Control Systems Letters (L-CSS)

Paper format for initial submission and ORCID

L-CSS publishes peer-reviewed brief articles that provide a rapid and concise account of innovative ideas regarding the theory, design, and applications of all aspects of control engineering. The Letters is an electronic-only, hybrid open-access journal.

Papers submitted to the L-CSS should address an important and timely topic that is relevant to the broad area of theory and applications of systems and control, and report results that are of potentially high impact and likely to be regarded by the community as a significant contribution to the state-of-the-art in our field. The technical correctness of the paper is of fundamental importance, but alone does not guarantee the paper acceptance.

Manuscript submitted to the L-CSS should be written in English, and should be at most six pages long (including figures and references) in the standard two-column IEEE format, 10-point font for Conferences available on PaperPlaza. The document should be configured for US Letter paper. If you use LATEX, choose the line \documentclass[letterpaper, 10 pt, conference]{ieeeconf}.
The authors are not allowed to alter the LaTex code beyond normal parameters when using the template.

Papers that are not submitted in the aforementioned two-column format, or that exceed 6 pages in length in the two-column format, will not be considered.

According to the new IEEE policy for manuscript submission, L-CSS requires an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) for all Authors at the time of initial submission. ORCID is a persistent unique identifier for researchers and functions similarly to an article's Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Authors will need a registered ORCID in order to submit a manuscript to the IEEE Control Systems Letters through the submission site. You can register your ORCID with any of you Papercept PINs here.

Prescreening

The Editorial Board will prescreen all submissions and remove from further consideration those that, in its opinion, do not meet one or more requirements that include, but are not limited to: areas of interest to our readership; quality and clarity of presentation; novelty; significance of contribution. Note that the decisions regarding novelty and technical significance of contribution are made by an Associate Editor and a Senior Editor and are approved by the Editor-in-Chief according to IEEE guidelines. In all cases where a submission does not pass the prescreening stage, it will promptly be returned to the authors. Prescreening decisions are final.

Overlap with previous work

Submission of a manuscript implies that it has neither been copyrighted nor published, submitted, or accepted for publication elsewhere. IEEE policy requires that authors, when using their own previously published or submitted material as a basis for a new submission, must "cite the previous work(s) and very clearly indicate how the new submission differs from the previously published work(s)." [IEEE Publications Operations Manual, Section 8.2.4F.] Full details on IEEE publication policies are provided in Section 8 of the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI)–generated text

The use of artificial intelligence (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.

Possible reference to external material/files

Papers submitted to the IEEE Control systems Letters should be self contained. In particular, the proofs of the main paper results should appear in the paper. The authors may refer to some external document, available on some public archive (e.g., arXiv, or IEEE TechRxiv), not a personal webpage/repository, only for some minor technical results or for an extended proof of lengthy but not fundamental technical steps.
The content, value and technical correctness of the paper will be assessed only based on the submitted manuscript.

Electronic Submission of a Manuscript

All prospective authors must submit their manuscripts electronically by accessing the IEEE Control Systems Letters submission site. Only pdf files are accepted. Instructions to upload the pdf file are available in the submission site. Authors will be given the option to submit a cover message, but not additional files.
At the time of initial submission authors will be asked to agree on the journal commitment form, where some of the fundamental author commitments are recalled. Perspective authors are recommended to read them carefully before agreeing on them. A copy of the commitment form will be sent as an attachment to the email acknowledging the submission.

Please make sure that your pdf file can be printed out correctly both on standard US paper size (8 1/2 x 11") and on A4 paper size (210 x 297 mm).

Copyright and Export Control Compliance

It is the policy of the IEEE to own the copyright to the technical contribution it publishes on behalf of the interests of the IEEE, its authors and their employers, and to facilitate the appropriate reuse of this material by others. To comply with the U.S. Copyright Law, authors are required to sign an IEEE copyright form before publication. This form returns to authors and their employers full rights to reuse their material for their own purposes. The form may be obtained from IEEE Copyright Form and signing the form is integrated in the on-line submission process. In addition, the IEEE must also comply with U.S. laws or restrictions pertaining to the dissemination of defense-related information. For more information please see the IEEE Export Control Compliance Form.

Style for Manuscripts

1. The First page of the paper must include:
     (a) Title of Paper (without Symbols);
     (b) Author(s) and affiliation(s);
     (c) Abstract (not exceeding 200 words);
     (d) For each author: complete mailing address, telephone number, and electronic mail (e-mail) address;
     (e) Preferred address for correspondence and return of proofs; and
     (f) Footnotes (if desired) containing acknowledgment of financial or other support.
2. Provide an Introduction that includes a statement of the purpose and contribution of the paper.
3. If appropriate, indicate advantages, limitations, and possible applications in a Conclusion section.
4. References should be numbered and appear in a separate bibliography at the end of the paper. Use numerals in square brackets to cite references, e.g., [15]. References should be complete and in the IEEE style.

