ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN): A Complete Research Guide

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (abbreviated TOSN, ISO abbreviation ACM Trans. Sens. Netw.) is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in the United States. It is the central archival venue of ACM's publication portfolio for the interdisciplinary field of sensor networks, spanning signal processing, networking and protocols, embedded systems, information management, and distributed algorithms.

Founded in 2005, TOSN has published continuously for two decades and is currently in its third decade of publication. The journal appears quarterly — four issues per year — in both print (ISSN 1550-4859) and electronic (eISSN 1550-4867) editions. It is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science) and Scopus, and its latest Journal Impact Factor is 4.7 (Journal Citation Reports). In Scopus-based rankings it holds Q1 status in Computer Networks and Communications.

Journal at a Glance

Overview

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks was launched in 2005 as ACM's dedicated journal for research and application of distributed, wireless or wireline sensor and actuator networks. From its first volume it was positioned as the central, archival venue for the interdisciplinary sensor network research community — a field that draws together researchers from signal processing, computer networking and protocols, embedded and cyber-physical systems, information management, and distributed algorithms.

Unlike conference proceedings, which capture snapshots of fast-moving work, TOSN publishes full archival articles: extended, rigorously peer-reviewed papers that document complete research contributions, system designs, and experimental campaigns. Its coverage history in Scopus runs continuously from 2005 to the present, and library records (for example, the Electronic Journals Library at the University of Regensburg) confirm holdings from Volume 1 (2005) onward.

Over two decades, the journal's topical center of gravity has evolved alongside the field itself. Early volumes concentrated on wireless sensor network fundamentals — routing, duty cycling, localization, and in-network processing. Later volumes reflect the field's expansion into the Internet of Things, edge and cloud integration, wireless sensing (Wi-Fi, mmWave), energy harvesting, machine-learning-driven sensor analytics, and security and privacy for cyber-physical systems. Recent volumes (e.g., Volume 20, 2024) feature work on mmWave-based signature verification, Wi-Fi sensing for human identification and activity recognition, deep-reinforcement-learning approaches to irrigation and wireless charging, and LoRa networking — evidence of the journal's continued relevance to contemporary computing research.

Aims and Scope

According to ACM's official call-for-papers documentation for the journal, TOSN covers research contributions that introduce new concepts, techniques, analyses, or architectures, as well as applied contributions that report on the development of new tools and systems or on experiences and experiments with high-impact, innovative applications. The journal pays special attention to contributions on systemic approaches to sensor networks — work that treats the network as an integrated system rather than isolated components.

Areas covered by the journal include, but are not limited to:

• Applications of sensor and actuator networks
• Mobile or actuator systems
• Data storage and query processing
• Distributed and collaborative signal processing
• Modeling of systems and physical environments
• Energy and resource management
• Fault tolerance and diagnostics
• Network protocols, coverage, connectivity, and longevity
• Foundations of sensor networks
• Information theory, coding and compression
• Programming models and languages
• In-network processing and aggregation
• Sensor fusion and distributed inference
• Learning of models from data
• Security, privacy, and data integrity
• Location, time and other infrastructure establishment services
• Scheduling, sensor tasking and control
• Simulation tools and environments
• Low-power hardware design
• System architectures and operating systems

In practice, recent published articles show the scope extending into wireless and battery-free sensing, Internet-of-Things systems, edge intelligence, industrial wireless sensor-actuator networks, smart agriculture and irrigation, indoor localization, and privacy-preserving sensing — reflecting the journal's stated openness to high-impact, innovative applications.

Editorial Leadership

The Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks is Prof. Yunhao Liu of Tsinghua University, China. Prof. Liu is a prominent figure in the sensor networks and Internet of Things research community: he is the Dean of the Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) at Tsinghua University, an ACM Fellow (2015, for contributions to sensor networks) and an IEEE Fellow (2015, for contributions to wireless sensor networks and systems). He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. from Michigan State University and his B.S. from Tsinghua University, and is known for landmark systems including LANDMARC, GreenOrbs, Tagoram, and CitySee.

The ACM Digital Library's editorial board page for TOSN also lists an Information Co-Director role held by Zhichao Cao of Michigan State University, United States.

Note: The full associate-editor and editorial-board roster changes over time and was not independently re-verified at the time of writing; prospective authors should consult the current editorial board listing on the ACM Digital Library journal page before submitting.

Peer Review Process

Like other ACM Transactions journals, TOSN operates a rigorous peer-review process. Manuscripts submitted to the journal are assigned to members of the editorial board and evaluated by expert reviewers in the relevant subfield. Submissions are expected to present original research that has not been published elsewhere and is not under concurrent review at another venue.

