EDITORIAL
From the Editor-in-Chief
Kimon P. Valavanis1
Accepted: 5 July 2021
#The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021
Dear Colleagues,
It is a great pleasure to report to you that JINT follows the path of continuous improvement. The impact factor (IF) for 2020 is2.646–it was 2.259 in 2019. Moreover, the Elsevier CiteScore 2020 has also been published, and the CiteScore of JINT has increased from 4.90 in 2019 to5.5in 2020. This is indeed great news, and this progress is because of everybody’s contributions: from the contributing authors and reviewers to the handling editors and the Springer team. We will continue working harder to make JINT even better. We are confident that switching to CAP will help, long-term, as accepted papers will be published and will appear immediately.
On another issue, we would like to propose and recom- mend a‘structure’for each submitted paper, which will facil- itate better handling and possibly shorter review periods. Note that I personally have suggested similar things in the past, however, these suggestions, listed below, will be forwarded to the handling editors who will be asked to follow during the paper reviews.
As such, we strongly believe that in the Introduction Section of each paper, authors should make clear:
& What is the research problem addressed and solved - what
is being researched?
& Why is it important and what are the challenges?
& How is the problem solved?
& Novelty and originality
& Differences and advantages over existing similar ap-
proaches, methods, etc.
& (Short summary of) Contributions
Only relevant references must be included and cited in the paper, preferably numbered in the order they are mentioned in the paper.
The above list is obvious, however, paper reviews become much easier when the above information is presented in one section–it alerts the reviewers.
Last, but not least, as we approach the last part of 2021, we encourage you to submit your work in time, and we promise we will do our best to provide decisions within 10–12 weeks at most.
Enjoy the issue.
Kimon P. Valavanis.
Editor-in-Chief.
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdic- tional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
* Kimon P. Valavanis Kimon.Valavanis@du.edu
1 D. F. Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208, USA
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-021-01471-6
/ Published online: 31 August 2021 Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems (2021) 103: 20
