Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering

About Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering — Journal Profile

The Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering — universally shortened to CJECE, and styled in its current IEEE form as the IEEE Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering — is the flagship technical journal of IEEE Canada. Sponsored by IEEE Canada, the Canadian arm of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, it has been publishing high-quality refereed scientific papers in all areas of electrical and computer engineering since 1976, and it is issued quarterly. Its print ISSN, stated on its own IEEE Canada pages, is 0840-8688, and the electronic ISSN recorded for the title in the bibliographic record for this profile is 2694-1783. Its complete archive is available through IEEE Xplore, which hosts all current and back issues, and the journal's own site states that it is indexed in ISI — the citation-index tradition now represented by Web of Science — and in IEEE Xplore.

CJECE occupies a particular place in engineering publishing. It is not a specialist transactions title devoted to one sub-field, and it is not a general-science magazine. It is a national flagship journal with an intentionally all-encompassing scope: its own description says that its publications cover all sub-disciplines of electrical and computer engineering, and that this nature allows it to support the wide variety of cutting-edge research and scientific possibilities in a fast-paced field. It complements international journals, in IEEE Canada's own words, and is of particular interest to anyone involved in research and development in electrical and computer engineering — with a Canadian centre of gravity, a bilingual English-and-French submission tradition, and a long-standing connection to the Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, whose distinguished papers have been published in extended form in its special issues.

Publisher, Sponsorship and History since 1976

The journal is sponsored by IEEE Canada — formally, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., Canada — which is IEEE Region 7. IEEE Canada presents the journal as one of the avenues by which it provides increased scientific and professional value for its members, and notes that, as a service to members, subsidies allow the subscription fee to be kept to a nominal value. The publications process is handled like that of other IEEE technical journals through IEEE's publishing operation in Piscataway, USA, in the description given by the journal's own informational pages, and the journal is administered through ScholarOne Manuscripts — Manuscript Central — for submission and follow-up, as it has been since 1 January 2012 according to its author guide.

The founding date given on the journal's own About page is unambiguous: it has been publishing since 1976. That date places its origins in the period when Canadian electrical engineering was organising itself nationally — the journal's earlier history runs through the Canadian electrical engineering journal tradition of the 1970s and 1980s, and international listings summarise the modern title's coverage as running from 1988 onward under the present name, with a restructuring around 2010 after which, in the words of an IEEE Canada call for associate editors, the administration implemented ambitious plans to raise the journal's impact and readership. Prospective readers should not be confused by those different dates: 1976 is the journal's own statement of when its publishing began, 1988 is the start of coverage under the modern title in several external listings, and 2013 marks the relaunch period of the restructured journal. The serial, its ISSN 0840-8688 and its IEEE Canada sponsorship are continuous through those presentational changes.

The stored directory record for this profile names the publisher as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, with the country given as Canada. That is consistent with the journal's own presentation: IEEE Canada is the sponsor and Canadian home, within the global IEEE publishing system. Where an external listing gives an address for the journal at Université Laval's electrical engineering department in Quebec City, that reflects an editorial-office address from a particular period, not a change of publisher; editorial offices of society journals move with their editors-in-chief, and authors should always use the current ScholarOne route rather than a postal address from a listing.

Scope: All Sub-Disciplines, Listed in Full

CJECE's official About page gives the most complete statement of its scope, and it is worth reproducing in substance because authors habitually underestimate its breadth. The general scope includes, but is not limited to: machine learning and neural networks; computational vision and linguistics; cognitive robotics; biosensors and bioelectronics; medical imaging; bioinformatics; operating systems; computer architecture; parallel processing; MIMO systems; channel coding; interference alignment; VLSI architectures; computer-aided circuit design; integrated circuits; distributed systems; high-performance networks; mobile computing; applied cryptography; information security and privacy; system modelling and design; adaptive control; antennas; radar sensing; optical communication systems; generation, transmission and distribution; smart grid; power electronics; microelectromechanical systems; microwave integrated circuits; photonics; human modelling; robotic vision and navigation; underwater robotics; software performance engineering; database systems; software evolution; audio signal processing; image processing; and signal processing for communications.

The journal's calls for papers organise the same territory under broader headings that authors may find easier to match against: artificial intelligence; bioengineering and biomedical engineering; computer systems; communication systems and wireless communication, including multihop wireless networks; circuits; computer networks; control systems; electromagnetics; energy and power systems; microelectronics; robotics; network security, trust and privacy; software engineering; signal processing; and image processing. The directory record's own topic summary — power system optimisation and stability, multilevel inverters and converters, advanced DC–DC converters, wireless communication networks, power quality and harmonics, and electric motor design and analysis among them — reflects one active slice of that scope, the power and energy slice, and should not be mistaken for the whole: a software-engineering, photonics or biomedical-imaging paper is as much in scope, on the journal's own list, as a power-electronics paper.

