International Journal of Robotics Research

Overview: The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)

The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) — ISSN 0278-3649 (print), 1741-3176 (online) — is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by SAGE Publications that covers the full spectrum of robotics research, from sensors and sensory interpretation to kinematics and motion planning. According to its official SAGE overview, it was the first scholarly publication on robotics research and has been described by SAGE as "a leading peer-reviewed journal in its field for more than two decades." The journal was established in 1982 and has been published continuously since.

The journal's official journal page is hosted at journals.sagepub.com/home/ijr, where current issues, most-read and most-cited articles, and calls for special issues are maintained. Its editorial scope spans applied mathematics, artificial intelligence, computer science, psychological, cognitive and behavioural sciences, and electrical and mechanical engineering — making it one of the few robotics journals that deliberately embraces both the theoretical and the experimental sides of the discipline.

IJRR publishes original research articles, review articles, special issues, peer-reviewed data papers, and multimedia extensions (mostly video, code, or data) that illustrate and demonstrate reported results. Its stated publication philosophy is distinctive: IJRR "only publishes work of archival value, which is produced to advance science and technology in this field, and stays valuable in time. To do so the work must be original, solid, and useful for others to build upon." The journal values "clarity, reproducibility, and conceptual depth over trends or short-term novelty" and seeks to capture "ideas that last — the principles that make robotics a mature scientific discipline."

Peer review at IJRR is operated exclusively by the research community itself — "with no professional editor external to the research community judging on scientific matters." Every submitted manuscript is reviewed by at least two expert reviewers of appropriate standing in the field, in a single-blind scheme (reviewer names are concealed from the submitting authors). The journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Fast Facts

Sources: official SAGE journal overview and submission guidelines (accessed 2026-10-10); frequency and indexing per Wikipedia/ABCD Index. See the metrics section below for impact-factor figures, which vary by reporting source.

History of the Journal

The International Journal of Robotics Research was established in 1982, at a time when robotics was not yet widely regarded as a standalone scientific discipline. It was the first scholarly journal devoted entirely to robotics research, giving the emerging field a dedicated archival venue for the first time.

The early 1980s were a formative period for robotics as an academic discipline. At MIT, the early-1980s "Year of the Robot" program sought to accelerate serious robotics research, and the first high-level academic conferences and journals of the field were launched in this window. IJRR's founding editorial team built the journal around a rigorous peer-review culture drawn from the research community itself — a principle that remains in the journal's official guidelines today: "IJRR exclusively operates on the basis of peer reviews, with no professional editor external to the research community judging on scientific matters."

From its founding, the journal positioned itself as multidisciplinary. Its scope statement has long covered "more than just narrow technical advances," explicitly naming applied mathematics, artificial intelligence, computer science, psychological, cognitive and behavioural sciences, and electrical and mechanical engineering. This breadth reflected the reality of robotics as an interdisciplinary field, and it is one reason the journal has remained relevant across decades of technological change — from industrial manipulators and kinematics in the 1980s, to mobile robotics and SLAM in the 2000s, to learning-based control and human-robot interaction in the 2010s and 2020s.

SAGE's official overview notes that the journal has been "consistently ranked in top in its category of the Thomson Scientific JCR" — a standing the journal has held for much of its history. In recent years, IJRR has adapted its article mix to the changing research landscape: it now publishes peer-reviewed data papers — high-quality datasets accompanied by adequate text material and demonstrated utility on existing, publicly available algorithms — and welcomes multimedia extensions (video or data) as integral parts of articles. These moves reflect the field's growing emphasis on reproducibility, benchmark datasets, and experimental demonstration.

Leadership of the journal has passed through generations of robotics researchers. The current Editor-in-Chief, Antonio Bicchi (University of Pisa, Italy, and a senior researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), leads the journal together with a global team of senior and associate editors drawn from institutions across North America, Europe, and Asia. The journal also runs an IJRR Paper of the Season recognition: papers published during each quarter are evaluated through a process led by the Editor-in-Chief together with the Senior Editors, with winners and honorable mentions highlighted to the community.