Style for Illustrations

Please follow the instructions in "Guidelines for Author-Supplied Electronic Text and Graphics".

Publication Decisions

The L-CSS is a rapid publication, whose target is to provide authors with a final decision about their submitted manuscripts within 5 months from their initial submissions. For this reason, it is the journal policy to allow for each paper at most two rounds of review. Authors will receive the first decision, along with review comments, within eight weeks from submission.

The first decision is of three types only: Accept for Publication, Reject, or Revise and Resubmit.

If the first decision is Accept for Publication, authors are required to submit the camera-ready version of their paper within two weeks.

If the first decision is Revise and Resubmit, authors can resubmit a revised version along with a Statement of Changes letter indicating how comments by the Associate Editor and by reviewers have been addressed. The revision has to be resubmitted within 25 days from reception of the first review. Failure to meet this deadline means the paper will be automatically moved to the Reject category: unfortunately, the tight timeline of the Letters will allow no extensions or exceptions to this rule.

Authors will receive a second and final decision within 5 months from initial submissions. Final decisions are only of two types: Accept for Publication or Reject.

If the final decision is Accept for Publication, authors are required to submit the camera-ready version of their paper within two weeks (more below about the format).

Upon receipt of the final version of the paper from the authors, and provided that all formatting and style requirements are met, the camera-ready PDF file will appear as a Rapid Posting preprint on IEEE Xplore. Rapid Posting preprints are citable papers and have a DOI.

Any paper submitted to L-CSS will either appear on Xplore in six months, or be rejected.

Shortly after Rapid Posting preprint appearance, a moderately edited and XML tagged version will be prepared by IEEE, submitted as galley proofs to the Authors, and eventually published as replacement of the preprint.

If the first or final decision is Reject, the paper cannot be resubmitted unless it has undergone such a major revision to be regarded as new submission.

Final Accepted Manuscript

Final versions of papers accepted for publication should not exceed 6 pages including all figures and references, and should be submitted either in the old IEEE Transactions 10-point font, double-column format (if LATEX is used, use the line \documentclass[letterpaper, 10 pt, journal, twoside]{ieeetran}) or in the new IEEEcolor.cls style available in the web page of "Template for Transactions" of the IEEE Author Center http://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/create-your-ieee-article/use-authoring-tools-and-ieee-article-templates/ieee-article-templates/templates-for-transactions/.

Once you have selected the previous link and accessed the IEEE Author Center, select IEEE Template Selector -> Transactions, Journals and Letters -> select IEEE Control Systems Letters in the scrolldown menu -> Original research -> Latex.

Please, be aware that IEEE templates come by default with a) headers, b) footers, and c) page numbers, that you will need to remove in order for the final pdf file to pass the margin check in PaperPlaza.
Alternatively, you can use this template version.
In case you want to use Word, you can follow the previous path and select Word at the final step.

Instructions are available on the submission site and will also be provided at the time of acceptance.

Open Access (OA)

As the other CSS journals, the IEEE Control Systems Letters is a hybrid publication, that permits both traditional subscription-based content as well as open access, author-pays content. Open access papers published within a hybrid journal will be included in all media types offered by that title.

L-CSS allows open-access for those authors who require it and who support publishing costs directly. The final acceptance/rejection decision about the manuscript is entirely independent of authors' choice of traditional or open-access publication. Any communication regarding the Open Access choice will only be entertained after the final decision about publication has been made. The peer-review process for articles that will be published Open-Access is the same as the one for those that will not. Reviewers will not know if an article is OA or not, since Authors' commitment to OA is only made after acceptance. The Open Access article processing charge (APC) for this publication is USD $2,495 plus applicable local taxes. The following discounts apply: IEEE Members receive a 5% discount; IEEE CSS Society Members receive a 20% discount. Discounts do not apply to undergraduate and graduate students. These discounts cannot be combined.

Code Ocean and IEEE DataPortTM are now available for authors of the IEEE Control Systems Letters.

Code Ocean is a cloud-based executable research platform that allows authors to share their algorithms in an effort to make the world's scientific code more open and reproducible. Uploading your algorithms and associated data files to the Code Ocean site is easy. Anyone can run an algorithm posted to Code Ocean, modify it, and test the modifications. The published algorithm that an author posts will remain unchanged.

