Submission and Editorial Policies

This page details the process of submission and subsequent review, as well as the pertinent journal publication policies. Please see the ACM journal guidelines or contact the EIC if you have any questions.

Note: It is anticipated that the journal will be moving to the Scholar One online system over the coming months. We are not ready to proceed on this route yet, so for the moment please use the email system described below.

Submission Guidelines

Each paper's content must be within the journal's scope. See the Subject Coverage page for further information. TOIT will not publish papers that have already appeared in conference proceedings, unless they have been extended or modified to add substantial "value" to previously published versions (see self prior publication policy below). Paper content must be substantially different from any work appearing in this or another journal.

A paper should be submitted to the EIC via email, with a cover letter describing the submission. At a minimum, this letter should provide:

  1. A author contact email address
  2. A list of all authors and their affiliations
  3. The paper abstract
  4. Relation of the submission to any prior publications
  5. Identify any potential conflicts of interest with the EIC of associate editors (see the editorial board for further details on potential conflicts).
  6. Optionally list reviewers with conflicts of interest with this work, i.e., those reviewers who should not be contacted.

The paper must be submitted in electronic form (PDF preferred), must not exceed 40 double-spaced pages (all inclusive), and must be in English and set in 10 or 11 point font.

Prior Publication Policy/Self-plagiarism

Manuscripts submitted to ACM Transactions on Internet Technology based on the author's own previously copyrighted work (e.g., appearing in a conference proceedings) must be disclosed at the time of submission and an explicit reference to the prior publication must be included in the submitted manuscript. The norm for ACM Journals and Transactions is that the submitted manuscript must contain at least 25% new content material (i.e., material that offers new insights, new results, etc.). For more details see the ACM policy on the subject.

Submission Process

The following describes the submission and subsequent review process for TOIT.

  1. The author submits his paper to the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) via email (mcdaniel@cse.psu.edu). An initial cursory review by the EIC will validate that the paper content is appropriate both in scope and quality. If the paper is deemed inappropriate, it will be rejected without review. Otherwise, the EIC will decide to process the paper directly or assign it to one of the associate editors (see the TOIT editorial board for a list of potential editors).

  2. The assigned editor performs an initial review of the submission, and may decide to desk reject it or put it through the review process. The grounds for a submission being desk rejected at this stage include, but are not limited to, simultaneous double submission, submission of substantially the same version of a previously published paper, the subject of the paper being outside the coverage scope of TOIT, the paper obviously lacking in breadth or substance or completeness.

  3. If the Editor decides to put the submission through the regular review process, he/she may retain reviewers for expert opinions and detailed useful comments for the authors. The number of reviewers may range between 0 and 5, with the Editor optionally serving as a reviewer. In all but the most unusual cases, 3 external reviewers will be contacted. The editor will work to limit each review cycle to an average of four months.

  4. The Editor makes an editorial decision on the submission, using reviewers' comments and recommendations as input (only as input). If the reviews are not clear or detailed enough, or the reviews diverge substantially, the Editor may communicate with the reviewers and seek additional verbal comments, and use them as additional input. The Editor may send the authors some or all of the reviewers' comments, and may withhold certain comments from the authors at his/her discretion. The editorial decision may be one of reject, request for a minor revision, request for a major revision, conditional accept, and unconditional accept. In all cases of acceptance, the editor will seek input from the Editor-in-Chief.

  5. If the author disagrees with the reject decision, he/she should communicate with the Editor and make his/her case and/or seek clarification. If the author wishes to appeal the decision, he/she should request the Editor to seek arbitration by the EIC. The EIC will review all materials and make a judgement on the merits of the appeal. The decision by the Editor-in-Chief is final.