Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing

An in-depth journal profile — history, leadership, scope, peer review, metrics, submission rules, open-access costs, landmark papers and author guidance. Researched from official Elsevier and ScienceDirect sources, October 2026.

Key Facts

Overview

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (commonly abbreviated RCIM) is an international, peer-reviewed research journal published by Elsevier that sits at the intersection of robotics, automation, and advanced manufacturing systems. It is one of the flagship venues for research that moves robotics out of the laboratory and into the factory: the journal's stated emphasis is on communicating research that leads to new or improved industrially relevant robots, manufacturing technologies, and manufacturing strategies.

The journal serves a dual audience. On one side are academic researchers in mechanical and industrial engineering, computer science, control engineering, and applied artificial intelligence; on the other are industrial practitioners, manufacturing engineers, and R&D teams who need validated, deployable advances rather than purely speculative work. This industry-facing character is the journal's defining trait: it actively prefers papers that pair theoretical contribution with experimental validation, and it publishes comprehensive review papers that take stock of fast-moving topical areas such as human–robot collaboration, digital twins, and cloud-based manufacturing.

By the metrics reported in secondary directories, RCIM is among the highest-impact journals in its field. It is consistently ranked in the first quartile (Q1) across Scopus subject categories including Computer Science Applications, Control and Systems Engineering, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Software, and General Mathematics — and was ranked first of 414 titles in General Mathematics in one secondary CiteScore ranking table. The journal operates a hybrid publishing model: authors may publish under a traditional subscription route at no charge, or pay an article processing charge for immediate gold open access. Manuscripts flow through the Elsevier Editorial System with single-anonymized peer review, and the journal's own published statistics indicate a notably fast first editorial decision.

History of the Journal

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing was founded in 1984, according to secondary journal directories (the founding year is not stated on Elsevier's official journal pages, so this date should be treated as approximate). Scopus coverage records list the journal's content from 1984–1994 and again from 1996 to the present. Its birth coincided with the rapid industrialization of robotics in the 1980s, when computer-integrated manufacturing — the idea of linking design, planning, and production through digital systems — was moving from concept to factory-floor reality.

Over four decades the journal has tracked, and in many cases shaped, the evolution of the field. Early decades reflected classical concerns of industrial robotics and flexible manufacturing systems; the 2010s brought cloud manufacturing, cyber-physical production systems, and big-data analytics; and the current era is dominated by digital twins, human–robot collaboration, and machine learning for adaptive, sustainable manufacturing. The roster of emeritus editors reads like a hall of fame of manufacturing science — including Harold Liebowitz, Toshio Sata, Günter Spur, and Nam Pyo Suh — which attests to the journal's long-standing position in the discipline's institutional memory.

The journal has also grown in volume: recent citation records show the journal reaching Volume 100 in 2026, with new research articles appearing in issues dated October and December 2026, confirming it remains an active, high-throughput venue. A 2026 call for papers on "Intelligent Maintenance for Robots: Advances in Prognostics, Health Management, and Self-Healing Manufacturing Systems" illustrates how its special-issue program continues to push into emerging territory such as robot reliability and self-healing manufacturing systems.

Leadership and Editorial Team

The journal is led by Editor-in-Chief Lihui Wang, PhD, of the Department of Production Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden — a prominent researcher in human–robot collaboration and smart manufacturing, and himself a frequent contributor to the journal's special-issue program. He is supported by nine associate editors drawn from academia and industry:

• Azadeh Haghighi (University of Illinois Chicago, USA)
• Wei Ji (AB Sandvik Coromant, Sweden)
• Michele Lanzetta (University of Pisa, Italy)
• Sotiris Makris (University of Patras, Greece)
• Fei Tao (Beihang University, China)
• József Váncza (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary)
• Enrico Villagrossi (National Research Council, Italy)
• Thorsten Wuest (University of South Carolina, USA)
• Fengfeng (Jeff) Xi (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada)
• Xun Xu (The University of Auckland, New Zealand)

The wider editorial board comprises 17 members, and the journal reports 27 editors and board members across 14 countries or regions, with the largest contingents in the United States (6), China (5), and Sweden (3). Notable board members include Andrew Kusiak (University of Iowa), Andrew Y. C. Nee (National University of Singapore), George Chryssolouris (University of Patras), and Jörg Krüger (TU Berlin). Six emeritus editors are listed: Harold Liebowitz, Grier Lin, Toshio Sata, Andre Sharon, Günter Spur, and Nam Pyo Suh.

Elsevier also publishes board diversity data: among responding editors and board members, 83% identified as men, 11% as women, and 6% preferred not to disclose, based on responses from 64.3% of the 28 editors and board members at the time of measurement.

