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INDUSTRIAL CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

How to Propose and Curate a Special Collection

Special Collections cover a key topic of interest to the readers of the TICPS and serve as a guide to the state of the art in the area. They typically include 6-8 papers.

Prospective Guest Editors are requested to submit a detailed proposal to Editor-in-Chief of TICPS for the consideration of the Editorial Board. Please contact the EiC for the proposal template.

The Editor-in-Chief will preview the proposals and may suggest some improvements to ensure that the proposals meet the required expectations. Proposals will then be submitted to review by a group of people selected from the Editorial Board. The review procedure takes three to four weeks. The Editor-in-Chief then makes the final decisions.

Best Practices for curating Special Collections (SC) in TICPS:

  1. There should be preferably two and maximum three Guest Editors (GEs), one of them will act as the leading GE (LGE). It is strongly encouraged to have one or more experts as GEs from industry. When GEs are from both academia and Industry or only from Industry, a Special Collection may have up to a maximum of four GEs. GEs should be all experts on the subject-area and should preferably be from different countries. More than one GE from the same university/industry is discouraged. All GEs should individually confirm to the EIC that they agree to organize the SC proposed. One of the GEs, who has enough prior experience as an Associate Editor (AE) will do all communications with the EIC. Note that EIC may add one of the regular AEs of the journal or any other renowned expert as one of the GEs.
  2. The responsibility of organizing the SC is equal for all the GEs and it is not divided between them. All GEs are 100% responsible for taking any decision on any manuscript.
  3. When submitting the proposal, the GEs should select an area that is emerging and having great potential (that is within the scope of TICPS) and prepare the proposal in the prescribed format available from the EIC.
  4. The SC to be curated should be on a focused area of research. An SC out of a conference is not encouraged.
  5. The submitted proposal will be reviewed by an appropriate group of people formed by the EiC from the Editorial Board (EB) of TICPS.  
  6. All papers submitted in the SC will be treated at par with the regular submissions of TICPS. It is a good practice to have at least 3 reviews (optimally four) and preferably not more than six to take the first decision. All decisions at any stage should be taken within 40 days of the submission of the paper. It is preferred that no new reviewers are added for revised manuscript in the subsequent stages of reviews.
  7. Reviewers should be experts in the area of the SC and to be selected from different countries. All reviewers should preferably not be from the same country. More than one reviewer from the same university is discouraged. Reviewers should not have any conflict of interest with any of the authors.
  8. GEs can submit manuscripts (maximum two authored or co-authored by them). These papers will be assigned to the other regular AEs of TICPS as decided by the EIC. GEs should not handle any manuscript where they have any conflict of interest. GEs should refer these papers to EIC to handle.
  9. Each paper submitted to the SC should be handled by one of the GEs. Other GE/GEs should see that the review process is happening properly. LGE should regularly (once a week) communicate to EIC with an EXCEL file showing who is handling which manuscript submitted to the SC. As the assignment of the papers will be done by the EIC through LGE, it is not possible for the EIC to know who is handling which paper.
  10. GEs are encouraged (but not mandatory) to write a state-of-the-art article on the subject of the SC. This will be assigned to a regular AE selected by EIC. GEs are expected to write a Guest Editorial to the SC (normally maximum 3-page including the GE-biography and photos). This preface will be overview of the articles those are accepted for the SC. If there are less than 5 papers accepted in any SC, a separate SC will not be published and instead the papers will be published as regular papers.

Dietmar Bruckner
B&R Corporate, Austria

João Catalão
University of Porto, Portugal

Elizabeth Chang
Griffith University, Australia

YangQuan Chen
University of California, Merced, USA

Zhenghua Chen
Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), A*STAR, Singapore

Armando Colombo
University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Germany

Yukang Cui
Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, China

Youngsoon Eun
DGIST, Korea

Henry Hong-Ning Dai
Hong Kong Baptist University, China

Sidun Fang
Chongqing University, China

Tingwen Huang
Texas A&M University, Qatar

Yuchen Jiang
Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Stamatis Karnouskos
SAP, Germany

Huaqing Li
Southwest University, China

Zhan Li
Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Shichao Liu
Carleton University, Canada

Kyung-Joon Park
DGIST, Korea

Roozbeh Razavi-Far
University of New Brunswick, Canada

Mehrdad Saif
University of Windsor, Canada

Yang Shi
University of Victoria, Canada

Lei Shu
Nanjing Agricultural University, China

Thomas Strasser
AIT Austrian Inst. of Technology, Austria

Ching-Chih Tsai
National Ching Hsing University, Taiwan

Valeriy Vyatkin
Luleå Tekniska University, Sweden

Ligang Wu
Harbin Institute of Technology, China

Shen Yin
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Wenwu Yu
Southeast University, China

Xinghuo Yu
RMIT University STEM College, Australia