Rights and permissions:

Prior to submission, authors should obtain all permissions, licences and licenses required for submission and publication. Upon acceptance, authors will need to assign copyright to IECE or, in the case of open access papers published under the Creative Commons CC BY license, complete a license authorising SPIE to publish the paper.

Significance:

Contributions should be substantial and significant in terms of content. We may refuse to publish papers that report only incremental progress. Although a paper may be sound and appropriate for an IECE journal, it will be rejected if it does not demonstrate, in the estimation of the reviewers and editors, that there is sufficient new and significant information to warrant publication, or provide a full review of the current state of the art. Manuscripts of a commercial nature will not be considered.

Originality:

Papers should describe original work by authors that has not been previously published in a refereed journal and is not currently being considered for publication in another refereed journal. IECE does not permit or prohibit the duplication or simultaneous submission of a paper to multiple peer-reviewed journals. Any copying of another author's text, graphics, data or results without attribution is defined as plagiarism and is a breach of professional ethics. Such papers will be rejected and may be subject to other penalties.

Double publication:

Papers should not report work that the author has already published in other refereed journals. This is also unethical. Such papers will be rejected and may be subject to other penalties.

Previously rejected papers:

If you are submitting a new version of a paper previously submitted to an IECE journal but rejected, there will be an entry on the submission form to indicate this. Follow the instructions there and include the paper number and title in your cover letter, with a brief description of the changes made to secure the new submission. Copies of rejected manuscripts are retained in the journal's editorial system.

Note:

It is IECE journal policy that resubmissions of manuscripts following a rejection decision will normally only be accepted three months after the date of the decision. This policy is designed to ensure that there is sufficient time between the rejection decision and resubmission to address the major changes and rewrites that would normally be required to resolve the issues that led to the rejection decision.

Rejection by another journal:

If a paper has been submitted to another journal and rejected, and if you feel that submission to one of the IECE journals would be more appropriate, we urge you to consider any comments or suggestions for improvement on your previous submission . Our reviewers will usually spot errors pointed out by previous reviewers.