Two consequences follow for authors. First, scope alone rarely decides a CJECE submission; almost any genuine electrical or computer engineering topic fits somewhere on the list, so the deciding questions are quality, significance and clarity, exactly as the journal's acceptance criteria state. Second, breadth makes the choice of keywords, abstract framing and suggested expertise especially important at submission, because the editor-in-chief must route the paper to an associate editor whose field matches it — a power paper framed in generic computing language, or a machine-learning paper framed as pure theory with its engineering application hidden, risks slow or mismatched routing.

Article Types, Special Issues and the Conference Pathway

The journal accepts papers in two regular tracks, described on its informational pages as the original article track and the Review/Tutorial track. Its calls for papers state the same division as, first, papers presenting new and original results, techniques or concepts in a research area, and second, survey and tutorial-style papers providing a rigorous analysis of existing results in a research area. Its author guide adds that it publishes theoretical research presenting new techniques, concepts or analyses, and applied contributions reporting on experiences and experiments with actual systems — a pairing that captures the journal's dual allegiance to rigour and to practice. Papers published are typically three to ten pages long in final two-column form, in the description given in an IEEE Canada editorial call, and the journal also considers work on current electrical and computer engineering practice and on the history of electrical and computer engineering relevant to the Canadian scene, together with brief descriptions of new technical achievements and application articles on novel realisations or major system implementations.

Special issues form the third route into the journal. Every year, in the journal's own description, there are conference special issues publishing extended versions of distinguished papers from conferences such as the Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE). That pathway has strict logic: a conference paper is a stage in a work's evolution, and the journal version must be a fully developed contribution, fully referencing the earlier stage. The author guide spells out the underlying IEEE position — new ideas may be presented at a workshop, more developed work may go into a conference proceeding, and a fully developed contribution may take the form of a journal paper, but that evolutionary process must be fully referenced by the authors — and it requires authors whose submission contains previously published material to identify that prior publication specifically, link to it, and explain the differences between it and the present submission. Authors extending a CCECE paper should follow that instruction literally rather than treat the journal version as a fresh start.

Editorial Process, Peer Review and Acceptance Criteria

The process described in the journal's author guide is a conventional IEEE society-journal process with named stages. After the editor-in-chief determines that a paper is suitable for publication — that is, that it meets the journal's minimum standards for style and scope suitability — it is assigned to an associate editor, who assembles a group of reviewers selected for their expertise in that field. During review an author is often asked to expand, rewrite or explain further the content of the paper, and it is not uncommon for an author to be asked to provide another draft with the suggested changes for further review. The result of the process ends with acceptance, with minor or major revision, or rejection, and for both forms of acceptance the associate editor informs the authors of the required timeframe for revision.

On speed, the journal makes a specific claim on its informational pages: it aims for an exceptionally short submission-to-publication process for a journal of its kind, with first decisions provided to authors in about two months from the date the paper enters the full review process, made possible by a dedicated editorial team operating within ScholarOne. An IEEE Canada editorial call from the restructuring period states the same expectation as a first-decision turnaround of less than two months. Authors should read those figures as the journal's stated aim for papers that enter full review — a paper returned at the editor-in-chief's initial examination for style or scope reasons is on a different clock — and should not treat them as a guarantee for any individual manuscript. No current acceptance rate that could be verified from an official present-day source is stated in this profile; a striking acceptance-rate figure that circulated in an IEEE Canada call for associate editors in the restructuring period is not presented here as a current rate, because a decade-old recruitment document is not evidence of today's selectivity, and authors who need a rate for planning should ask the editorial office.

The principal criteria for acceptance are stated plainly in the author guide: significance of the topic or experimental question; conformity to rigorous standards of evidence and scholarship; and clarity of writing. Those three tests explain most editorial outcomes in a broad-scope journal. A technically correct paper on an insignificant question fails the first; a significant claim supported loosely fails the second; a sound paper that reviewers cannot follow fails the third, which is why the journal advises authors to write in plain and clear language.

Language, Submission Mechanics and Charges as Stated by the Journal

CJECE accepts submissions in both English and French, and its issues are published in both languages — a feature that reflects its Canadian national character and that distinguishes it from most IEEE journals. Manuscripts should be written in plain and clear language in whichever of the two languages is chosen. Since 1 January 2012 the journal has accepted papers only through the Manuscript Central website operated by ScholarOne; authors create an account, submit through that system, and use a simple login afterwards for follow-ups and paper status. Help for the system is available through ScholarOne's support pages, linked from the author guide.

The author guide historically published by IEEE Canada states charges that authors must verify as current before relying on them, and this profile reports them exactly in that spirit. That guide states that manuscript submission requires payment at two points: a deposit of CAD 100 on initial submission, which the author is notified is required only after a preliminary examination by the editor-in-chief confirms the paper meets minimum standards and is to be assigned to an associate editor; and, on acceptance, a page charge of CAD 100 per published page, payable once the publication editor has sent a draft camera-ready PDF following approval, with the deposit applied to the page charges if the paper is approved and returned if it is not. The guide states that CJECE accepts PayPal transactions for both payments through links on its site. Because that guide is a preserved page of some age, an author budgeting a submission today should confirm the present deposit, page-charge and payment arrangements with the current journal pages or the editorial office before submission, and should treat any different figure quoted by a third-party site as unverified.

