Information for Authors

Editorial Process

TRETS will publish outstanding papers which are "major value-added extensions" of papers previously published in conferences; that is, TRETS will not automatically reject papers that are major extensions to previously published conference papers. These papers will go through the normal review process. The common practice of "at least 30% new material beyond the conference publication" will be applied by TRETS, and authors should explicitly identify the new material either in the paper or in the cover letter.

TRETS will occasionally publish special issues to provide a timely boost to promising areas of research and development, or a timely consolidation of the results in other areas. Guest editors will be invited to organize such issues.

Submitted papers are evaluated by anonymous referees for originality, relevance, and presentation. (Please see the TRETS Referee Guidelines for more details.) The author will be notified of the name of an Associate Editor who will be responsible for the processing of the manuscript, and should address correspondence to that Associate Editor.

TRETS encourages high-quality submissions that are concise, with no more than 22 published pages including figures, tables, and references. Authors should expect that in longer papers any lengthy appendices, program listings, or similar matter will be published online by ACM and not appear as part of the printed paper.

TRETS normally will not publish survey papers. Authors who wish a survey paper to be considered for TRETS should submit directly to the Editors-in-Chief to determine if a full review is appropriate.

Manuscript Format, Preparation, and Submission

Authors are encouraged to consult the ACM Publications web page, and especially the directions regarding Electronically submitting accepted articles to ACM journals; following those directions and guidelines will speed the process of having your papers reviewed and published. All manuscripts for TRETS must be submitted electronically as Microsoft Word or as pdf files to ACM Manuscript Central. Once you are at that site, you will be asked to create an account and password with which you can enter the manuscript review tracking system. This account is different from the ACM account that you may have. From a drop-down list of journals, choose Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems and proceed to the Author Center to submit your manuscript and any other accompanying files. Published papers will be required to be submitted in ACM format. This format is encouraged but not required for initial submission.

Authors must include as part of the manuscript a descriptive title, author names and affiliations, an abstract of 150-200 words, and indexing information consistent with the Computing Reviews Classification Scheme (most recently released in 1998). Please select at least one primary-level classification followed by two secondary-level classications. Proper classification by the authors, who best know their work, will aid in the review and publication process.

Questions about submissions should be directed to one of the Editors-in-Chief or by email to trets in the domain acm.org.

Technical content is the primary criterion for acceptability, but the presentation of the technical content is also critical for a successful paper. Authors are encouraged to take this into account before submitting papers, because extremely poor presentation can contribute to a poor evaluation by a reviewer.

In papers describing experimental results, authors should strive to report experiments with replicability as a goal. Such papers shall report results on standard test sets using standard metrics. Authors shall cite the best known results on these test sets. Authors shall provide statistical significance tests on their results. There is little value in a paper that describes an experiment using authors' private data, private test sets, and authors' own metric. In case there are no standard tests or metrics in the paper's area, the authors shall have a mechanism to provide the test material and the evaluation tool to the community.

NOTE: The ACM Digital Library will host ancillary material for a paper on its web site. This material, an online appendix that does not appear in the print journal, is linked to and accessed from the online table of contents. For example, authors could provide hypertext and/or XML versions of their papers, or animations, or any other appropriate technology. Authors that wish to use this option should attach such material as an appendix to their submission and indicate in their cover letter that this material is intended to be ancillary material included in the digital library, and how it is intended to be accessed. All ancillary material should be free from viruses.

Prior Publication Policy

The technical contributions appearing in ACM journals are normally original papers which have not been published elsewhere. Widely disseminated conference proceedings and newsletters are a form of publication.

The submitted manuscript should have at least 30% new material. The new material should be content material, not just the addition of obvious proofs or a few more straightforward performance figures. The submitted manuscript affords an opportunity to describe the novel approach in more depth, to consider the alternatives more comprehensively, and to delve into some of the issues listed in the other paper as future work. At the same time, it is not required that the submitted manuscript contain all of the material from the published paper. To the contrary: only enough material need be included from the published paper to set the context and render the new material comprehensible.

TRETS expects that papers submitted to it will not have been simultaneously submitted elsewhere. The corresponding author of a TRETS submission must inform the editor handling that submission about any paper by any author of the TRETS submission that (a) is in submission, (b) has been accepted for publication, or (c) has been published, that overlaps significantly (more than a page or so) with the TRETS submission. Such papers in categories (b) and (c) should be referenced by the TRETS submission and discussed in the related work section, as appropriate. The corresponding author should also inform the editor about any overlaps that occur while the paper is under consideration by TRETS. In all cases, the Editors-in-Chief will make the determination as to whether the overlap is acceptable and reserve the right to reject papers if these guidelines have not been followed.

ACM Plagiarism Policy

ACM has established a rigorous policy on plagiarism. Manuscripts found in violation of this policy will be immediately rejected. Authors of papers found to be in violation after publication face severe penalties. It is important that all authors and co-authors review this policy before submission. Note that this policy also covers the practice of self-plagiarism (i.e., reuse of one's own previously published material without reference to the original source).

For more information, see the ACM Policy on Plagiarism.