Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control

Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/timc to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines will be returned.

Only manuscripts of sufficient novelty, that conform to the required standard of presentation and meet the aims and scope of Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control will be reviewed.

As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control may not accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article isaccepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.

 

1. What do we publish?
   1.1 Aims & Scope
   1.2 Article types
   1.3 Writing your paper
2. Editorial policies
   2.1 Peer review policy
   2.2 Authorship
   2.3 Acknowledgements
   2.4 Funding
   2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
   2.6 Research Data
3. Publishing policies
   3.1 Publication ethics
   3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
   3.3 Open access and author archiving
   3.4. Permissions
4. Preparing your manuscript
   4.1 Pre-writing stage
   4.2 General requirements
   4.3 Formatting
   4.4 Specific Permissions
   4.5 Artwork, figures and other graphics
   4.6 Supplementary material
   4.7 Reference style
   4.8 English language editing services
   4.9 Preparing your manuscript for re-review
5. Submitting your manuscript
   5.1 ORCID
   5.2 Information required for completing your submission
   5.3 Permissions
6. Special and Themed Issues
7. On acceptance and publication
   7.1 Sage Production
   7.2 Online First publication
   7.3 Access to your published article
   7.4 Promoting your article
8. Further information
   8.1 Appealing the publication decision

1. What do we publish?

1.1 Aims & Scope

Before submitting your manuscript to Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

1.2 Article Types

The technology covered by Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control is naturally inter- or cross-disciplinary and for this reason the field is very wide. However, where possible, the Editors will ensure that material having a similar theme will be published in the same issue. When the Editors select original manuscripts having a similar theme for publication in an issue, the theme will be indicated on the front cover of the issue.

Original Article: Describes a piece of original or substantially original research within the measurement and/or controls area. The article should be based on work that has been completed to the point of yielding conclusions amply supported by firm evidence. As far as possible the results should be reproducible. If this requires additional material, such as simulation software, it may be included in a separate file, see section 4.5. Additional material will, at the discretion of the publishers, be made available should the manuscript be accepted for publication.

Review Article: A review article should, summarise, critically analyse and integrate previously published articles related on a specific area of research important to the measurement and control community. In particular, it should provide a 'snap-shot' of the current state-of-the-art and provide insights into those problems that are substantially solved, the 'yet to be solved' problems requiring novel solutions, or for those problems for which a better solution is required. The answers given may not be definitive but it should indicate directions for future research. A review may be needed when the number and content of research reports on a given area of research become diffused and a overview is required in order to simulate and focus further research activity.

Length

1. In general, Original Articles and Review Papers should not normally exceed 6000 words (with up to 10 illustrations).
2. Discussions on papers already published should not exceed 500 words and 2 illustrations

1.3 Writing your paper

The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.

1.3.1 Make your article discoverable

For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.

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2. Editorial policies

2.1 Peer review policy

Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. 
Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:

•  The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
•  The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
•  The author has recommended the reviewer
•  The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution). 

2.2 Authorship

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

1. Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
2. Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
3. Approved the version to be published,
4. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

2.3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.

2.3.1 Third party submissions

Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

2.3.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

2.4 Funding

Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. 

2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests

It is the policy of Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.

2.6. Research data

The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
• cite this data in your research

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3. Publishing Policies

3.1 Publication ethics

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.

3.1.1 Plagiarism

Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

3.1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement

Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.

3.3 Open access and author archiving

Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.

3.4 Permissions
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please visit Sage Journal Author Gateway.
 

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4. Preparing your manuscript for submission

Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you carefully read and adhere to all the guidelines and instructions to authors provided below. Manuscripts which are badly presented will not be forwarded for review.

4.1 Pre-writing stage

The most important thing to remember in preparing your manuscript is the requirements of the various parties involved. Fortunately, these requirements have much in common.

• The author(s) want the manuscript to be published and then to be cited by other authors. 
• Reviewers want a well-presented manuscript, in which the area of the work and its contribution to that area is clearly presented. This will include things like, a clear explanatory title describing the content, a very clear summary indicating the scope of the work and the main findings.  The body of the manuscript must also be clearly written, easily understood and concise. Reviewers will also want the contributions (novelty) clearly defined and the work put in to context by comparing it with the work of others.
• The Editor and publishers want to produce a journal that will be read by their subscribers.
• A subscriber wants to quickly identify manuscripts that are relevant to their areas of interest and then very quickly absorb the key points.