ACM's publication policies require authors to follow ethical standards including proper attribution of prior work, disclosure of conflicts of interest, and compliance with ACM's plagiarism policy. Authors retain defined rights over their work under ACM's author-rights framework, which permits posting of author versions on personal or employer servers and the reuse of figures in subsequent publications, provided the ACM definitive version is appropriately acknowledged and linked.

Note: No official, currently published figures for TOSN's acceptance rate, average time to first decision, or average time to acceptance could be verified from official sources at the time of writing; these fields are therefore left blank rather than estimated.

Indexing and Abstracting

ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks is indexed and abstracted in the following services, as reported by journal-metric sources:

• Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) — Web of Science (Clarivate). Inclusion in SCIE is what makes the journal eligible for a Journal Impact Factor in the Journal Citation Reports.
• Scopus (Elsevier) — continuous coverage from 2005 to the present.
• dblp — the computer science bibliography indexes TOSN volumes in full (e.g., Volumes 10 and 20 are listed with complete tables of contents).
• Electronic Journals Library (EZB), University of Regensburg — records full-text holdings from Volume 1 (2005).
• University and national library catalogs worldwide (e.g., IIT Kanpur's P K Kelkar Library lists electronic access from 2005 to the present).

The journal's articles carry DOIs and are archived in the ACM Digital Library, the definitive version of record for all ACM publications.

Impact Metrics (with source attribution)

Citation metrics for TOSN, as reported by independent journal-metric sources based on Web of Science and Scopus data:

Metric aggregator pages note that Scopus-derived "impact scores" (e.g., 4.94 on Resurchify, computed as cites per document over two years from Scopus data) can differ slightly from the official Clarivate Journal Impact Factor; readers should consult the Web of Science / Journal Citation Reports for the authoritative impact factor figure.

Publication Ethics

As an ACM journal, TOSN is governed by ACM's publication policies and code of ethics. Key expectations placed on authors include:

• Originality: submitted work must be original and not previously published in substantially the same form.
• Plagiarism: ACM enforces a strict policy against plagiarism; manuscripts are expected to properly cite and attribute all prior work.
• Authorship: all listed authors are expected to have made substantive contributions to the work.
• Conflicts of interest: authors and reviewers are expected to disclose conflicts that could compromise objective evaluation.
• Data and reproducibility: in line with the journal's applied-systems orientation, authors are encouraged to document experimental setups and, where appropriate, share artifacts that allow results to be reproduced.

The definitive, current text of ACM's publication policies is maintained by ACM itself; authors should review the official ACM policy pages before submitting.

Open Access Policy

ACM — the publisher of TOSN — has been transitioning its entire publication portfolio to an open-access model. Under the ACM Open program, institutions subscribe through "read and publish" agreements that cover both access to the ACM Digital Library and open-access publishing for their affiliated corresponding authors with no author-facing charges. Reporting on ACM's transition notes that from January 1, 2026, new ACM publications in the Digital Library became freely readable under Creative Commons licenses, with authors able to choose between CC-BY and CC-BY-NC-ND options.

Practical implications for TOSN authors:

• Authors at institutions participating in ACM Open agreements can typically publish open access in TOSN at no cost to themselves, with the institution's agreement covering the charges.
• ACM's author-rights framework allows authors to post author versions of their work on personal or institutional servers and in public repositories before and after review.
• Bibliographic metadata (titles, abstracts, keywords) for ACM works is openly available.

Note: No TOSN-specific article processing charge (APC) figure was published on an official ACM page that could be verified at the time of writing; because ACM's charges depend on institutional agreements and the evolving open-access model, no APC number is stated here.

Submission Guidelines

Researchers wishing to submit to ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks should note the following, drawn from ACM's official journal documentation and standard ACM practice:

• Venue and format: TOSN publishes full-length archival research articles and applied contributions (new tools, systems, experiments, and high-impact applications). The journal is published quarterly.
• Submission system: manuscripts are handled through ACM's online manuscript submission system; the current submission link is listed on the journal's ACM Digital Library page.
• Manuscript preparation: ACM journals use the ACM article template (acmart); authors should format manuscripts accordingly and follow the journal's instructions regarding length, structure, and supplementary materials.
• Scope fit: because TOSN emphasizes systemic approaches to sensor networks, authors should frame contributions in terms of the complete system — architecture, protocols, algorithms, and evaluation — rather than isolated components.
• Prior publication: extended versions of previously published conference papers are generally expected to contain substantial new material (a standard ACM expectation is on the order of at least 25–30% new content, per ACM's prior-publication policies); authors should verify the current policy text.

