I didn’t get a chance to do a lot of writing during my time in grad school. Ironically, recently I had to do a lot of writing to be formally left out of grad school.
One of the first steps of the actual writing process for a journal paper is to select a journal to publish in. Things to consider are the relevance and impact of the journal, and mechanical details such as limits on page count. None of this info is easy to find, so I set down for a few hours and compiled the following table for seven of the better known robotics journals.
| IJRR | TRO | RAM | AuRo | RAS | Robotica | IRS | TMe | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Sage | IEEE | IEEE | Springer | Elsevier | Cambridge | Springer | IEEE |
| Website | link | link | link | link | link | link | link | link |
| Impact Factor (2012) | 2.863 | 2.571 | 2.484 | 1.908 | 1.156 | 0.88 | 0.827 | 3.135 |
| Eigenfactor | 0.007497 | 0.01148 | 0.004455 | 0.002366 | 0.004485 | 0.002241 | 0.001613 | 0.004954 |
| Article Influence | 1.0871 | 1.0279 | 1.3031 | 0.5709 | 0.496 | 0.3036 | 0.252 | 0.6653 |
| Issues per Year | 12-14 | 6 | 4 | 6-8 | 12 | 7-8 | 8-10 | 6 |
| Length Limit | ? | 10 pages | 4000 words | 75,000 chars | none | none | none | 8 pages |
| Additional Paid Length | N/A | 7 pages | yes | no | N/A | N/A | N/A | yes |
| Additional Length Cost | N/A | $175/page | $250/page | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | $200 |
| Latex Class/Template | ? | link | any pdf | link | link | any pdf | link | link |
| Review Style | ? | single blind | single blind | single blind (?) | single blind (?) | ? | ? | single blind |
| Suggested Reviewers | yes (3) | no | no | yes (4) | yes (3) | no | no | no |
The long-form names of abbreviated journal titles in the table above are:
- IJRR: International Journal on Robotics Research
- TRO: IEEE Transactions on Robotics
- RAM: Robotics and Automation Magazine
- AuRo: Autonomous Robots
- RAS: Robotics and Autonomous Systems
- IRS: Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems
- TMe: Transactions on Mechatronics
Notes:
- The length limit is for normal papers. Other types of papers (e.g. review, short) might have different limits.
- The impact factor stated on the journals’ websites is used.
- The eigenfactor is that reported by www.eigenfactor.org.
- RAM: 8 magazine pages, 10 equations, 20 references, 10 figures, at least one high quality photo
- AuRo counts a figure as 2000 characters towards the character limit
The Intelligent Autonomous Systems lab at TU Darmstadt maintains a page about impact factors of robotics journals, which is one of the sources I used for the table above.