Aims and Scope

Per its official SAGE overview, IJRR offers "incisive and thought-provoking original research papers and articles, perceptive reviews, and lively editorials on ground-breaking trends issues, technical developments, and theories in robotics by the outstanding scholars and practitioners in the field." The journal's coverage spans:

• Modeling, dynamics, and kinematics — including robot design, actuation, and motion planning.
• Perception and sensing — sensors and sensory interpretation, vision, and multi-sensor calibration.
• Control and physical interaction — control theory, compliant and soft robots, manipulation, and human-robot physical interaction.
• Learning and autonomy — robot learning, planning under uncertainty, mapping, localization, and navigation.
• Computation and AI — algorithms, artificial intelligence, and software architectures for robotic systems.
• Interdisciplinary foundations — applied mathematics, cognitive and behavioural sciences, psychology, and biomechanics as they relate to robotics.

The journal's quality bar is explicitly stated: manuscripts "must be original, solid, and useful for others to build upon." Submissions that fall outside the journal's scope or are not of sufficient quality are not sent for review — the journal advises authors to read the official Aims and Scope before submitting.

IJRR accepts manuscripts containing material previously published in conference proceedings, provided the journal submission is a substantial extension — new research results, methodology, analysis, conclusions, and/or implications — beyond the conference version. "The mere inclusion of more details, experiments, or discussion is typically considered not substantial," and the final decision rests with the Editorial Board. Authors must disclose details of previous submissions (including DOI and licensing terms) in a Novelty Statement, explicitly discuss the differences from the conference version(s) in the manuscript, cite the conference reference(s), and upload the conference version(s) as accompanying material.

The journal also publishes review articles on selected topics of broad interest (normally solicited by the Editorial Board; unsolicited proposals should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief for pre-evaluation), special issues on research areas of high interest (a special issue proceeds to production only if at least five manuscripts are finally accepted), and data papers in which the utility of a dataset must be demonstrated on an existing, publicly available algorithm or technique.

Editorial Board

The board below was transcribed from the official SAGE editorial board page (journals.sagepub.com/editorial-board/IJR) on 2026-10-10. Editorial boards change over time; readers should verify current membership on the official page.

Editor-in-Chief

• Antonio Bicchi — University of Pisa, Italy

Senior Editors

• Arash Ajoudani — Italian Institute of Technology, Italy
• Ron Alterovitz — University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
• José-Luis Blanco Claraco — Universidad de Almería, Spain
• Luca Carlone — Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
• Greg Chirikjian — National University of Singapore, Singapore
• Margarita Chli — ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Matei Ciocarlie — Columbia University, USA
• Mark Cutkosky — Stanford University, USA
• Elena De Momi — Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Cosimo Della Santina — TU Delft, Netherlands
• James Forbes — McGill University, Canada
• Oliver Kroemer — Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Dongjun Lee — Seoul National University, Korea
• Max Likhachev — Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Huaping Liu — Tsinghua University, China
• Jun Morimoto — Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), Japan
• Trishanta Nanayakkara — Imperial College London, UK
• Anibal Ollero — University of Sevilla, Spain
• Christian Ott — TU Wien, Austria
• Ioannis Poulakakis — University of Delaware, USA
• Carla Seatzu — University of Cagliari, Italy
• Adriana Tapus — ENSTA Paris, France
• Li Wen — Beihang University, Beijing, China

Editorial Advisory / Senior Board (selection)

