A note on the length of submitted manuscripts

Summary form only given, as follows. As of August 1, 2012, the IEEE Transactions on Communications, the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (J-SAC) will have a new submission format. These journals will allow, for each submitted manuscript, up to 30 double-spaced pages in single-column format, inclusive of figures and tables. The text portion of the manuscript should be in 12- point font with approximately 26 lines per page and 6.5-inch line length. Authors are required to submit their manuscripts in single-spaced double-column IEEE format as well as in the single-column format described above. The previous formatting rules for J-SAC manuscripts limited the number of text pages for the single-column format to 20 but set no bound on the number of figures and tables that could be added. The new formatting rules allow authors to integrate tables, figures, and text as they please, as long as the entire submitted manuscript is no more than 30 pages in length. This change in formatting has two implications. (1) Authors can submit papers containing more text than in the past, thereby giving them more latitude to express their ideas clearly. (2) Authors wishing to submit manuscripts containing a large number of figures or tables will have to decide how to trade text, figures, and tables in order not to exceed the 30 pages allotted. We encourage authors to submit concisely written manuscripts, using the 30 pages only as needed. By the same token, guest editors will continue to make sure that the length of submitted manuscripts is in keeping with the content. We expect that the majority of submitted manuscripts will not be of maximum length. In addition, we request that all authors read and comprehend the policy on mandatory over-length page charges, which applies to all papers accepted for publication in J-SAC. Detailed descriptions of the single- and double-column formatting rules for manuscripts submitted - o J-SAC and the over-length page charge policy for accepted papers are provided on the J-SAC website at http://www.jsac.ucsd.edu/Guidelines/info.html.