Source: ScienceDirect editorial board page for the journal, accessed October 2026.

Aims & Scope

The following is a paraphrase of the journal's official aims and scope statement (not a quotation). RCIM's core mission is to disseminate research that advances the development of new or better industrially relevant robotics, manufacturing technologies, and innovative manufacturing strategies. The journal gives preference to original research papers that combine theoretical development with experimental validation — purely armchair work is a poor fit.

Comprehensive review articles on timely topics in robotics and manufacturing are also welcome. The journal explicitly draws boundaries around what it will not consider: papers on conventional machining processes, modelling and simulation, supply chain management, and resource optimisation are generally regarded as out of scope and better suited to other journals, as are overly theoretical or heavily mathematical papers.

Topics the journal actively welcomes include industrial robotics, human–robot collaborative manufacturing, cloud-based manufacturing, cyber-physical production systems, big-data analytics in manufacturing, smart mechatronics, machine learning applied to manufacturing, adaptive and sustainable manufacturing, and other domains involving distinctive or novel manufacturing technologies. In short, if the work makes factories smarter, more flexible, more sustainable, or more collaborative — and demonstrates it experimentally — it belongs in the conversation.

Paraphrased from the official Aims and Scope page on ScienceDirect, accessed October 2026.

Editorial Process and Peer Review

RCIM follows a single-anonymized review process: reviewers know the authors' identities, but authors do not learn who reviewed their work. Every submission is first assessed by the editors for suitability; manuscripts deemed suitable are typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers for evaluation of scientific quality, and the editors make the final accept/reject decision.

Integrity safeguards are spelled out in the guide. Editors are barred from handling decisions on papers they wrote themselves, papers by family members or colleagues, or papers relating to products or services in which they have a financial interest; such submissions are handled independently of the involved editor and their research group. Authors may lodge a formal appeal against an editorial decision under Elsevier's appeal policy — but only one appeal per submission is considered, and the appeal decision is final.

Special issues and article collections follow the same review process as regular submissions, with one nuance: a guest editor may send submissions to reviewers and recommend a decision, while the journal editor retains oversight and makes the final decision on every article. This two-layer structure is designed to preserve publishing ethics and responsiveness in themed collections.

The journal publishes its own turnaround statistics, which are unusually fast for a top-tier venue:

• Submission to first decision: 1 day
• Submission to decision after review: 55 days
• Submission to acceptance: 141 days
• Acceptance to online publication: 10 days

One figure the journal does not officially publish is its acceptance rate. No acceptance-rate figure appears on the ScienceDirect journal page or in the guide for authors; any acceptance-rate numbers found on third-party sites should be treated as unverified.

Sources: official Guide for Authors (Peer review section) and ScienceDirect journal page metrics, accessed October 2026.

Impact and Metrics

The journal's citation metrics place it among the elite titles in manufacturing and robotics research. Important caveat: Elsevier's own journal pages do not display the Impact Factor, so the figures below come from secondary metric directories and should be treated as approximate, pending verification against the official Journal Citation Reports and Scopus records.

The combination of a double-digit Impact Factor and a CiteScore above 25 reflects the journal's role as a primary outlet for high-visibility work in smart manufacturing — particularly in human–robot collaboration, digital twins, and cloud manufacturing, which dominate its most-cited articles. The roughly one-quarter gold open-access share indicates a healthy uptake of open publishing, though the majority of content still flows through the subscription route.

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts are submitted through Elsevier's online editorial system. The official Guide for Authors sets out detailed requirements; the essentials are summarized below (paraphrased, not quoted):

• File format: Provide editable source files for the entire submission — Word (.doc/.docx) or LaTeX (.tex). A PDF alone is not acceptable as a source file. Word manuscripts should use a single-column layout; double-column formatting is permitted only for LaTeX submissions.
• Title page: Must include a concise, informative article title (avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible), full author names in the correct order, complete affiliation addresses with country names, a clearly designated corresponding author with current contact details, and present/permanent addresses where applicable.
• Abstract: Required, concise and factual, not exceeding 250 words. It must stand alone, state the purpose, principal results, and major conclusions, and avoid references and non-standard abbreviations.
• Keywords: 1 to 7 keywords in English for indexing purposes.
• Highlights: Required at submission — 3 to 5 bullet points capturing novel results and new methods, each no longer than 85 characters including spaces, submitted as a separate editable file with "highlights" in the filename.
• Graphical abstract: Encouraged — a single pictorial summary of the work (minimum 531 × 1328 pixels), submitted as a separate file.
• Artwork: Figures supplied as separate files with logical names. Minimum resolutions: 300 dpi for color/grayscale photographs, 1000 dpi for bitmapped line drawings, 500 dpi for line/halftone combinations. Vector drawings as EPS or PDF with embedded fonts.
• Math and tables: Equations as editable text (not images), variables in italics, powers of e as exp; tables as editable text with captions, numbered consecutively.
• Ethics: Authors must follow Elsevier's publishing ethics policy, declare competing interests via the declarations tool, disclose all funding sources, and confirm the work is original and not under consideration elsewhere.
• Generative AI: Authors must declare any use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies in manuscript preparation via a disclosure statement placed before the references. AI tools must not be listed as authors. Separately, the journal does not permit reviewers or editors to use generative AI in peer review and manuscript evaluation.
• Preprints: Authors may share preprints (e.g., on SSRN) — this does not count as prior publication. The journal offers a free preprint posting service on SSRN during submission.
• Authorship: The author list must be definitive at submission; changes are possible only before acceptance with editor approval and written confirmation from all authors. No authorship changes are allowed after acceptance.