• Jake J. Abbott — University of Utah, USA
• Alin Albu-Schäffer — DLR, Germany
• Ruzena Bajcsy — University of Pennsylvania, USA
• Tim Barfoot — University of Toronto, Canada
• Aude Billard — EPFL, Switzerland
• Oliver Brock — Technical University Berlin, Germany
• Henrik Christensen — UC San Diego, USA
• Peter Corke — Queensland University of Technology, Australia
• Alessandro De Luca — Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
• Dieter Fox — University of Washington / NVIDIA, USA
• Ken Goldberg — UC Berkeley, USA
• Robert Howe — Harvard University, USA
• David Hsu — National University of Singapore, Singapore
• Seth Hutchinson — Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
• Lydia Kavraki — Rice University, USA
• Oussama Khatib — Stanford University, USA
• Vijay Kumar — University of Pennsylvania, USA
• Cecilia Laschi — National University of Singapore, Singapore
• Matt Mason — Carnegie Mellon University, USA
• Yoshihiko Nakamura — The University of Tokyo, Japan
• Paul Newman — University of Oxford, UK
• Allison Okamura — Stanford University, USA
• Frank Chongwoo Park — Seoul National University, Korea
• Nicholas Roy — Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
• Daniela Rus — Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
• Tim Salcudean — University of British Columbia, Canada
• Giulio Sandini — Italian Institute of Technology, Italy
• Davide Scaramuzza — University of Zurich, Switzerland
• Siddhartha Srinivasa — University of Washington, USA
• Russell H. Taylor — Johns Hopkins University, USA
• Dawn Tilbury — University of Michigan, USA
• Robert J. Webster III — Vanderbilt University, USA

The board additionally includes a large team of Associate Editors (more than 100 researchers from universities, institutes, and companies across the USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia, including David Abbink, Pulkit Agrawal, Kostas Alexis, Jessica Burgner-Kahrs, Roberto Calandra, Chuchu Fan, Jeffrey Ichnowski, Edward Johns, Shuguang Li, Anirudha Majumdar, Shuran Song, Danfei Xu, Heng Yang, Andrea Zanchettin, and many others) — see the full list on the official SAGE editorial board page.

Metrics and Rankings

Metric note: Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is subscription-gated, and SAGE's own overview page does not display a current impact factor, so the figures below come from third-party trackers and differ by methodology. We report each figure with its source rather than presenting a single blended number.

• Journal Impact Factor: SciJournal.org (using JCR data) lists a 2025 Impact Factor of 7.450 and a 2024 Impact Factor of 7.460; jrank.net likewise lists a 2024 JIF of 7.50. OOIR, citing Web of Science 2024 data with rounded values, lists approximately 5.0, ranking the journal #5 of 26 (Q1) in the Robotics category. These figures reflect different computation windows and rounding; treat the JCR-derived ~7.4–7.5 range as the official Impact Factor family of figures.
• 5-year Impact Factor: 9.70 (jrank.net, JCR-based, accessed 2026-10-10).
• SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 2.022 (2025, per SciJournal.org/SCImago).
• H-index: 209 (per SciJournal.org/SCImago, 2025).
• Category standing: SAGE's official overview states the journal has been "consistently ranked in top in its category of the Thomson Scientific JCR"; OOIR's 2024 ranking places it Q1 in Robotics.
• Journal Citation Indicator (JCI): 1.89 (jrank.net).
• Cited half-life: 10.20 years (jrank.net) — consistent with the journal's emphasis on archival, long-lived contributions.
• Acceptance rate: Not published. IJRR and SAGE do not publish an official acceptance rate for this journal. Any acceptance-rate figure found elsewhere should be treated as unverified.

Historical context: older sources (e.g., Wikipedia's 2013 JCR citation) list a 2013 Impact Factor of 2.503, which ranked the journal 3rd of 21 journals in the "Robotics" category at that time. The trend since then has been strongly upward (Resurchify's year-by-year series: 6.52 in 2016, 6.71 in 2017, 7.54 in 2018, 7.97 in 2019, 7.34 in 2020, 8.15 in 2021, 10.56 in 2022, 9.24 in 2023, 7.50 in 2024, 7.45 in 2025).

