When preparing a manuscript for submission to the IEEE Transactions for Education, authors with previously published conference papers in the same subject area may want to know the extent to which the manuscript must be different from their conference papers, and the extent to which text from the conference papers can be reused. Guidelines for acceptable conference paper use are addressed in this document.
Background
Existing IEEE policies provide a framework for those adopted by the IEEE Transactions on Education. Relevant portions of the IEEE Publication Services and Products Board Operations Manual can be found at the Author Information Page on Originality of Content web page: https://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/author_originality.html
To be published in the IEEE Transactions on Education, a manuscript must offer a contribution not already made in the published literature. Conference papers are considered to be published, archival literature, as conference proceedings are often published, archived, indexed, and available through the World Wide Web. When considering the originality of a manuscript’s contribution, conference literature must be considered.
Content overlap between any manuscript submitted to an IEEE publication and published documents is analyzed through CrossCheck http://www.ithenticate.com/products/crosscheck. The Editorial Administrator for the IEEE Transactions on Education flags any manuscript with a content overlap greater than 30%. These manuscripts are reviewed in detail by the Editor‐in‐Chief to understand the nature and extent of content overlap. Further, the entire Originality Report is made available to the authors for their review. If the review process determines that content overlap is excessive, the manuscript may be rejected.
Policy – IEEE Transactions on Education
Policy Statement: Intended contributions of a manuscript submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Education are expected to differ substantively from contributions of published conference papers on a similar subject; thus, authors are required to cite their published work and identify the new contribution of the manuscript.
Examples of reuse are given here to provide concrete illustrations of the guideline, but these should not be considered the only possible illustrations. Examples of substantively different contributions include, but are not limited to, new research questions, new instructional design, new findings, new assessment data, and different analyses of data. It would not, however, be considered a substantive difference if an author were to add further descriptive detail than that already available in a conference paper for a course, curriculum, laboratory experiment, or other instructional strategies.
More specifically, consider a paper, published in conference proceedings, that contains assessment results from using a new type of project in a digital design course. In the conference paper, students self‐reported how much they learned on a Likert scale for several topical areas of the course. In order to publish this work in the IEEE Transactions on Education, the following are examples of substantive contributions that would require peer review to decide if the contributions of the manuscript were substantively different than the conference paper:
- (i) The course is taught over additional years (compared to the data used in the conference paper) and student performance on exams is compared to their self‐ratings of learning of concepts.
- (ii) The course is taught again and the project is implemented earlier in the semester and spread out in pieces over time. Assessment results are compared for each type of implementation.
Example: Authors of best papers from any IEEE sponsored and technically co‐sponsored conferences who consider expanding their work for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Education should expect their manuscripts to be reviewed according to the guidelines in this policy document. Authors who have received best paper awards should not expect that embedding extensive previously published work (e.g., entire manuscript sections, multiple paragraphs, tables, figures) in a manuscript together with minimal new material will constitute a publishable contribution.