Given this list of requirements, it is evident that, if it is to be published a manuscript must, in addition to having novelty, be well presented. It also needs to be presented in such a way that it is easily found and easily understood. 

The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article online through online search engines such as Google. 

For example, a researcher, looking for material in their area of research, is likely to base their search on 'commonly used key words'. If your manuscript uses 'non-standard key words' or obscure acronyms, it is unlikely that your manuscript will be picked up by a search engine. 

Next, they will scan the title of the various articles produced by that search. To be selected at this stage, your article must have a clear explanatory title describing the content.  A very clear summary indicating the scope of the work and the main findings then becomes the prerequisite to selecting the work for further study. 

If the work is selected for further study and the content is concise, easily understood and with the contributions clearly defined, then it is highly likely that this work will be referenced. 

For further information, please refer to the information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords by visiting Sage’s Journal Author Gateway Guidelines on how to Promote Your Article.

It is for these reasons that this journal has adopted a standard presentation model for all its submitted manuscripts. Presentation is considered a necessary prerequisite for demonstrating novelty. Novelty is required to merit publication.

4.2 General Requirements

A manuscript which is published in Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control is one that the editors believe satisfies the following: 

•    is in the scope of the Journal, 
•    is well written and well presented
•    is one that the readership would want to read and
•    is one that has sufficient novelty to be quoted in future works. 

All papers accepted for publication in Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control are copyedited and typeset. Copyediting will correct minor grammatical mistakes, and typesetting ensures all manuscripts conform to the same format.  Hence, papers submitted to Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control should be presented so that they are easy to review and conform to the publishers referencing style. Hence the general requirements are:

•    The presented standard of the written text should be of an acceptable standard. That is, the text should be easily understood and meet the specified standard of presentation.
•    For ease of reading the manuscripts should be single column and contain all figures and tables within the text. Separate good quality figures will be required once the manuscript is accepted for publication.

4.3 Formatting

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway. Please note, due to known problems with transforming equations in the Sage PDF converter, authors should submit their own PDF version of the manuscript for review purposes.

For ease of reading, the manuscripts should be:

• The text should be double-spaced throughout and with a minimum of 3cm for left and right hand margins and 5cm at head and foot.
• Text should be standard 10 or 12 point. Times New Roman, bold and italic type can be used, but use only one typeface and size.
• The text should be ranged left and unjustified, with hyphenation cancelled. Indents, underlining and tabs should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
• Single column and contain all figures and tables within the text, and use double line spacing
• Headings and paragraphs should be separated by two carriage returns. Subheadings should be typed on separate lines and marked to indicate their progressive order of importance. The use of more than three levels of heading should be avoided.
• There should be only one space between words and only one space after any punctuation.
• Capitals should be used only where they are to appear in the finished text.
• Abbreviations should be minimised and avoided whenever possible, however, when they are used, they must be spelled out.
• Harvard Referencing must be used with Author-Date, in-text, referencing and the reference list should be ordered alphabetically, by surname.
   

4.4 Specific Requirements

When submitting your manuscript, you will first be asked to complete steps that ensure we have full contact details for all the authors and some specific information about the manuscript itself. The last section allows you to download an electronic version of your manuscript, please ensure that it contains the following sections and meets the indicated standard of presentation.  

Note: The initial submission process will check that your manuscript meets the following requirements. Manuscripts not meeting these requirements will not be reviewed. Please ensure that:

• All authors are listed at the start of the manuscript text, and the corresponding author is listed clearly. Ensure the email addresses for all authors are provided

• Title

The title should be Brief and Descriptive of the content. Note the title would not normally contain acronyms.

Hence, 

“A learning machine for monitoring chemical processes”

is better than, 

“An improved extreme learning machine integrated with nonlinear principal components (NPCs-IELM) in monitoring complex chemical processes”

The acronym has been removed and details on the implementation will be included in the abstract.