Prospective authors should always consult the live journal page on the ACM Digital Library for the current instructions to authors, as submission procedures and formatting requirements are updated periodically.

History and Milestones

• 2005 — ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks launches with Volume 1, establishing ACM's dedicated archival journal for the sensor networks community.
• 2005–present — Continuous quarterly publication; Scopus coverage runs uninterrupted from 2005 through the current year.
• 2014 — Volume 10 published; the journal's first decade closes with a mature archival record indexed in full by dblp.
• 2024 — Volume 20 published, featuring contemporary work on mmWave sensing, Wi-Fi-based human identification and activity recognition, LoRa networking, and deep-reinforcement-learning applications in wireless rechargeable sensor networks and smart irrigation.
• Impact trajectory — The Journal Impact Factor rose from the ~1.4 range in the early 2010s to 2.5+ by 2018–2021, then to 3.9 (2023), 4.7 (2024), and 4.7 (2025, latest JCR release), reflecting the journal's growing citation influence.
• 2026 — ACM completes its transition to a fully open-access publishing model, making new TOSN articles freely readable under Creative Commons licenses.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who publishes ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks?
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), headquartered in New York, USA.

What are the ISSNs of the journal?
Print ISSN 1550-4859 and electronic ISSN 1550-4867.

How often is TOSN published?
Quarterly — four issues per year.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief?
Prof. Yunhao Liu of Tsinghua University, China (ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow).

What is the impact factor of ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks?
4.7, per the latest Journal Citation Reports release (June 2026), as reported by journal-metric trackers. Earlier values include 4.7 (2024), 3.9 (2023), and 4.1 (2022).

Is the journal indexed in Web of Science and Scopus?
Yes — it is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science) and in Scopus (coverage from 2005 to present). It holds Q1 status in Scopus's Computer Networks and Communications category and is ranked Class B in the China Computer Federation catalogue.

Is TOSN open access?
ACM has moved its journals to an open-access model (from January 2026, new articles are freely readable under Creative Commons licenses), and authors at institutions with ACM Open agreements can publish open access without author-facing charges. Authors should confirm current terms on ACM's official pages.

Representative Research Themes

The journal's published record illustrates the breadth of its remit. Foundational work has addressed duty-cycling and energy fairness in asynchronous sensor networks, link-quality prediction from measured link features, radio diversity for reliable communication, and fault detection in the presence of data errors. Systems-oriented contributions include occupancy modeling for building energy management, cooperative MIMO frameworks, and schedules for time-critical data delivery in industrial settings such as WirelessHART networks. More recent volumes showcase the field's convergence with sensing and learning: mmWave radar fused with vision for target liveness detection in autonomous vehicles, Wi-Fi-based walking-velocity estimation and respiration detection, vibration-based authentication for smart headsets, semi-supervised cross-modal human activity recognition, meta-learning for runtime adaptation in industrial wireless sensor-actuator networks, and deep reinforcement learning applied to wireless charging and field irrigation. This trajectory — from protocol and energy fundamentals to AI-driven, application-embedded sensing — is precisely the systemic, interdisciplinary coverage the journal was founded to provide.

Sources and Further Reading

• ACM Digital Library — ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks journal and editorial board pages (dl.acm.org)
• ACM official call-for-papers document for TOSN (editor-in-chief, aims and scope, ISSNs, frequency)
• Yunhao Liu — Wikipedia biography (editor-in-chief role, fellowships, affiliations)
• BioxBio — ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks impact factor history
• Resurchify — TOSN metrics page (SJR, h-index, impact score, coverage history)
• S-Logix — TOSN journal page (CiteScore, SNIP, SJR, indexing)
• Journalsearches.com — TOSN ranking page (impact factor 4.7, SJR, quartile)
• dblp — ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks volumes 10 and 20
• Electronic Journals Library (EZB), University of Regensburg — TOSN holdings from Volume 1 (2005)
• IIT Kanpur P K Kelkar Library — e-journal listing (access from 2005 to present)
• Editage — TOSN journal metrics page (publishing since 2005, quarterly, ISSNs)
• WebProNews / I-Programmer — reporting on ACM's transition to a fully open-access publishing model
• University of Oldenburg — ACM Open read-and-publish agreement information
• Penn State University Libraries — ACM agreement coverage for authors
• Myhuiban — TOSN journal page (CCF Class B ranking)