Any author that has had an IEEE journal article published on IEEE Xplore in the past five years can upload associated algorithms to Code Ocean by visiting

https://codeocean.com/ieee/signup

Once the algorithm is uploaded to Code Ocean, it will be automatically linked to the associated article in IEEE Xplore. Users in IEEE Xplore will be able to discover and access the link to run the algorithm in Code Ocean.

Further information about using Code Ocean can be found at:

https://help.codeocean.com

IEEE DataPortTM serves as a valuable and easily accessible repository of datasets and data analysis tools. The repository is designed to accept all types of datasets, including Big Data datasets up to 2TB, and it provides both downloading capabilities and access to Cloud services to enable data analysis in the Cloud. IEEE DataPortTM is a universally accessible web-based portal that serves four primary purposes:

  • Enable individuals and institutions to make datasets easily accessible to a broad set of researchers, engineers and industry;
  • Enable researchers, engineers and industry to gain access to datasets that can be analyzed to advance technology;
  • Make data analysis tools and capabilities available to enable analysis of datasets;
  • Retain referenceable data for reproducible research.

CSS authors have an option to submit their research data to IEEE DataPort during the article submittal process and link the data to their submitted article. If data is submitted and the article is published in Xplore, there will be a "Datasets Available" icon and a link to the dataset for Xplore readers. Contact dataport@ieee.org if you have questions about submitting your data.

See also https://ieee-dataport.org/about-ieee-dataport



Below is an example of what this integration looks like in IEEE Xplore.

The IEEE Control Systems Letters and the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and the AACC American Control Conference

While submission to the L-CSS is open throughout the year, in some periods of the year, the Letters offers the opportunity for authors to not only publish a paper in the journal but also to present the same paper either at the flagship conference of the IEEE Control Systems Society: the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), or at the annual conference of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC): the American Control Conference (ACC).

Manuscripts submitted to the L-CSS with the CDC/ACC option will undergo a regular review as papers submitted to the Letters (so they should be submitted only to the L-CSS and not to the CDC/ACC). At the end of the first round of review, the reviews and the Associate Editor's report will be forwarded to the CDC/ACC Program Committee, which will use them to decide on the inclusion of these manuscripts in the program of the Conference.
This means, in particular, that these papers will be visible in the CDC/ACC submission site (PaperPlaza) only once the first round of review is completed and in that moment they will receive an ACC/CDC submission number. After the first round of review the decisions about the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript for the L-CSS and for the CDC/ACC will be independent of each other.

A manuscript submitted to the L-CSS with CDC/ACC option may be accepted both by the L-CSS and the CDC/ACC, by either of them, or by neither.

If the paper is accepted only by the L-CSS it will appear on IEEE Xplore as a journal paper.

If it is accepted only by the CDC/ACC it will appear on IEEE Xplore as part of the CDC/ACC Proceedings.

If a manuscript is accepted by both, only the journal version will appear on IEEE Xplore. Authors will present their manuscript at the CDC/ACC, but the manuscript will not be part of the CDC/ACC Proceedings available on Xplore. However, as all the manuscripts presented at the CDC/ACC, it will be available to participants in the conference proceedings.

Note that the timeline of the review process of papers submitted to the L-CSS with CDC/ACC option has been planned to match CDC/ACC deadlines, so the information about the paper acceptance by the L-CSS will be available to conference organizers before the CDC/ACC proceedings are archived on the IEEE Xplore.

L-CSS will only handle the review for papers submitted to the letters via L-CSS with CDC/ACC option. Papers submitted directly to the CDC/ACC will be reviewed by the corresponding Conference Editorial Boards and will be considered only for presentation at the CDC/ACC.

Guidelines for submission of manuscripts to L-CSS with CDC/ACC option

Manuscript submitted to the L-CSS with CDC/ACC option should be written in English, and should be at most six pages long (including figures and references) in the standard two-column IEEE format, 10-point font for Conferences available on PaperPlaza. The document should be configured for US Letter paper. If LATEX is used, choose the line \documentclass[letterpaper, 10 pt, conference]{ieeeconf}. The authors are not allowed to alter the LATEX code beyond normal parameters when using the template. Please, refer to the Guidelines for Authors page for additional information.

Papers that are not submitted in the aforementioned two-column format, or that exceed 6 pages in length in the two-column format, will not be considered.

When submitting a paper to L-CSS with CDC/ACC option, the authors should choose between two submission types:

  • L-CSS and CDC/ACC
or
  • L-CSS and CDC/ACC Invited Session
The former should be chosen if authors plan to submit their paper to CDC/ACC as a Regular Paper, the latter if authors plan to submit a paper that is part of a CDC/ACC Invited Session.

