Post Acceptance Guide

Final Files

Should your article be accepted for publication, you will be asked to provide the following items:

  • Manuscript in MS Word or LaTex with all author biographies and photos included.
  • A PDF of the final manuscript in double column, single-spaced format named “FINAL Article.pdf”.
  • A Graphical Abstract (GA) which provides a concise, visual summary of the findings of your article. The GA should be a figure or image from the accepted article.  The ideal size for a GA is 660 x 295 (JPG format, < 45 KB). If you submitted a video with your article, the video will automatically become the GA and you will need to supply a still image to act as an overlay. The maximum file size for GA images is 45K. For an example of a GA, please click here.

    Note: If your article did not have any images when it was peer reviewed, then you may include a figure that summarizes the main contributions of your article.

  • Video(s) included in peer review (if any)
  • A Word file that indicates: a) the file name(s) of the GA and overlay (if applicable), b) a caption for the GA that should not exceed 60 words.
  • If the figures/photos are not embedded directly within the final article, please submit them as a separate PDF, Word, .eps, .ps, or .tiff files

Copyright

After you submit final files you will automatically be directed to the Electronic Copyright Form. Since IEEE Access is a fully open access journal, all articles will be published under either the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) or the Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, No Derivatives License (CCBY-NC-ND).

CC BY and CCBY-NC-ND allow authors to retain copyright of their article and permit a very broad range of reuse. Under CC BY, reuse for commercial purposes or to create derivative works is permitted, whereas under CCBY-NC-ND, reuse cannot be for commercial purposes or change the work in any way. Under the CC BY licenses, authors are responsible for protecting their content from possible abuses such as infringement and plagiarism.

Authors will be asked to select CC BY or CCBY-NC-ND prior to publication, so be sure to check your funder’s requirements, if applicable.

Article Processing Charge (APC)

Once the copyright information is completed, within a few business days, authors will receive an email from Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) to settle the article processing charge (APC) of $1,995 (plus applicable local taxes) by check, credit card, or wire transfer.

Corresponding authors who are IEEE members receive a 5% discount; IEEE members who are also IEEE Society members receive a 20% discount (the 5% IEEE member discount plus an additional 15% discount for Society membership). Please note that this discount does not apply to Student or Graduate Student Members.

Authors from low-income countries (as classified by the World Bank) are eligible for discounts on article processing charges. Discounts are based on the country of origin and are only applied if all authors are from a country eligible for a discount. For more information, please visit the Author Center by clicking here.  The IEEE APC waiver for low-income countries (as classified by the World Bank) is in place to assist authors from geographical locations whose economic situation creates a genuine hardship that would otherwise prohibit them from publishing. However, we expect that all sources of funding are considered; for example, if all co-authors are not from low-income countries, our expectation is that they will help cover the required APC.  Please click here to learn more about why IEEE and other publishers charge APCs for open access: https://ieeeaccess.ieee.org/guide-for-authors/post-acceptance-guide/

Additionally, you may want to check with your institution’s library to see if they have established a deposit account with IEEE to pay APCs on your behalf. You could also reach out to your co-authors to ask them to contribute to the article processing charges.

Please note that discounts cannot be combined.

Why does IEEE charge an APC for Open Access? What are these funds used for?

https://open.ieee.org/about/faqs/

There are a number of factors IEEE takes into account when developing pricing for article processing charges (APCs) or any of its publishing offerings. IEEE designs its open access publishing program to be sustainable, taking into account all of the costs related to publishing an article and maintaining a high-quality publishing program. This includes:

  • Editorial work, peer-review administration, management, and platform maintenance
  • Professional production of articles, copy editing, and formatting in PDF and other formats
  • Tools and administration for securing and protecting IP rights and plagiarism checks
  • Dissemination of papers in various venues for bibliometric monitoring and management
  • Technical infrastructure such as data storage and management, publishing platform development, data security, and maintenance
  • Institutional open access administration tools
  • Ensure proper indexing of articles and maximize discoverability
  • Marketing and communications to raise awareness of published content
  • Customer service for authors, readers, and institutions, and author support tools
  • Digital preservation services to ensure long-term archival access to scholarly literature
  • Governance to ensure enforcement of editorial policies, procedures, and quality controls
  • Various other publishing functions and infrastructure costs

Understanding the Publication Process

Once an author submits final files, the accepted version of the article will be published Early Access on IEEE Xplore within 2-3 days.  Once the article is in Early Access, it is considered published and cannot be withdrawn. 

Authors will receive page proofs from the production team within 7-10 business days after submitting final files. The corresponding author is responsible for making sure that all coauthors carefully review the page proofs and provide any necessary changes prior to providing approval. Once the proof is approved, the Early Access version of the article will be replaced by the final, approved version on IEEE Xplore.  Once an article is published on IEEE Xploreit cannot be edited or withdrawn.

Below is a list of items that will be edited on each accepted article prior to publication per IEEE style guidelines:

Article title
  • The article title will be shortened to fit the space of one column within the running head.
Byline
  • All affiliation superscripts will be listed in numerical order, with affiliation superscript “1” displaying the first author’s affiliation. The following affiliations will then appear numerically based on the order of the byline. Affiliation superscripts cannot be inversed, i.e, “2, 1.”
  • Financial support: all funding information will be edited to say: “This work was supported by….”
Abstracts
  • All variables will appear lightface italic; numbers and units will remain bold.
  • Abstracts will be a single paragraph.
  • Abstracts cannot contain numbered mathematical equations.
  • Numbered reference citations are also not allowed. An abstract needs to be effective when displayed in IEEE Xplore as well as through indexing services as a standalone product. If a citation is made, the sentence will be reworded to exclude citation numbers.
Formatting
  • All articles will be formatted into the standard ACCESS article template.
  • Visual layout will be checked and corrected.
  • We will ensure that all figures/tables cited in text have a corresponding figure and vice versa, all figures must be cited within the text.
Equations
  • Equations that are page-wide in the author’s manuscript will be retained as is.
  • If an equation is too large to fit in a single column, rather than making the text smaller, the equation will be floated on the page, and the text will be edited to reflect that the equation is now at the bottom or top of page.

    • If there are figures or tables on a page, then the equation, no matter where cited, will appear at the bottom of the page.
Biographies
  • Author’s biographies are included only if provided. If an author’s biography is not provided, we will not query for it or include it.
  • Biographies are reordered in the following manner:

    • Education;
    • Current and previous affiliation details;
    • Authorship;
    • Research interests;
    • Rewards and honorary memberships;
    • IEEE/other publication Editorship, etc.

      • Inappropriate content/hobbies will be removed.
  • Membership progression will be retained if provided, and validated. If the provided membership is not validated based on IEEE membership number/email, the membership will be removed.
  • Membership years will not be included, only most recent membership grade (for example, John Smith, Senior Member, IEEE).
  • The biographies will be edited for grammar, chronology, and spelling errors.
  • Titles of publications within the text will be formatted as follows:

    • The title of IEEE transactions, journals, and letters will be cap/small cap.
    • The title of IEEE magazines will be made italics (includes IEEE Spectrum)
    • All non-IEEE titles will be italics.
  • Author photos

    • Photos will only be inserted when provided, we will NOT query or insert photo placeholders.
    • Author photos, if provided in color, will retain color in online.