• All authors’ names and full affiliations

• Abstract 

The Abstract must give an overview of the entire paper. It should tell the reader what they will find. Be clear and avoid unnecessary details and acronyms. It should not normally exceed 200 words. The reader would expect at least one (brief) sentence (and not more than 3) on each of the following:  

1. purpose and context (what has been done and why), 
2. method (an overview of the approach used to solve the problem), 
3. key results (how do the new results compare with previously published work),
4. conclusions (the key results and any limitations)

• Keywords

These should be generic; that is all the key words should relate to established subject areas. Do not define new 'key words' to specify your area of research. Keywords should indicate general areas of research; that is a general reader with some experience in the areas indicated would be able to understand the material presented. The recommended keywords should be used If possible. For example:

You have done some work on self-tuning and everyone in your research lab knows this as the GAFLex method; since it combines genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic and your work on ‘the x-factor’ that will self-tune a PID controller. You apply the method to an arc furnace simulation.

GAFLex, arc furnace, and x-factor are NOT keywords.

Keywords should describe the work and the expertise of the reader who be able to understand the importance of this new work ‘x –factor’. 

Hence the keywords should be:
Self-tuning, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, PID  

• Introduction 

The introduction should put your research in context and provide any specialised information that the general measurement or control reader might need if they are to understand what follows. It must state the importance and significance of relevant previous work in the area and, indicate the existing problems which your work addresses. It should also indicate the comparators from which to judge the effectiveness of your work. The Introduction should then clearly define the contribution(s) made by the current article and indicate how these are demonstrated in the remainder of the manuscript.

A typical introduction should be as brief as possible and would contain the following:

• An outline of the problem.
• A review of the literature relating to the problem, recording briefly the main contributors indicating:
  • What the main contributors did
  • What the main contributors found
• A statement of unsolved problems and/or areas requiring improvement; particularly the one(s) considered in your manuscript. 
• In relation to the above state what you will do that has not been done before (what are the new contribution(s))
• An outline of how the following sections show what you did and how its relevance will be demonstrated.

 

• The main body of the manuscript

The nature of the work will determine the headings and specific content found in the main body of the manuscript. However, you should ensure that:

1. The presentation is logical and clear
2. Known results are stated and, if necessary, derivations referenced (and not duplicated). 
3. Someone reading the manuscript could duplicate your work (assuming the right equipment)?
4. You have demonstrated and compared your results with the work of others. 

• The Conclusion 

The Conclusions are a summing up of the advances in knowledge that have been made because of your work.

• Draw together the most important results and their consequences.
• List any reservations or limitations.

 

• References

Select your references with care. 

• Ensure the references are recent. In general, recent references will indicate the latest developments.
• Ensure the references are relevant. 
  
  • Do they put the work in context? 
  • Do they provide alternative techniques with which your work may be compared? 
  • Do the references demonstrate relevance to Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control? 

• Finally

Your manuscript must be clearly written and easily understood; if it is not, it will not be reviewed.  Hence: 

• Use simple language and simple, concise construction.
• Use short words rather than long words.
• Use short sentences rather than long ones.
• Use familiar words and not obscure ones.
• Check the accuracy of the text and the equations – these must be checked and re-checked – it is your responsibility to get them right.

Reasons for immediately REJECTING or RETURNING a manuscript before review.

·         Manuscripts where the measurement or control novelty of the work is not evident from the Abstract.

·         Manuscripts where the main contribution to knowledge is the area of application rather than in measurement, or                        control.

·         Manuscripts where the keywords are not associated with this journal.

·         Manuscripts with an excessive number of acronyms.

·         Manuscripts with an excessive number of references or a majority of references that do not relate to measurement or                control journals.

·         Manuscripts that are long or have an excessive number of figures or tables

4.5 Artwork, figures and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.  

Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.

For ease of review, all figures and tables should appear in the manuscript when they are referenced.  

For copy editing and publication purposes good quality figures and tables are required, these should appear on separate pages at the end of the article and be saved separately as.eps or.jpeg files. Line drawings should be black and white. Figures should ideally be drawn for a reduction of one third i.e., 3:2 or 150:100 mm.

Symbols: A list of symbols should be provided at the beginning of the paper, following the abstract.

Mathematical: All vectors and matrices should be shown in bold type. Avoid confusion between ambiguous characters and take care to ensure that subscripts and superscripts are clear. Numbers below 10 should be written out in the text unless used in conjunction with units (e.g. three apples, 4 kg). Full points (not commas) should be used for decimals. For numbers less than one, a nought should be inserted before the decimal point. Use spaces (not commas) within numbers (e.g. 10 000, 0.125 275).