Instructions for authors of papers who want to submit a paper to L-CSS with option to be considered as an ACC/CDC invited paper.

The paper contributors will need to submit their paper to the L-CSS (only). If the authors already know the code of the ACC/CDC invited session their paper belongs to, they should choose as submission type L-CSS and ACC/CDC-Invited Sessions and insert the aforementioned code. If the authors are not aware of the code of the ACC/CDC invited session their paper belongs to, at the time of submission to LCSS, then they should choose as submission type L-CSS and ACC/CDC (only). After submission, and no later than 5 days after the Conference deadline for initial submission, the authors should send an email to L-CSS Editor in Chief, Elena Valcher (meme@dei.unipd.it), specifying the number of their LCSS and ACC/CDC paper, the name of the invited session, the name of the invited session organizer(s) and the ACC/CDC invited session code (received from the invited session organizers).

FAQ

Q1. Is the page limit of 6 for the IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS) strict? Even in case the paper is submitted with CDC/ACC option?
Yes, 6 pages in the standard IEEE two-column format (including figures and references) is a strict limit, even when the paper is submitted with CDC/ACC option. The journal aims at rapid publication of brief papers, and the 6 pages constraints is motivated both by the paper format (Letters) and by the goal of keeping the reviewers' workload compatible with the strict deadlines.

Q2. I would like to submit my paper to the L-CSS and also to present it at the CDC/ACC: can I submit it to both? Or can I first submit to the CDC/ACC and eventually a revised version to the Letters, or conversely?
If an Author submits the same manuscript or slightly different manuscript to the L-CSS and to the CDC/ACC they will be treated as double submissions and as such they will both be rejected. The correct path to follow is to submit the manuscript to the L-CSS and select the CDC/ACC option.

Q3. Can a paper that was published in the Proceedings of an IEEE conference be resubmitted to L-CSS?
In principle yes, if the paper follows the "evolutionary paradigm" of IEEE, i.e., if it incorporates substantial improvements and it discloses openly the source(s) and discusses the changes (these are the same conditions under which the same paper could be submitted to other CSS Transactions). However, considering that IEEE conference papers are typically 6 or even 8 pages long and the Letters has the 6 page constraints, the chances that the new manuscript is substantially different from the previous conference versions are low. Submission to other CSS Transactions of an evolved and extended version of a previous conference paper is a more realistic scenario.

Q4. I have submitted a paper to L-CSS with the CDC/ACC option, and the paper has been accepted both by the L-CSS and for presentation at the CDC/ACC. Where will my paper be published?
It will appear in the Letters on Xplore and in the proceedings distributed during the Conference. It will not appear in the Conference Proceedings available on the IEEE Xplore, although the title and abstract will be there, with a link to the Letters paper.

Q5. I have a paper published in the Letters. Can I expand on it and submit to some IEEE Transaction, the same way I used to do with Conference Proceedings papers?
The Letters are a journal, and IEEE does not accept to republish the same material on two journal publications. A new submission to some IEEE Transaction should have little overlap with a paper published in the Letters, and contain mainly novel material.

Q6. Will the L-CSS be indexed in journal databases and will they have an Impact Factor?
The Letters is already indexed in Scopus and is part of the ESCI (Emerging Source Citation Index) of Web of Science (WOS).
The Letters received and Impact Factor in 2023: 3.00.

Q7. I would like my paper accepted by the L-CSS to be published Open Access. Is this possible?
Yes, the L-CSS is a hybrid publication, that permits both traditional subscription-based content as well as open access, author-pays content. A paper accepted to appear in the Letters can be published Open Access provided that authors cover the cost. For more details see the Guidelines for Authors.

Q8. Does a Revise and Resubmit decision 'restart' the 6 month clock or does the 6 month timeline include revisions?
It includes revision, so the 6 month clock is between first submission and on-line publication (of course, in case of acceptance).

Q9. Can Authors post their manuscripts, submitted to L-CSS, on a preprint server such as ArXiv?
Yes. The IEEE recognizes that many authors share their unpublished manuscripts on public sites. Once manuscripts have been accepted for publication by IEEE, an author is required to post an IEEE copyright notice on his preprint. Upon publication, the author must replace the preprint with either 1) the full citation to the IEEE work with Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or a link to the paper's abstract in IEEE Xplore, or 2) the accepted version only (not the IEEE-published version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with a link to the final, published paper in IEEE Xplore.

