Information for Authors

Scope

IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation publishes archival quality original papers in evolutionary computation and related areas including nature-inspired algorithms, population-based methods, and optimization where selection and variation are integral, and hybrid systems where these paradigms are combined. Purely theoretical papers are considered as are application papers that provide general insights into these areas of computation. 

Types of Contributions

The IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (TEVC), published six times a year, publishes archival journal-quality original papers in evolutionary computation and related areas. TEVC publishes three types of articles: regular papers, letters, and survey papers. Letters are normally 6 pages or less. Review management is primarily under the direction of an associate editor, who will solicit reviews for each submission. The associate editor will ordinarily make a recommendation after receiving three reviews (two for letters). To avoid delays in processing your paper, please follow these guidelines.

Comments on Published Papers

The transactions does publish comments readers may make on previously published papers. Every Comments on a Paper (CoP) is processed in the following manner:

1. CoPs are reviewed by one of the authors of the paper commented on plus two independent reviewers selected by the Editor-in-Chief.
2. If the review outcome is a clear acceptance or rejection the process ends.
3. If the Editor-in-Chief finds the CoP publishable but the authors/reviewers disagree, then the authors are given an opportunity to submit a rebuttal paper (RP).
4. The RP will be reviewed by the CoP author and the two reviewers selected by the Editor-in-Chief.
5. If the review outcome is a clear acceptance or rejection the process ends. Otherwise the Editor-in-Chief makes a decision. This decision is final.

If both the CoP and RP are accepted, they will be published in the same issue of the transactions.

A CoP should be submitted through the ScholarOne Manuscript system as a letter. In the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief the authors should clearly state the submission is a CoP. 

Submission of Manuscripts

All correspondence concerning submissions is between the author, Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Assistant. To submit your paper for consideration, visit the IEEE Author Portal system for this journal at: https://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/TEVC-IEEE. There you can create a new account or use an existing one if you have one, and submit a first draft of a new manuscript. This Transactions is devoted to archival reports of work that have not been published elsewhere. Specifically, conference papers and book chapters that have been published previously are not acceptable unless until they have been enhanced significantly. Ensure that "Comments to Editor-in-Chief" you state that the work submitted has not been published elsewhere, nor is it under review currently by another publication.

All IEEE journals require an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) for all authors. ORCID is a persistent unique identifier for researchers and functions similarly to an article’s Digital Object Identifier (DOI). ORCIDs enable accurate attribution and improved discoverability of an author’s published work. The author will need a registered ORCID in order to submit a manuscript or review a proof in this journal. 

Submission Requirements

The TEVC follows the format standards of the IEEE. All papers must be submitted in the IEEE two-column format and must not include the names nor the affiliations of its authors. Papers not in the correct format will be returned without review. For manuscript preparation guidelines, visit the Preparation of Papers for IEEE Transactions and Journals at the following URL: http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/authors_journals.html.

Refer to a recent issue of this transactions to verify your paper is correctly formatted prior to submission.

A list of 2-5 keywords are required for all manuscripts. Do not use fonts smaller than 10pt. Provide an abstract of 100-200 words that is an informative summary of the paper, including any important results found or conclusions drawn. Abstracts must not contain abbreviations, acronyms, footnotes, mathematical formulas or references. Excessively long abstracts or abstracts that contain improper material will result in paper rejection.

An acknowledgement section, if included, can only list research sponsors and/or individuals identified by name. Do not include acknowledgements to anonymous reviewers or editors.

Acronyms are not allowed in the manuscript title. Titles cannot be longer than 15 words. 

Graphical Abstract

To aid readers, including reviewers, in understanding the key contributions of a paper, authors are encouraged to submit a graphical abstract along with their manuscript submission. The graphical abstract should (but not limited to) describe the motivation, key ideas and findings, and impact of the research. The graphical abstract is submitted as a supplemental material by uploading it with a supplemental file designation during the manuscript submission process. Like any supplemental material, the graphical abstract will undergo the peer review process. More details on graphical abstracts can be found at https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/create-your-ieee-journal-article/prepare-supplementary-materials/developing-a-graphical-abstract/. 

Artificial intelligence (AI)-Generated Text (e.g., chatGPT)

The use of AI-generated text in an article shall be disclosed in the acknowledgements section of any paper submitted to an IEEE Conference or Periodical. The sections of the paper that use AI-generated text shall have a citation to the AI system used to generate the text.

Open Access

Page Charges

After a manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author's company or institution will be requested to pay a charge of $110 per printed page to cover part of the cost of publication. Page charges for this Transactions, like those for journals of other professional societies are not obligatory, nor is their payment a prerequisite for publication. The author will receive 100 free reprints without covers if the page charge is honored. Detailed instructions accompany the proofs.

With effect from January 1, 2017, papers submitted to this transaction will be imposed mandatory over-length page charge for pages in excess of 10 pages for a regular paper, 15 pages for a survey paper, and 6 pages for a letter. Authors of papers/letters accepted for publication will be assessed a mandatory page charge of $200 (per page) for every printed page over these limits. The maximum manuscript length (excluding supplementary materials) with over-length page charge is 15 pages for a regular paper, 21 pages for a survey paper, and 9 pages for a letter. 

Copyright

It is the policy of the IEEE to own copyright to the technical contributions it publishes. To comply with the IEEE copyright policy, authors are required to sign the IEEE Copyright Transfer & Export Control Compliance Form before publication in either the print or electronic medium. The form is provided upon approval of the manuscript. Author must submit a signed copy of this form with their final manuscripts. 