Copyright follows IEEE policy: CJECE requires a completed and signed copy of the IEEE Copyright Form when a manuscript is uploaded for submission, consistent with IEEE policy, as the author guide states.

Plagiarism, Double Submission and Prior Publication

The journal's rules on originality are strict and are worth quoting in substance because they are the commonest cause of avoidable trouble. Papers submitted to CJECE are not to be submitted to any other journal or publisher until a final decision is made, and papers submitted elsewhere are not to be doubly submitted to CJECE; the guide calls double submission a serious departure from honesty under the IEEE plagiarism guidelines followed by the editorial board. Papers that have been previously published, fully or in part, in another journal or book will not be considered. No manuscript that has been published, including in electronic form, or is under consideration elsewhere may be submitted. Material previously published in any form must be specifically identified, with a link and an explanation of the differences, as described above. None of this prevents the normal workshop-to-conference-to-journal evolution of a piece of work; it prevents concealment of that evolution, which is a different thing.

Indexing, Metrics and Standing

The journal states that it is indexed in ISI and IEEE Xplore, and IEEE Xplore hosts its complete archive of current and back issues. That combination — the Web of Science tradition and the IEEE's own digital library — is the discoverability that matters for an engineering journal, because engineers search Xplore and evaluators search citation indexes. The directory record for this journal records an h-index of 41, with about fifteen hundred works indexed in the open scholarly graph and over ten thousand citations — figures that describe a mid-sized, long-lived national flagship rather than a high-volume international transactions title, and that should be read as such. This profile does not state a current Journal Impact Factor or quartile for the journal, because no such figure was verified from a current official Clarivate or Scopus source during its preparation; authors whose institutions require a specific current metric should read it from the present Journal Citation Reports or Scopus record for ISSN 0840-8688 on the day they need it.

Standing, for CJECE, has a national dimension that metrics miss. IEEE Canada describes it as the flagship IEEE technical journal of its area in Canada. For a Canadian research group, publication in CJECE places work in the national journal of record for the discipline, in front of the Canadian electrical and computer engineering community, in either official language, under IEEE's publishing standards — and for an international group working on a Canadian system, grid, climate or regulatory setting, or extending a CCECE paper, it is often the most precisely fitted venue rather than a second choice. The journal's restructuring-era ambition to raise its impact and readership, and its stated short first-decision aim, show a journal conscious of competing for good papers; its breadth, bilingualism and conference pathway show one competing on fit rather than on narrow prestige.

Who Should Submit, and Final Checks

CJECE is a strong candidate for: original research in any electrical or computer engineering sub-discipline on its long scope list, especially work with a Canadian setting, system or research community; rigorous survey and tutorial papers that organise a research area for practising engineers as well as researchers; applied contributions reporting experiments with actual systems; extended, fully developed versions of distinguished CCECE and similar conference papers, with the prior publication fully declared; and French-language engineering scholarship seeking an IEEE venue. It is a poor fit for work outside electrical and computer engineering, for manuscripts simultaneously submitted elsewhere, and for incremental republication of already published journal work.

Before submitting, an author should: confirm the manuscript is not under consideration anywhere else; prepare any prior-publication declaration with links and a differences statement; obtain the IEEE Copyright Form ready for upload; register in ScholarOne and submit only through that system; frame title, abstract and keywords so the paper routes to the right associate editor within the broad scope; write plainly and clearly, in English or French; and verify the current charges directly with the journal. Do those things, and the journal's own stated aim — a first decision in about two months from full review — becomes a realistic expectation rather than a hope.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the journal's ISSNs?

Print ISSN 0840-8688, stated on the journal's own IEEE Canada pages; electronic ISSN 2694-1783, as recorded for this title in the bibliographic record.

Who sponsors and publishes it?

It is sponsored by IEEE Canada, within the IEEE publishing system; the directory record names the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, in Canada, as publisher.

Since when has it published, and how often?

Since 1976, in its own statement, and it is issued quarterly.

What does it cover?

All sub-disciplines of electrical and computer engineering — the official scope list runs from machine learning, computer architecture and VLSI to antennas, radar, photonics, smart grid, power electronics, control, robotics, biomedical engineering and software engineering, among many more topics listed in full in this profile.

How does review work, and how fast?

The editor-in-chief screens for style and scope suitability, an associate editor then obtains expert reviews, and revision is commonly requested. The journal states an aim of first decisions in about two months from the date a paper enters full review.

Can I submit in French, and can I extend a conference paper?

Yes to both. Submissions are accepted in English and French, and extended versions of distinguished conference papers, including from CCECE, are published in special issues — provided the prior publication is identified, linked and its differences from the journal version explained, as IEEE policy and the author guide require.

Profile prepared for Journals World from IEEE Canada's official CJECE About, author-guide and call-for-papers pages, the journal's IEEE Xplore presence as described by IEEE Canada, and the bibliographic record for ISSN 0840-8688 / 2694-1783.