Romeil Sandhu dot com

A few days back,  I submitted my second academic journal to IEEE Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence for review.  While it is always a great feeling to finally put the finishing touches for a written paper, I remember that one of the more stressful parts of  my first paper was the submission itself!  Luckily, and to my relief, the second time around went much smoother.   Aside from making sure your paper is mistake free, the submission process for most journals includes several key components that are to accompany most manuscripts.  These include the classic cover letter, and if you had similar work in a conference, you must write a summary of differences between the two pieces of work.   The smaller details can sometimes be overlooked and from the experience of my first paper and also having been a reviewer for SIAM, I thought I would share my thoughts and tips that helped me.

Journal Checklist:

1) Create a separate submission folder:
This seems somewhat trivially, but my main point here is to separate the manuscript.pdf from being editable. I have found that when I begin the submission process, I always am making minor grammatical or sentence style changes (e.g., Use “Moreover” vs. “In Addition”). There’s always something I can correct. My advice, if you get to this point, then your manuscript is ready to submit. In order from you to keep changing these details, make a submission folder and place that paper there and as the saying goes, “don’t look back.” That is until you finally get to the “approval of all documents” stage where you can view your submission online.

2) Create a cover letter:
I believe for most journals, you will need to create a cover letter identifying the paper’s title (and perhaps author list) as well as the main idea and contribution. This is pretty standard and can be likened to a cover sheet. Here’s a quick example of a cover letter that I just submitted.

Cover Letter

Please note that this is general, and check your journal guidelines to see if more information is needed.

3) Create a shortened abstract:
Now you might be able to skip this step depending on your paper, but each time that I have submitted a paper, whether it was to a journal or conference, I realized that my abstract went over the “word limit.” Ideally, an abstract should be the shortened version of the paper, but then again, it might be over by 30 words. So without distracting from the main idea, make sure that your abstract is short enough to submit, otherwise doing this on the fly can be sometimes distracting, let alone annoying!

4) Gather keywords describing your paper:
Keywords are important. It might seem that this is a minor detail in the submission process, but those few words that you choose matter alot! For example, the chosen keywords might play a factor on how the associate editor will distribute the paper amongst reviewers. Moreover, if your paper is to be accepted, other researchers in your area will usually perform a general search and these keywords aid in placing your paper corresponding to one’s search. So, take some time and choose a few sub areas that is representive of your work. This pretty much goes for conference papers too.

5) Create a summary of changes (if similar conference paper exists):
Usually, my collaborators and I tend to write to conferences before we submit to journals. The reason being is that we would like to get our preliminary results of the work out to the community, and it sets the foundation for the more important paper, its journal version (of course going on vacation to a nice place is not a bad consquence). Then again, if you decide to stick with research, I have seen some of my colleagues that prefer to just submit to journals. Nevertheless, should your journal submission be a more in depth and detail work of a similar conference paper, most journals ask for a “summary of changes.” This short one page or less document is simply a description of the extensions and changes or differences from your conference work. For example, your extensions might be to broaden a certain framework in a theoretical setting and to include more experiments. Basically, the journal paper is seen to be the more “complete” work, but you need to have differences between the two works and they must be documented and presented. Here’s my recent “summary of changes” example:

Journal and Conference Summary of Differences

One thing that I will note about this document is to be honest! I have found that some people tend to exaggerate the differences between the two papers. My advice is don’t. Be forthcoming about your research, even showing both the success and failures. I was once told that at most a person would be lucky to have a total of 3 to 5 great ideas in their lifetime. So if you feel strong about your work, let it speak for itself. Being on the side of a reviewer, I know that one thing that will annoy him or her when critique’n your paper is if you exagerate the actual accomplishments. It might sound naive, but your reviewers are human beings too and they will appreciate the full assesement of your contribution.

6) Prepare a list of reviewers:
Most IEEE journals allow you to have a “preferred” and “non-preferred” list of reviewers and associate editors. This is up to you and is not necessary to fill out, but there might be a research group or a few people who might better understand your work. You can suggest these people during the submission process so keep this in mind.

7) Submission and Copyright form:
After you proof read your current submission that is the database, its the dreaded “submit” button that everyone always thinks at least twice before hitting. However, if you are submitting to an IEEE journal, you will find out that the process does not stop here just yet, which leads to more confusion! You have one extra step, which is the online copyright form. Don’t worry, its extremely simple. All you have to do is follow the instructions and type in your name that you agree to the rights and guidelines. This beats printing the form, signing it, and faxing it over.

Hopefully, this will help you when it is time to submit your journal. In the future, I will try to discuss major revisions, minor revisions, and final acceptance submission associated with the whole journal process.

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