Q10. Is there a suggested format for citing papers that have been accepted for publication in both L-CSS and CDC/ACC? How about citing them in an authors' CV?
All citations must go to the L-CSS paper only. The full paper will appear on IEEE Xplore only as a paper of the Letters so it does not make sense to cite a version of the paper that is available only on the conference proceedings. In addition, splitting your citations would negatively affect your h-index etc.
When listing the journal paper in your list of publications, however, you may add a note stating that "The contents of this paper were also selected by CDC/ACC XX Program Committee for presentation at the Conference".

Q11. How can I improve my responses to reviewers?
Three tips from Authors@IEEE Newsletter: Volume 6, Issue 4, August 2021:
1. Appreciate the opportunity to improve. The reviewers and the editor have invested significant time in your article in order to help you improve it for the scientific community at large. Receiving a long list of suggested edits from reviewers may leave you feeling discouraged or defensive. Instead, consider the suggestions as opportunities to improve your article before publication.
2. Respond to every comment. Copy all of the reviewers’ suggestions from the decision letter into a new file and separate them into individual suggestions. This will be the basis for the response-to-reviewers document that you will submit along with your revised article. Read each suggestion carefully, implement the appropriate change in your article, and then explain your changes in the response document just below each suggestion. This will help the reviewers and the editor focus on the changes you have made. Keep your responses professional, factual, and concise.
If you disagree with a reviewer's suggestion, state this in the response document that you have not implemented the suggestion and provide your reason(s) for not doing so. The editor may accept your explanation.
3. Read the article again before resubmitting. Set aside the revised article and the response-to-reviewers document for a few days and then return and fully read both again. You may find additional edits when reading through the documents with fresh eyes. Resubmit to the journal once you are satisfied with the revised article and the response document.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Adaptive control
Adaptive systems
Aerospace
Agents-based systems
Air traffic management
Algebraic/geometric methods
Automata
Automotive control
Autonomous systems
Autonomous vehicles
Top
B
Backstepping
Biological systems
Biologically-inspired methods
Biomedical
Biomolecular systems
Boolean control networks and logic networks
Building and facility automation
Top
C
Cellular dynamics
Chemical process control
Closed-loop identification
Communication networks
Compartmental and Positive systems
Computational methods
Computer-aided control design
Constrained control
Control applications
Control of networks
Control over communications
Control system architecture
Cooperative control
Top
D
Data driven control
Data storage systems
Decentralized control
Delay systems
Differential-algebraic systems
Discrete event systems
Distributed control
Distributed parameter systems
Top
E
Electrical machine control
Embedded systems
Emerging control applications
Energy systems
Estimation
Extremum seeking
Top
F
Fault accomodation
Fault detection
Fault diagnosis
Fault tolerant systems
Feedback linearization
Filtering
Finance
Flexible structures
Flight control
Fluid flow systems
Fuzzy systems
Top
G
Game theory
Genetic regulatory systems
Grey-box modeling
Top
H
Healthcare and medical systems
Hierarchical control
Human-in-the-loop control
Hybrid systems
Top
I
Identification
Identification for control
Information technology systems
Information theory and control
Intelligent systems
Iterative learning control
Top
K
Kalman filtering
Top
L
Large-scale systems
Linear parameter-varying systems
Linear systems
LMIs
Lyapunov methods
Top
M
Machine learning
Manufacturing systems and automation
Maritime control
Markov processes
Mean field games
Mechatronics
Metabolic systems
Model Validation
Model/Controller reduction
Modeling
Top
N
Network analysis and control
Networked control systems
Neural networks
Nonholonomic systems
Nonlinear output feedback
Nonlinear systems identification
Numerical algorithms
Top
O
Observers for Linear systems
Observers for nonlinear systems
Optimal control
Optimization
Optimization algorithms
Output regulation
Top
P
Petri nets
PID control
Power electronics
Power generation
Power systems
Predictive control for linear systems
Predictive control for nonlinear systems
Process Control
Top
Q
Quantized systems
Quantum information and control
Queueing systems
Top
R
Randomized algorithms
Robotics
Robust adaptive control
Robust control
Top
S
Sampled-data control
Sensor fusion
Sensor networks
Smart cities/houses
Smart grid
Smart structures
Stability of hybrid systems
Stability of linear systems
Stability of nonlinear systems
Statistical learning
Stochastic optimal control
Stochastic systems
Subspace methods
Supervisory control
Switched systems
Systems biology
Top
T
Time-varying systems
Traffic control
Transportation networks
Top
U
Uncertain systems
Top
V
Variable-structure/sliding-mode control
Variational methods
Top

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