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T is both more prestigious and more difficult to publish in
the TRANSACTIONS than in nearly any other journal or
conference digest. The competition is fierce and the standards
are high. Here are a few common-sense tips on how to prepare
your article to give it the greatest chance of acceptance. Of
course, there is no substitute for a brilliant solution to an
important engineering problem. But there is more to a good
TRANSACTIONS article than meets the eye. Read on. You will
be surprised at how many very simple things you can do to
ease your paper through the review process and get that
coveted acceptance notification delivered straight to your in
box.
For me, the most important stage of writing a paper starts
before I have put down a single word on paper. This is the
planning stage of the paper. Some authors begin by writing up
an outline. I prefer to gather my graphs together and look
them over. Others look over similar papers that have been
previously published in the TRANSACTIONS. Which ever way
you approach writing a manuscript, ask yourself what story
you have to tell, and whether that story is complete. The
planning stage is essential because it helps you gain important
perspective and set up a logical organizational framework for
your paper. It also keeps you from starting in on a paper
before you have gathered sufficient measurements or
completed the analysis.
Once you have gathered your ideas, download the Word or
LaTeX IEEE template for TRANSACTIONS submissions from
http://www.mtt.org/publications/For_Authors/for_authors.htm
.
Read the template before you begin. It is full of sound advice
on grammar and style, and contains many useful tips. Starting
your article in the template will also result in a more
professional looking submission. This favorably impresses the
reviewers.
I can not overemphasize the importance of grammar and
organization of your ideas. Reviewers are very busy people
and they were chosen because they have made important
contributions to the field. So your number-one goal is to get
the reviewer to understand and appreciate your technical
contribution as quickly as possible. The last person you want
commenting on your technical work is a grumpy reviewer
who has just spent an hour marking up your paper with a red
pen or, worse yet, struggling to understand the point you are
* Publication of the US Government, not subject to copyright.
trying to make. Remember that nearly all reviewers put many
hours and sometimes days into reviewing a paper, and you
want to make their job as easy as possible.
Good grammar and exposition are difficult to come by, and
you probably didn’t go into electrical engineering because
prose flows from your pen. It helps to revise and then re-
revise over a period of two months or more. It is often
surprising how many weaknesses you can find this month in
last month’s brilliant tour-de-force.
Whether you are a native English speaker or not, take your
paper to an expert for grammatical proofreading and
correction—a native-speaking English literature, history, or
philosophy professor or graduate student, for example. Go
over the paper together with your grammatical advisers. Be
inquisitive, and try to understand not just what they suggest
changing, but why.
If you see the TRANSACTIONS reviewer as your most
important adversary in the publishing process, you need to
learn editorial jujitsu. Start by lining up your own set of
technical reviewers well before you submit. Just as with your
grammatical advisers, arrange a meeting with each of your
technical reviewers. Try to use this process as a way of getting
them to talk about the paper. You will find what they say to be
far more useful than what they wrote. Sometimes you will find
that you simply did not think of writing down some key
points.
Above all, keep your cool. What your reviewers and
grammatical advisers tell you will be hard to hear. But if you
do this right, your editorial jujitsu will have put the reviewers
to work for you. You see, reviewers often provide exactly
what you lack the most, perspective—perspective on all sorts
of things, from the most subtle technical issues to the most
obvious (in retrospect) organizational problems.
If you want your article to be accepted in the first review
cycle, you need to get the TRANSACTIONS reviewer to focus on
your brilliant technical contributions. You do not want your
reviewer sorting through your previous publications trying to
decide what is new and what is old. Keep in mind that
reviewers and readers alike prize both originality and
completeness, and you will do far better pleasing your
reviewers and readers with new ideas and with complete and
original articles than trying to explain why your current
manuscript differs significantly enough from your last to
deserve publication.
No discussion of the TRANSACTIONS would be complete if
Editorial*
How to Get Your Manuscript Published in the TRANSACTIONS
in Six Months or Less
I
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it did not touch on conference Special Issues and the
relationship of “expanded” to conference papers. Much has
changed in recent years, with conference papers generally
becoming archival and available electronically. Writing a
good paper for a conference Special Issue is far more difficult
than writing any other TRANSACTIONS paper. The root of the
problem is that some topics are well suited to a conference
paper, and others to a TRANSACTIONS paper, but only a very
few to both.
But maybe you have your heart set on one of these Special-
Issue papers. “What to do?” I hear you ask. First, start early.
Contrary to popular belief, writing two good complementary
papers really does take twice as long as writing one.
