process and work flow, and this training is mandatory.

The IEEE TMAG Conference Editor's job is to schedule conference issues, work with each Publications Chair in assuring that IEEE and Transactions editorial requirements are satisfied, help prepare page estimates, and bill the conferences. The current Conference Editor is Prof. Laura H. Lewis, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, Massachusetts 02115. Telephone: +1-617-373-3419. E-mail: (Click to show email).

The Publications Chair, in coordination with the IEEE TMAG Conference Editor, will normally be in close contact with an IEEE Associate Editor who will process the materials for the conference issue. The IEEE Associate Editor contact is Ms. Meredith Fallon, IEEE Transactions/Journals, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, New Jersey 08855 USA. Telephone: +1-732-562-6872. Fax: +1-732-562-0545. E mail: (Click to show email).

D. Author Instructions.

For detailed instructions on the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics required manuscript format, authors should be informed to download either TRANSMAG.DOC or TRANSMAG.PDF from http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/authors/transjnl/. An IEEE style guide, "Information for Authors," may be found at http://www.ieee.org/documents/info_authors_kit.pdf.

Authors are required to sign an IEEE Copyright Form before publication. This form appears at http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/copyrigh….

The conference Publications Committee (or conference organizer) may supplement these instructions with additional items specific to the individual conference. Typical supplementary information is the number of pages allowed for contributed and invited papers, the manuscript receipt date authors should include in the footnote on the first page of their papers, deadlines, etc. Authors should be reminded to not submit a paper if they have already submitted (or plan to submit) a similar paper elsewhere. 

All conference manuscripts must be submitted for review and final submission online through the Transactions on Magnetics – Conferences site, IEEE Author Portal accessed at https://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/maglet-ieee. 

E. Publication Month.

The IEEE Transactions on Magnetics is published monthly. The TMAG Conference Editor will work with the conference Publications Chair to determine the most appropriate month for the conference issue. The Transactions publishes several conference issues a year. It may be necessary to adjust the publication month to accommodate commitments to these other conferences. It is wise to arrive at an agreement on a target publication date as early as possible, at least one year in advance. Because of scheduling issues and other constraints, it may be necessary for the TMAG Conference Editor to reschedule conference issues. Conferences are not scheduled for the December issue, which contains the annual index.

The IEEE headquarters deadline for the receipt of all papers for a given issue month must be observed for timely publication. Unless other arrangements are made, the IEEE Associate Editor must receive all the material for a conference issue 14 weeks before the first day of the issue month. It is the responsibility of the conference Publications Chair to ensure that all materials reach the IEEE Associate Editor by the required deadline.

F. Conference Sponsorship.

Arrangements between a specific conference and the Transactions for the publication of the conference issue do not constitute or imply sponsorship of the conference by the IEEE or by the IEEE Magnetics Society. Questions regarding conference sponsorship and the level of financial responsibility should be directed to the Chair of the Conference Executive Committee of the Magnetics Society: Prof. Dr. Rudolf Schäfer, Head, Magnetic Microstructures, Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research (IFW), Dresden, Germany: Phone: +49-351-4659-223; Fax: +49-351-4659-541; Email: (Click to show email).

Beginning in 2016, IEEE has mandated that technically sponsored conferences will incur a charge of $1000. This charge does not apply to those conferences that are financially sponsored by the IEEE Magnetics Society.

G. Publication of new conferences.

A new policy for publication of papers originating from new conferences was approved by AdCom in November 2014. This policy applies only to “new conferences,” those with fewer than two cycles of Magnetics Society sponsorship or fewer than two cycles of publishing conference-related papers in the Transactions. The guidelines are listed below:

1. A new conference must be approved for technical or financial sponsorship by the Magnetics Society’s Conference Executive Committee (contact: Randy Victora, University of Minnesota).
2. The proposed conference publications chair must have experience as a conference editor or as a journal editor and be approved by the Transactions Conference Editor (contact: Laura H. Lewis, Northeastern University).
3. The conference must target a manuscript rejection rate of at least 50%. (For reference, the rejection rate for regular Transactions articles is about 70%).
4. A conference organizer or committee member may be an author on no more than two manuscripts accepted for publication.
5. An assessment of the conference’s peer review process will be carried out by the Transactions editors.

The Transactions Conference Editor may modify these requirements for individual conferences based on additional considerations. These guidelines do not apply to small conferences publishing conference-related articles in IEEE Magnetics Letters, where the regular journal editors handle the reviews.

Section 2: Handling of Papers from Conferences Sponsored by the IEEE Magnetics Society

Conferences that are technically or financially sponsored by the IEEE Magnetics Society (MagSoc) have the option to publish conference-related manuscripts as regular papers in the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics and as Conference Proceedings in the IEEE Magnetics Society’s Xplore Digital Library. This section summarizes the different options and steps that conferences need to follow to publish manuscripts submitted as part of the conference with the Magnetics Society. 

Please note that the editorial standards for acceptance in the Transactions are higher than for the Xplore Digital Library. Conferences should expect that only about one third of submitted manuscripts will be acceptable for the Transactions. It is recommended that conferences publish some manuscripts in the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics and some in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. 

For questions, please contact the Publications Chair of the IEEE Magnetics Society, Petru Andrei.

Contacts and Contact information

1. How to publish some manuscripts in the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics and some in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library (recommended)

Conference Publication Chair. To publish both in TMAG and as Conference Proceedings, Magnetics Society sponsorship must first be obtained from the Conference Executive Committee (Olga Kazakova). After confirmation of sponsorship, the Conference Publication Chair fills out and submits the IEEE Conference Publication Form approximately one year before the start of the conference but no less than 3 months before the manuscript submission starts. Instructions on how to fill out this form are presented in Fig. 1.