IEEE Preprint Policy

There is often questions about whether it is OK to post preprints of articles under review to arXiv or other preprint servers. Bottom line: it is fine to post to arXiv with certain conditions. The PSPB Operations Manual contains the policies related to posting of preprints of articles submitted to IEEE publications. First, here are some definitions (from p. 83):

• a. An author-submitted article is the version originally submitted by the author to an IEEE publication. An author includes a completed IEEE Copyright Form during submission of the article to an IEEE publication and thereby transfers the copyright of the article to IEEE.
• b. An accepted article is a version which has been revised by the author to incorporate review suggestions, and which has been accepted by IEEE for publication.
• c. The final, published version is the reviewed and accepted article, with copy-editing, proofreading and formatting added by IEEE.
• d. E-prints are digital texts of research articles. Electronic preprint is a form of an e-print where an author posts a draft article on the author’s or another web site. For purposes of this definition, a preprint is assumed to be the article in the form prior to submission to the IEEE, at which point copyright is transferred to IEEE. Authors who have submitted articles for publication by the IEEE may be interested in posting various preprint versions of the same article on e-print servers operated by third parties. E-print servers provide authors rapid dissemination of new results, with the opportunity of receiving comments from the peer community and with the opportunity to have a time-stamp associated with the announcement of results.

And now, the relevant policy (from Section (8.1.9, beginning on p. 82):

3. IEEE seeks to maximize the rights of its authors and their employers to post preprint versions of an article on the author’s personal web site, on a server operated by the author’s employer, or on a server operated by an approved not-for-profit third party as specified in 8.1.9.G.2 below.
4. IEEE allows its authors to follow mandates of agencies that fund the author’s research by posting accepted versions of their articles in the agencies’ publicly accessible repositories.
5. IEEE does not restrict the rights of authors to use their IEEE-copyrighted articles in their own teaching, training, or work responsibilities, or those of their institutions or employers. In any preprint version archived by the author after submission, IEEE requires that IEEE will be credited as copyright holder. Upon publication of the work, authors are asked to include the article’s Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
6. As indicated in Section 8.1.9.A.4 (above) and amplified in Sections 8.1.9.C through G below, IEEE’s policy for permitting posting of IEEE-copyrighted articles extends only to authors, their employers, approved third-party not-for-profit organizations, and IEEE organizational units. The IEEE Intellectual Property Rights Office maintains a list of not-for-profit third party servers where material submitted to the IEEE may be posted. [The only approved third-party server is arXiv.]

 

E-PRINTS

Before submitting an article to an IEEE publication, authors frequently post preprints of their articles to their own web site, their employer’s site, or to another server that invites constructive comment from colleagues and provides a publication time stamp. Upon submission of an article to IEEE, an author is required to transfer copyright in the article to IEEE, and the author must update any previously posted version of the article with a prominently displayed IEEE copyright notice (as shown in 8.1.9.B). Upon publication of an article by the IEEE, the author must replace any previously posted electronic versions of the article with either (1) the full citation to the IEEE work with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), or (2) the accepted version only with the DOI (not the IEEE-published version). IEEE shall make available to each author the preprint version of the article that the author can post and that includes the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), IEEE’s copyright notice, and a notice indicating the article has been accepted for publication by IEEE. 

Submission of Final Manuscript

Page Numbers: Number all pages, including illustrations (which should be grouped at the end), in a single series, with no omitted numbers. Figures should be identified with the figure number and author's name at the bottom or on the back; keep the information in the margin, off the body of the figure.

References and Captions: Put references on a separate page and provide them in IEEE style. Figure captions should also be on a separate page from references and content. Do not include captions on the illustrations themselves. Figure captions should be sufficiently clear so that the figures can be understood without detailed reference to the accompanying text. Axes of graphs should have self-explanatory labels, not just symbols, wherever appropriate.

Illustrations and Photos: Figures and photos should be original figures and not photocopies. Photos must be glossy prints without screens. Laser prints are not acceptable in place of photos or where gray-scale graphics are involved. All line drawings and photos should be in black and white, unless specifically requested. Letters should be large enough to be readily legible when the drawing is reduced to two or one-column width - as much as 4:1 reduction from the original. All materials should be no larger than 22 x 28 cm (8.5 x 11 in).

Electronic Form for Final Printing: For the final printed production of the manuscript, the author will need to upload all text and graphics source files of the final accepted article to ScholarOne Manuscript at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tevc-ieee. Please be certain that final changes made to the article are incorporated into the final source files. Check that all files are complete including abstract, text references, footnotes, biographies, figures and captions. For figures, tables, and author photos, fiff, .eps, or .ps formats are preferred , but all types of graphic formats are accepted. All graphic files will be converted to tiff or eps. For more information on submitting source files and graphics, please visit URL:
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/authors_journals.html for "Article Preparation and Submission."

An IEEE LaTeX style file or Word Template can be obtained at the URL:
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/author_templates.html.

Professional Editing Services

Sometimes IEEE TEVC receives submissions that suffer from poor English usage and readability. Such manuscripts often get rejected because of extremely poor readability. Authors, at their own cost, may take the help of American Journal Experts for pre-submission professional editing services. An author willing to get assistance with English grammar and usage prior to submitting his/her manuscripts for review or during the review process can go directly to https://www.aje.com/en to submit a manuscript for copy editing. Various levels of editing services are available. Cost estimates as well as required time are available immediately on line. We cannot guarantee that the linguistic quality of an edited manuscript will meet your expectation. As expected, an edited manuscript will undergo usual reviews.

Double-Anonymous Review

The articles in this journal are peer reviewed in accordance with the requirements set forth in the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual (https://pspb.ieee.org/images/files/files/opsmanual.pdf). Each published article is reviewed by a minimum of two independent reviewers using a double-anonymous peer review process, where the identities of the reviewers are not known to the authors, and the reviewers do not know the identities of the authors.