Submission Information and Peer Review

Manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system, linked from the official journal page (journals.sagepub.com/home/ijr) and the SAGE submission guidelines page. Key facts from the official guidelines:

• No submission or publication fees. "There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal." Color figures appear in color in the online version at no cost.
• Optional open access. Optional open-access publishing is available for a fee via the Sage Choice program, and Open Access agreements may allow authors to publish open access discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement between their institution and SAGE. Eligibility is determined by the corresponding author's affiliation at acceptance.
• Preprints accepted. The journal's access policy states it accepts preprints.
• No page limit. "There is no page limit for IJRR submissions. The rule is however that a paper should be as long as necessary, and no longer: conciseness is highly valued." The normal length is 12 pages in the final two-column format; substantially shorter or longer papers may be considered only if of sufficient merit.
• Formats. The preferred manuscript format is LaTeX (SAGE provides a LaTeX template, also available on Overleaf); Microsoft Word is also acceptable.
• Abstract and keywords. A structured abstract of 250 words and a minimum of 3–6 specific keywords are required. Plain-language summaries (~300 words plus a ~50-word plain-language title) are an optional addition, published open access below the scientific abstract.
• Review model. Single-blind (reviewer identities concealed from authors); at least two expert reviewers per manuscript; all decisions made by the editorial board drawn from the robotics research community. Reviews of prior submissions must be disclosed if the manuscript was previously rejected elsewhere.
• Novelty and ethics. Submissions must be original work, with all permissions secured. Parallel submission to another archival journal is not acceptable and leads to editorial rejection before review. Previously published conference material must be disclosed with a Novelty Statement and a substantial extension of the work.
• Reporting standards. Manuscripts should follow relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines where applicable (with checklists uploaded at submission); animal research must adhere to the ARRIVE guidelines.

Article types accepted

1. Original Articles — of archival value: original, solid, and useful for others to build upon.
2. Review Articles — on selected topics of broad interest; normally solicited; unsolicited proposals go to the Editor-in-Chief first with topic, author qualifications, timing motivation, and a survey of existing reviews.
3. Special Issues — guest-edited collections on high-interest areas; proposals require a topic, qualified guest editors, timing motivation, and at least six committed contributing authors; the issue is produced only if at least five manuscripts are accepted.
4. Data Papers — high-quality peer-reviewed datasets with accompanying manuscript text and demonstrated utility on an existing, publicly available algorithm; a data paper should not simultaneously present a new algorithm.
5. Multimedia extensions — video, code, or data accompanying an article to illustrate and demonstrate results.

Notable Papers and Research Topics

The journal's SAGE homepage maintains live "most cited" and "most read" rankings, updated weekly from CrossRef data. Among the works currently listed among the journal's most-cited articles on its official homepage are contributions by an OpenAI-led team (Marcin Andrychowicz et al.) on dexterous robotic manipulation, by Andreas Geiger, Philip Lenz, Christoph Stiller, and Raquel Urtasun on vision-based robotics benchmarks, and by Manuel G. Catalano et al. on the Pisa/IIT SoftHand — reflecting the journal's long-standing strength in manipulation, perception, and robot design. (Exact citation counts fluctuate weekly on the official page.)

Representative research themes that have defined IJRR over its history include:

• Kinematics, dynamics, and motion planning — foundational theory for robot arms, mobile robots, and humanoids.
• SLAM and mapping — simultaneous localization and mapping, occupancy-grid mapping, and memory-efficient mapping methods (the journal's recent Paper of the Season honorable mentions include work on memory-efficient boundary maps for large-scale occupancy grid mapping).
• Manipulation and grasping — dexterous hands, soft robotics, and contact-rich manipulation, including the widely cited work on the Pisa/IIT SoftHand and learning-based in-hand manipulation.
• Perception and calibration — multi-sensor calibration with identifiability guarantees, and vision benchmarks that shaped autonomous driving research.
• Human-robot interaction and physical human-robot collaboration — control, safety, and cognitive aspects of robots working with people.
• Learning and autonomy — reinforcement learning for robots, planning under uncertainty, and field robotics.
• Benchmark datasets and reproducible research — peer-reviewed data papers with demonstrated utility on existing algorithms.