4.6 Supplementary material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.

4.7 Reference style

Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

You should only include references that are relevant to your prospective publication. This should include recent relevant publications published in TIMC, since this assists the readers in seeing the development of the topic and generates themes within TIMC. You can quickly find references to recent publications in TIMC from the following web pages http://tim.sagepub.com/search.

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file

The reference should be referred to in the text by the author and date (Bloggs, 1997) and then listed in alphabetical order at the end of the article applying the following style: 

For a book 
Olson, M.A. 1965: The logic of collective action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

For an edited book 
Berry, P., editor, 1976: Language and communication in the mentally handicapped. London: Arnold.

For a chapter in an edited book 
Feagin, J.R., Gilderbloom, J. and Rodriguez, N. 1989: Private-public partnerships: the Houston experience. In Squires, G., editor, Unequal partnerships. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 204-59.

For a book in a series 
Lesser, R. 1979: Linguistic investigations of aphasia. Studies in Language Disability and Remediation 5. London: Arnold. 
Gore, A.J.P., editor, 1983: Ecosystems of the World. Volume 1, Mires: swamp, bog, fen and moor; Volume 2, Mangroves and coastal systems. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.

For a journal title 
Hanson P. 1977: The activity patterns of elderly households. Geografiska Annaler 59, 109-24.

Please note that in general references to web pages will not be accepted.

4.8 English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.

4.9 Preparing your manuscript for re-review

If you receive a letter The letter asking you to revise and resubmit your manuscript it will request that you provide a separate statement of the corrections that you have made. You would do this by first indicating (for example) that the comments for Reviewer 1 are all highlighted in yellow in the manuscript, those for Reviewer 2 are highlighted in red, and those for Reviewer 3 in green. Then follow this up with a statement of each specific change made. See the template provided below. It is important to realise that the reviewer comments are made to help bring the manuscript up to a publishable standard and not for personal information.

The following template should be used for responses to reviewers:

I wish to thank the reviewers for their useful comments. In the manuscript, the comments for Reviewer 1 are all highlighted in yellow, those for Reviewer 2 are highlighted in red, and those for Reviewer 3 in green.

Reviewer 1

Comment 1: There are some references that are not required.
Response: We have carefully revised our references; 5 references have been removed and two of the references replaced by more recent works.   

Comment 2: The presentation of equations 5 and 8 should be improved.
Response: The required changes have been made. 

Comment 3: Equation 9 seems to be incorrect.
Response: Equation 9 is correct. This may be demonstrated as follows: ... To make equation 9 clearer in the manuscript the following comments have been added... 
Etc.  

All changes for reviewer 1 are highlighted in yellow in the main text.

Reviewer 2

Comment 1: 
Response:

Comment 2:
Response:

Comment 3: 
Response:

All changes for reviewer 2 are highlighted in red in the main text.

Etc.

Such a document makes everything clear and will help the reviewers quickly assess the manuscript.

When uploading your revised main document files, we require you to also upload your statement of corrections. The statement of corrections should appear before your manuscript document.

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5. Submitting your manuscript

Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/timc to login and submit your article online.

Please make sure to upload a PDF version of your manuscript alongside any other manuscript files when you submit.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.  For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

5.1 ORCID

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

5.2 Information required for completing your submission

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted.If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

5.3 Permissions

Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.

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6. Special and Themed Issues

The Editors of the Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control welcome proposals for Special Issues. Special Issues are regular papers resulting from a one-off call for papers on a given topic.

Themed Issues are research topics identified by the Editors. When appropriate, Editors will select original manuscripts having a similar theme for publication in the same Issue; the theme of the Issue will be indicated on the front cover of the issue. For established Themes, submission of regular papers may be made directly to that Theme.

Prospective Special Issue guest editors should provide a short CV together with a proposal making the case for the proposed Special Issue. This proposal should be sent to timadmin@sagepub.co.uk

7. On acceptance and publication

7.1 Sage Production

ProductionYour Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. 

7.2 Online First publication

Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.

7.3 Access to your published article

Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.

7.4 Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

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8. Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control editorial office as follows:

timadmin@sagepub.co.uk

8.1 Appealing the publication decision

Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Manymanuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailedwritten description of the error they believe occurred.If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern, and information supporting the concern, at publication_ethics@sagepub.com