There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.

Figures submitted in color will be published in color in the online version of the journal at no cost. If you wish to have color figures in the printed version, the following fees apply: don't include fees.

Optional open access publishing is available for a fee via the Sage Choice program, and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. Open Access agreement eligibility is determined by the corresponding author’s affiliation matching an agreement at acceptance. 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.

Your article must be within the scope of the journal and be of sufficient quality. If not, it will not be reviewed. Please read the journal’s Aims and Scope to see if your article is appropriate.

The manuscript must be your original work, you must have the rights to the work, and you must have obtained and be able to supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, including figures, illustrations, tables, lengthy quotations, or other material previously published elsewhere.

Prior Submission

It is not acceptable that manuscripts are submitted to IJRR while they are being evaluated by other archival Journals. In case of parallel submission of partly overlapping material to a non-archival conference or workshop, this should be openly disclosed at the time of IJRR submission.

It is also not acceptable to submit to IJRR manuscripts which have been previously rejected anywhere else, without openly informing and discussing how the reviews received from other members of the same community have been used to improve the quality of the paper. Proper practice is to enclose all relevant materials from previous submission(s) with the IJRR submission, as supplemental files. These include information on the venue of previous submission(s), the reviews received, the answers to such reviews, and the highlights of changes in the new manuscript that address the criticisms received. This material can be prepared in a similar style as when preparing a revised version for the same Journal.

Manuscripts submitted elsewhere without informing the Editorial Board nor following the above practices will be editorially rejected before review. The Editorial Board of IJRR will inform the EiC and Board of other involved Journals of such decisions.

Inclusion of Previously Published Material

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.

Article types

The International Journal of Robotics Research publishes

• Original Articles;
• Review Articles;
• Special Issues;
• Data Papers;

Original Papers

IJRR considers original articles of archival value, produced to advance science and technology in the field, which will stay valuable in time. The work must be original, solid, and useful for others to build upon.

An IJRR paper is as long as necessary, but no longer. 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.

Review Papers

IJRR publishes 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.

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:

1. The topic and tentative title of the review paper and the proposed submission deadline
2. 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. Previous experience of publishing on the subject matter in IJRR, or similarly ranked scholarly Journal, by at least some of the authors is important. The number of authors should be limited to the strict necessary.
3. A motivation for timing: why a review on this subject is timely?
4. 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. 

Special Issues

IJRR welcomes 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.

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:

1. The topic and tentative title of the SI and the proposed submission deadline
2. 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. Previous experience of publishing on the subject matter in IJRR, or similarly ranked scholarly Journal, by at least some of the proponents is important. The number of GEs should be limited to the strict necessary.
3. 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.
4. 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?
5. A list of perspective authors
6. 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 should take care of advertising the SI in the reference community, including preparing a webpage, posting on social networks, etc. Guest Editors will be introduced in the Review Management system, and they will participate in paper assignment and review, under the supervision of an IJRR Senior Editor. Manuscripts co-authored by a Guest Editor will be assigned to a regular IJRR Associate 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.

Data sets

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.

IJRR requires the utility of a new dataset to be demonstrated within the paper. In particular, a dataset should demonstrate how to use the data with an existing, publicly available, algorithm or technique. For example, if the paper is presenting a new dataset to be used for the development of visual SLAM algorithms, the paper should present the use of the dataset on an existing, ideally state-of-the-art, visual SLAM algorithm. Doing so gives potential users of the dataset confidence that the dataset is well prepared and that there are some challenging conditions in the dataset that an existing method cannot handle, thus spurring new research. Note that a dataset paper should not present a new algorithm in addition to the dataset. Datasets for which there are no existing algorithms to test on are not encouraged.

For more information, please refer to these instructions on what is defined as a Data Paper and how to submit.

Multimedia extensions

Multimedia extensions (mostly video, code, or data) are most welcome parts of an IJRR article, concurring to illustrate and demonstrate its results.

Reporting guidelines

Your manuscript must follow the relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines, depending on the type of study. The EQUATOR wizard can help identify the appropriate guideline. You will need to upload the appropriate checklist with your submission.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives.

If your research involves animals, you will be asked to confirm that you have carefully read and adhered to the ARRIVE guidelines.

As part of the submission process you will need to confirm that this is your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that this is for first publication in this Journal, that it is not being considered for/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.

Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of manuscripts that have been posted on preprint servers.

Submission site

Submit your manuscript online via Sage Track.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in Sage Track 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.

Manuscripts should only be submitted with the consent of all contributing authors. The individual responsible for submitting the manuscript should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the manuscript are listed as authors.

Ensure you upload all relevant manuscript files, including any additional supplemental files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

Authorship

Please view our authorship policies, which includes information on criteria for authorship, who should be the corresponding author and more.

Writing assistance coming from AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should also be openly declared. Authors are required to i) clearly indicate the use of language models in the manuscript, including which model was used and for what purpose; ii) verify and take responsibility for accuracy, validity, and appropriateness of the content and any citations; iii) verify that no plagiarism occurred where the LLM may have reproduced substantial text from other sources; iv) quote and cite all sources of short excerpts as they are needed, and v) acknowledge the limitations of language models in the manuscript, including the potential for bias, errors, and gaps in knowledge. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

Files

Multimedia

• 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.

