T-FR Information for Authors

Information for Authors

Manuscripts submitted to Field Robotics should describe work that has both practical and theoretical significance. Authors must clearly articulate claims, and support them by empirical evidence from relevant experiments. Results that are limited to simulation will not be sufficient, experimental validation in the field or appropriate analogs is necessary.

Manuscripts describing robotic systems should clearly describe the principles underlying them in addition to the design and performance. Manuscripts addressing theoretical results should also discuss their practical utility. Authors must clearly acknowledge the contributions of prior and related work. Manuscripts should advance the current state of understanding and make clear why the advance matters. Authors are encouraged to report on what was learned in doing the work, rather than merely on what was done. In addition to regular articles, Field Robotics publishes research notes, survey articles,  field reports and systems articles. Regular articles emphasize both novelty and field experimentation. Research notes are brief monographs that extend or evaluate previous articles. Survey articles are tutorials or literature reviews that contribute an analysis or perspective that advances our understanding of the subject matter. Field Reports are descriptions of novel systems that have been in operation over an extended duration. They describe interesting and new implementations of known methods and discuss their performance in the field, or present innovative field robots and analyze their performance. Generally, Field Reports emphasize experimentation and experimental results rather than a rigorous analysis of underlying principles.  Systems articles emphasize design of complex systems, including processes to test such designs and analysis of performance results.

Submissions must be original. The research described cannot have previously been published or pending publication in another journal, and submissions cannot be under review in any other forum. Field Robotics will publish work that has previously been reported in conferences or workshops. If the work has appeared in a conference, the submission must substantively extend the conference publication.

Articles may be accompanied by online appendices containing data, demonstrations, instructions for obtaining source code, or the source code itself. We strongly encourage authors to include such appendices along with their papers.

To promote rapid publication of research results, articles will be reviewed and a decision returned to the authors in approximately 4-6 weeks. If an article is longer than usual, we may require more time for the review. If the article is deemed to be inappropriate for the journal, the Editor may choose to do a summary rejection, that is a rejection without a full review. 

Reviewers are instructed to make recommendations to accept, accept with minor revisions, accept with major revisions, or reject. If a paper requires substantial revisions, it will not be accepted. In this case, the editor may recommend that the author submit a revised version, but there is no guarantee it will be reviewed by the same referees, or that it will eventually be published. A paper may be revised and resubmitted at most once.

If a paper is accepted, the editor and reviewers may require minor revisions. The author should return the revised paper as soon as possible. Normally, authors will have up to 60 days to accomplish their revisions. Upon receiving a revised paper, the editor may ask the reviewers to re-review the revised paper. Electronic publication will occur soon after upon receipt of the final version of an accepted article.