Transactions on Automatic Control

General Information

The following two types of contributions are regularly considered.

Full Papers: Presentation of significant research, development, or application of control concepts

Technical Notes and Correspondence: Brief technical notes, comments on established control topics, corrections to papers and notes published in the Transactions.

TAC requires both Full Paper (FP) and Technical Note (TN) submissions to be in a double-column format. (Templates can be located by searching online for "IEEE Transactions template.") 

The standard Full Paper is 12 pages, but authors are allowed 4 extra pages over the 12 pages for Full Papers, with a $125.00 fee for each extra page.  The standard Technical Note is 6 pages, but authors are allowed 2 extra pages over the 6 pages for Technical Notes, with a $125.00 fee for each extra page.

FPs MUST include the authors’ photos and bios at the end of the paper, within the page limit stated in the previous paragraph. 

TNs (both the initial submissions and resubmission of initial FPs resubmitted as TNs upon review) MUST NOT include the authors’ photos and bios. 

Full Papers of length exceeding 16-pages, 2-column, single-spaced, typed pages (including photos and bios) will not be considered. Technical Notes and Correspondence of length exceeding 8 pages, 2-column, or single-spaced format will not be considered.

Submission of a manuscript signifies that it has been neither copyrighted, published, nor submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere.

When submitting to TAC a manuscript based on the manuscript’s (published or submitted) conference version, the authors should cite the conference version and make it accessible to the reviewers (for instance, on arXiv). The CSS policy is not worded to require that the journal version make a “(significant) contribution” relative to the conference version but solely that the journal version contain “VALUE ADDED” material relative to the conference version. The added value may be in the form of details of proofs that might have been omitted in the conference version due to the page limit, additional numerical results, or helpful interpretations. (Such “added value” in practice, especially for TNs, often translates to a 15% difference between the 6-page conference version and a 7-8 page TAC version.)

TAC, as a flagship journal in its area, and constrained by a submission volume that exceeds the editorial capacity, is not a venue for content that has already undergone a peer review and been rejected - either in TAC or in another journal. By submitting to TAC, the authors CERTIFY that the manuscript bears no relation with rejected papers. (The exception is when a rejection decision, in TAC, has indicated the possibility that a completely new manuscript, based on the rejected paper, may be developed and submitted de novo to TAC.)  

Protests to decisions resulting from review may be considered only in highly limited, rare situations, outlined at the Access page for TAC on PaperPlaza. Prescreening rejections are final. 

Human Subjects/Animal research

Authors of articles reporting on research involving human subjects or animals shall confirm upon submission of an article to the Editor* whether or not an approval was obtained from a relevant Review Board. If such approval was obtained, the original source and reference shall be provided to the Editor* at the time of submission and shall appear in the article.

Paper Submission Site

Issues (IEEE Xplore)