Human and Animal Studies

Following SAGE’s standard policy (as spelled out at https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/editor_guidelines.pdf), IJRR requires every manuscript involving human and animal studies to include appropriate statements on the following:

• (1) Ethics committee, institutional review board (IRB) or institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) consideration
• (2) Informed consent (for inclusion, collection/use of data or samples, and/or publication, as applicable) or, in the case of animal studies, animal welfare.

Novelty Statement

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.

• 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.

Figures and Images

• All figures must be numbered consecutively in the order in which they appear in the text – they will appear in the published article in the order they are numbered.
• Figure resolution is 300dpi. More information on figure/image preparation can be found here.

Supplemental material

This journal can host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images, etc) alongside the full-text of the article. Your supplemental material must be one of our accepted file types. For that list and more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.

• Complete list of authors, with their institutional affiliations.
• The author information you enter at submission must exactly match what is included on your manuscript and/or title page, including full names, academic affiliations, and corresponding author contact details.
• The listed affiliation should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a note at the end of the manuscript.
• All listed authors must meet the criteria for authorship (above).
• All persons eligible for authorship must be included at the time of submission.
• All authors must have given consent for the manuscript to be submitted in its current form.
• Keywords: During submission, you may be asked to select or enter keywords for your manuscript. These keywords are used to match appropriate reviewers to your manuscript.
• The number of figures, tables, and words in your manuscript.
• Funder information: Name, grant/award number.
• You may be required to enter your declaration of conflicting interest as part of the submission process, in addition to listing it on your manuscript and/or title page. Please have it on hand.

• If you have posted your manuscript to a preprint server, you will be asked to supply the DOI (this does not prohibit submission, but no changes should be made to the preprint version while your manuscript is under evaluation in this journal). Please see our guidelines on prior publication. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy. If your manuscript is accepted, you must include a link in your preprint to the final version of your published article.

The following summary describes the peer review process for this journal. Please refer to the Guidelines for Editors and Reviewers for detailed information on the IJRR peer review process, timelines and best practice.

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.

Eligible 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.

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)

Your manuscript will undergo an initial evaluation. If it does not conform to the requirements laid out in these guidelines, it will be returned to you for amendments prior to peer review. Manuscripts may be desk rejected without peer review at this point if they are out of scope for the journal or otherwise unsuitable.

After passing the initial evaluation, your manuscript will then be peer reviewed. You can log in at any time to check the status of your manuscript. We will notify you when a decision has been reached.

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.

To ensure the integrity of the peer review process we assign reviewers and cannot accept author recommendations.

All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, while maintaining rigor. Reviewers make comments to the author and 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 who then makes the final decision on all manuscripts, including those appearing in a special issue. The Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the Journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

Read Sage's complete peer review policy.

Manuscript Submission Steps and Timeline for Authors

After authors submit their paper (day 0), they should expect to receive a first decision within 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 then starts.
• 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 then starts.
• 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 begins.

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 begins.

Rejection and Resubmission

Papers which according to reviewers and editors have merit, but are not deemed to be publishable in their present form, nor amendable in reasonably short time, will be rejected. However, authors will be allowed to rewrite the manuscript and resubmit it as new.

Authors who are convinced that a new manuscript can solve the problems that caused rejection should include an accompanying letter explaining the situation and all supplemental material apt to convincingly answer all comments, or otherwise argue against the editorial observations they consider misplaced.

Although there is no certainty, it is safe to assume that one or more of the editors and/or reviewers of the first submission will see the new paper again. A resubmission will have no different treatment than a new submission, and no bias in evaluation, although all history of the submission will be taken into account.

Plagiarism

The journal and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. Please read Sage's complete policy on plagiarism and the actions we may take.

Contributor’s Publishing Agreement

Before publication, we require the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive license agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and license 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 Journal Author Gateway.

Preprints

If your manuscript was posted on a preprint server prior to acceptance, you must include a link in your preprint to the final published version of your published article.

Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal, Sage Edit, or by email, and should be returned promptly to avoid delaying publication. 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. This is the final opportunity to make changes to your manuscript. Further corrections will not be possible after publication. Changes to the author list are not permitted at this stage.

Publication

OnlineFirst publication: This enables us to publish final articles online immediately, without waiting for assignment to a future issue of the Journal. This usually significantly reduces publication lead time. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite OnlineFirst articles.

Access to your published article: We provide you with online access to your published article. The online access link is provided to the corresponding author for sharing with their co-authors.

Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process. Between us, we can ensure that your article is found, read, downloaded and cited as widely as possible. Many of the most effective tactics are those you can do quickly and easily to your network of contacts and peers. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway for numerous resources to help you promote your work.

The Sage Journal Author Gateway has some general advice on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance your article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journals Solutions Portal.

You can view our complaints and appeals procedure.

Contact us

You can direct any questions to the journal’s editorial office:

ijrr.admin@sagepub.co.uk