IJRR also runs special issues on high-interest research areas, proposed by guest editors and overseen by a Senior Editor, and a quarterly Paper of the Season award process led by the Editor-in-Chief with the Senior Editors — both of which are tracked on the journal's official pages and its LinkedIn presence.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The International Journal of Robotics Research?

It is a peer-reviewed journal published by SAGE Publications covering the full field of robotics — from sensors and perception to kinematics, motion planning, control, learning, and human-robot interaction. Established in 1982, it was the first scholarly publication devoted to robotics research.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief of IJRR?

Antonio Bicchi, a professor at the University of Pisa, Italy (and senior researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia). He leads a global team of Senior Editors and more than a hundred Associate Editors; the full board is listed on the official SAGE editorial board page.

What is the impact factor of The International Journal of Robotics Research?

Third-party trackers using Journal Citation Reports data report a 2025 Impact Factor of approximately 7.450 and a 2024 Impact Factor of approximately 7.460–7.50 (SciJournal.org, jrank.net, Resurchify), with a 5-year Impact Factor of 9.70. OOIR, using rounded Web of Science 2024 values, lists approximately 5.0 and ranks the journal #5 of 26 (Q1) in Robotics. SAGE's own page does not display a current Impact Factor, so figures should always be cited with their source and year.

Does IJRR charge submission or publication fees?

No. The official submission guidelines state: "There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal." Optional open access is available for a fee through the Sage Choice program, and institutional Open Access agreements may cover or discount the charge.

Is IJRR open access or subscription?

IJRR is a subscription journal. Authors can optionally publish individual articles open access via Sage Choice, and preprints are accepted.

What article types does IJRR publish?

Original Articles, Review Articles (normally solicited), Special Issues, peer-reviewed Data Papers, and multimedia extensions (video, code, or data) accompanying articles.

Can I submit work that was previously published at a conference?

Yes — IJRR accepts submissions containing material previously published in conference proceedings, but the journal version must be a substantial extension (new results, methodology, analysis, conclusions, and/or implications). Authors must disclose the prior version in a Novelty Statement, explicitly discuss the differences in the manuscript, cite the conference reference(s), and upload the conference version as accompanying material.

Is there a page limit for IJRR submissions?

No page limit. Papers should be as long as necessary and no longer; conciseness is highly valued. The normal length is 12 pages in the final two-column format.

How does peer review work at IJRR?

Single-blind peer review (reviewer names concealed from authors), with at least two expert reviewers per manuscript. All editorial decisions are made by editors drawn from the robotics research community — no external professional editors judge scientific matters. The journal is a COPE member.

Where is IJRR indexed?

The journal is abstracted and indexed in Scopus and the Science Citation Index (Web of Science), per standard journal listings.

Where can I submit a manuscript to IJRR?

Through the journal's online submission system linked from the official journal page at journals.sagepub.com/home/ijr and the official submission guidelines at journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/IJR.

Sources

All figures, names, and policy statements above come from the sources listed below, accessed 2026-10-10. Where official figures are not published (e.g., acceptance rate), that is stated explicitly rather than estimated.

• Journal overview and metrics — SAGE Journals: https://journals.sagepub.com/overview-metric/IJR
• Journal homepage — SAGE Journals: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ijr
• Editorial board — SAGE Journals: https://journals.sagepub.com/editorial-board/IJR
• Submission guidelines — SAGE Journals: https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/IJR
• IJRR company page (editorial description) — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ijrr-journal
• The International Journal of Robotics Research — Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Journal_of_Robotics_Research
• SciJournal.org metrics page: https://www.scijournal.org/int-j-robot-res
• OOIR robotics journal rankings: https://ooir.org/j.php?issn=0278-3649
• jrank.net IJRR metrics: https://jrank.net/journals/int-j-robot-res/metrics
• Resurchify IJRR impact page: https://www.resurchify.com/impact/details/18050