After the IEEE Conference Publication Form is submitted and approved by IEEE and by the Magnetics Society, the Conference Publication Chair will receive an email from IEEE with the Letter of Acquisition, which contains information about the ISBN number of the issue and the Conference ID. A copy of this letter should be emailed to the Publication Chair of the Magnetics Society and to Mr. Franklin Jones. 

Authors. Authors must submit the manuscripts for review on the IEEE Author Portal at https://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/maglet-ieee. The submission period for all manuscripts is determined through discussion between the Conference Publication Chair, the Publication Chair of the Magnetics Society and the Transactions Executive Editor. All the manuscripts should be formatted according to the template for IEEE Transactions on Magnetics. During the review process, manuscripts that receive high scores from reviewers can be recommended for publication as regular papers in the IEEE Transactions of Magnetics; manuscripts that receive not so high or average scores should be recommended for publication as a Conference Proceedings paper in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Manuscripts that receive low scores should be rejected.

Once a manuscript is recommended for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics or as a Proceedings paper in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, the authors may fill out the copyright form and submit the final version of the manuscript. If the authors do not fill out and submit the copyright form, the manuscripts will be withdrawn from consideration.

Editorial Board. The conference Publications Chair and the conference Editorial Board, if the conference has one, should be approved in advance by the Associate Chair for Conference Publications.  

Publication of regular manuscripts in TMAG. Manuscripts accepted for publication will appear as regular articles in TMAG. The issue in which these manuscripts appear will not contain any information related to the conference such as the Chairman’s Forward, the Publication Chair’s Preface, or other information about the location and dates of the conference. This information will appear on the front pages of Conference Proceedings (see next section). 

Publication of Conference Proceedings. Manuscripts accepted for publication as Conference Proceedings will appear in the IEEE Magnetics Society’s Xplore Digital Library approximately 3 months after the conference. The front pages of the Proceedings Issue will contain the Chairman’s Foreword, the Publication Chair’s Preface, and information about the location and date of the conference. These manuscripts will be explicitly designated as peer-reviewed. Please note that papers recommended for publication in the Magnetics Society’s Xplore Digital Library will be rejected if submitted to the Transactions as a regular paper.

Once the manuscript review process ends, the Conference Publication Chair contacts the Publication Chair of the IEEE Magnetics Society, who will provide a report of the manuscripts submitted for publication as Conference Proceedings and provide electronic copies of each manuscript to the Conference Publication Chair. The Conference Publication Chair confirms if the manuscripts should indeed be published (for instance, a manuscript should be removed if it was not presented at the conference) and informs the Publications Chair of the MagSoc. After the final list of manuscripts is confirmed, the Publications Chair of the IEEE Magnetics Society will work with the Conference Publication Chair to submit the IEEE packing list (electronic list of papers) to IEEE Conference Publications. IEEE Conference Publications requests that the final IEEE packing list be received within one month after the conference ends.

Notes: (1) A manuscript cannot be published both as a regular paper in the IEEE Transactions and as a Conference Proceedings in the IEEE Digital Library. (2) All manuscripts accepted for publication in the IEEE Transaction on Magnetics and in the IEEE Digital Library will be screened for plagiarism using the CrossCheck (iThenticate) tool. All manuscripts must contain sufficient new material to be considered for publication.

2. How to publish manuscripts only as Conference Proceedings in the MagSoc’s Digital Library

The Magnetics Society is working on offering the option to publish conference-related manuscripts only in the IEEE Digital Library, without consideration for publication in the IEEE Transaction on Magnetics. If you need more information please contact the Publication Chair of the IEEE Magnetics Society.

3. Billing information and Publication Costs

All conference-related papers are published electronically and are accessible by IEEE/Magnetics Society Members. Only pages published in TMAG are subjected to billing; charges for pages published in IEEE Magnetics Society’s Xplore Digital Library are currently waived. While the Magnetics Society will develop a price model in the near future, it will always be more economical to publish Conference Proceedings than to publish in TMAG.

The total cost to conferences for publishing manuscripts in the IEEE Transactions on Magnetics depends on the total number of pages published. In general, the cost is $40 per published page. Conferences that are financially sponsored by the Magnetics Society are entitled to up to a one-page subsidy per published manuscript in proportion to the percentage of financial sponsorship. The 2018 formula for charges billed to the Conference for publication in TMAG is given by: C = 45·P where C = amount to be paid by conference, in U.S. dollars, P = number of technical pages. 

The conference will be invoiced directly by the TMAG Conference Editor around the time that the conference issue is scheduled to be published. Please arrange to submit a check payable to IEEE against the invoice. Bank transfer (wire) instructions are also provided. Purchase orders will not be accepted. It is suggested that foreign conferences maintain a U.S. bank account, which perhaps can receive pre-registration fees from U.S. attendees, from which to pay the cost of publication.

Conferences that publish papers in the Transactions will be eligible for a page subsidy in the form of a reduction in the publications billing charge. The subsidy will correspond to 1 page per paper, but the amount of the subsidy will be proportional to the level of conference sponsorship with financial responsibility by the IEEE Magnetics Society. To receive the subsidy, a conference must require authors to submit papers of at least 4 journal pages in length.

For information on conference sponsorship and level of financial responsibility, see paragraph I. If you have questions about the subsidy, please contact the TMAG Conference Editor (Section C).