Be sure to choose a subject that is actually large enough to
justify two separate submissions, and that contains a subtopic
suitable for a conference paper. The conference paper should
be a short vignette, completely and thoroughly treating an
important aspect of the entire study, but no more. I am not
talking about simply putting highlights in the conference
paper or “dumbing it down.” These papers have very little
long-term value. It should be short, complete, and stand alone,
and readers should still be able to read the paper in future
years and learn something that never appeared anywhere else.
When you write up the main body of the work for a Special
Issue, try summarizing the conference paper in a few
paragraphs or a short section, rather than repeating the
conference paper in its entirety. The expanded TRANSACTIONS
article is not just the conference paper with more words and
equations. It should build on the conference paper, but in a
way that both publications are worthwhile reading and so that
a reader learns different things from each. This strategy will
help you write two truly distinct and complementary crowd
pleasers, is sure to wow the reviewers, and will give you a
great additional opportunity to advertise your work.
Finally, there is a possibility that a reviewer will still object
to your paper. In this case, there are only two possible courses
of action that will steer you clear of the endless review-cycle
vortex. You can determine that the reviewer was right to begin
with, and fix your paper. Or you can figure out why the
reviewer misunderstood you, and fix your paper. Trying to
convince a TRANSACTIONS reviewer, who is typically an
expert in the field, that he or she never should have objected
to your work in the first place is guaranteed to send you
straight into the maw of the vortex!
Using these simple tips will not cover up technical blunders
or ensure acceptance in the TRANSACTIONS. But it will most
assuredly put you in a far better position to get your work and
insights out to your most important audience, your peers in the
microwave community that the TRANSACTIONS serves.
Finally, I need to talk about properly referencing articles.
Not only do incomplete and inaccurate references create an
impression of carelessness, but errors and the time required to
correct them are the major reason for delays in copy editing
(the time between the manuscript being sent to IEEE and its
being published). I have attached a set of IEEE rules for
proper referencing at the end of this editorial.
Admittedly, the tips and tricks in this article were learned
the hard way by the author. They do not necessarily represent
the editorial policy of the TRANSACTIONS.
DYLAN F. WILLIAMS
Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Microwave
Theory and Techniques.
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Boulder, CO 80305 USA
Some rules and examples for IEEE references:
Always use month and year of publication in references, and abbreviate
months. Use initials for the first names of authors in your list of references,
and include all authors’ names. If the periodical is an IEEE publication, the
issue # information is removed. Any IEEE Transactions that was published
prior to 1988 (with the exception of Proc. IEEE) must carry the transactions
acronym, e.g., vol. MTT-25). Note that the correct reference for the
Transactions is 'IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech.' The correct reference
for the 2004 IMS Symposium is 'in 2004 IEEE MTT-S Int. Microwave Symp.
Dig.' Do not use acronyms for conferences: spell out the full name of the
conference (e.g., use Int. Electron Devices Meeting instead of IEDM). If
references carry online information, the author should include this (i.e., http
information, etc.) at the end of the reference. Finally, keep your eyes out for
the automated reference checker being developed by the IEEE!
Periodicals: Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s), "Title of paper," Title of
Periodical, vol #, issue #, pp. xx-xx, Abbrev. Month, Year.
Books: Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s), "Title of chapter in book (if
applicable)," Title of Book, xth ed. City of Publisher, State/Country: Abbrev.
name of Publisher, Year, Chapter X (if applicable), Section X (if applicable),
pp. xx-xx.
Reports: Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s), "Title of report," Name of Company,
City of Company, State/Country of Company, Report number, Year.
Handbook (generally a "book" published by a company as opposed to a
publisher): Title of Manual/Handbook, x edition, Abbrev. Name of Company,
City of Company, State/Country of Company, Year, pp. xx-xx.
Published Conference Proceedings: Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s), "Title of
paper," Unabbreviated Name of Conference, City of Conference,
State/Country, Abbrev. Month Year, pp. xx-xx (published conf. proc. MUST
include page numbers).
Unpublished Papers Presented at Conference: Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s),
"Title of paper," presented at the Name of Conference, City of Conference,
State/Country, Year.
Patents: Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s), "Title of patent," U.S. Patent #
xxxxx, Abbrev. Month Day, Year.
Theses (Masters) and Dissertations (Ph.D.): Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s),
"Title of thesis," Abbrev. Department, University, City of Univ.,
State/Country, Year.
Unpublished References: Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s), private
communication, Abbrev. Month, Year. OR Author(s) Initial(s), Surname(s),
"Title of paper," unpublished.
Standards: Title of Standard, Standard number, Date/Year.