Paraphrased from the official Guide for Authors on ScienceDirect, accessed October 2026.

Open Access and APC

RCIM is a hybrid journal offering two publishing routes:

• Gold open access: The article is immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy, and distribute. The article publishing charge is USD 4,640 excluding taxes for all article types, payable by the authors, their institution, or their funder. This figure is published on Elsevier's official open-access options page for the journal.
• Subscription: The article is available to subscribers (plus developing countries and patient groups through Elsevier access programs). No publication fee is charged to the author.

Gold open-access articles are published under a Creative Commons license chosen by the author. The journal offers CC BY (most permissive, allows commercial reuse and adaptations), CC BY-NC (non-commercial reuse with adaptations allowed), and CC BY-NC-ND (non-commercial, no derivatives). Authors needing to comply with funder mandates can request a CC BY license after acceptance. Authors retain copyright alongside scholarly usage rights, with publishing and distribution rights granted to Elsevier.

For authors who choose the subscription route but still want public access, green open access (self-archiving) is permitted: the accepted manuscript may be shared publicly in an institutional or funder repository after an embargo period of 24 months from formal online publication. The published journal article itself may not be shared publicly.

Elsevier operates a "best price promise" — during submission, authors are shown a personalized APC based on their country, institutional affiliation, and society memberships, and the online author communication system is designed to offer the lowest applicable charge. The publisher has also negotiated open-access agreements with many institutions and consortia worldwide, which can cover or discount the APC entirely, and it maintains funding-body arrangements to help authors comply with funder open-access policies. Authors should check their institution's agreement before budgeting.

Source: official Open Access Information page for the journal on ScienceDirect, accessed October 2026. APC USD 4,640 excl. taxes is an official Elsevier figure.

Indexing and Abstracting

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing is indexed in the major scholarly databases that matter for visibility, evaluation, and discovery:

• Scopus — the journal's CiteScore, SJR, and quartile rankings are computed from Scopus data, and Scimago lists it among the top titles in Computer Science Applications, Control and Systems Engineering, and related categories.
• Web of Science / Science Citation Index — secondary directories list the journal in the SCI collection, which is consistent with its published Journal Impact Factor. (Secondary source — verify against the official Master Journal List.)
• ScienceDirect — full-text hosting and discovery on Elsevier's platform, with articles assigned DOIs under the 10.1016/j.rcim prefix via Crossref.

The presence of a Journal Impact Factor implies coverage in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports, and the journal's articles are routinely picked up by scholarly search engines and news outlets covering manufacturing research. Authors should verify current indexing claims against the official Scopus title list and Clarivate Master Journal List, as coverage can change.

Landmark Papers

A journal's identity is written by its most influential papers. For RCIM, secondary citation analyses point to a clear landmark: "From cloud computing to cloud manufacturing," reported as the journal's most-cited article with approximately 1,209 citations (per research.com, a secondary source). The paper helped define cloud manufacturing — the paradigm of delivering manufacturing resources and capabilities as on-demand services — and its citation footprint explains much of the journal's current prestige.

Beyond that single landmark, the journal's citation leaders cluster around the themes that now define smart manufacturing:

• Digital twins for human–robot collaboration. Zequn Zhang, Yuchen Ji and colleagues published "Enabling collaborative assembly between humans and robots using a digital twin system" (2023, DOI: 10.1016/j.rcim.2023.102691), introducing a system that builds a virtual map of the shared workspace so robots can plan suitable behaviors when cooperating with humans — including a human mesh-recovery algorithm to handle occlusions and uncertainty estimation for action recognition. The work was covered by the science press as a notable advance in collaborative assembly.
• AR-assisted digital twins. Li, Zheng, Li, Pang and Lee's "AR-assisted digital twin-enabled robot collaborative manufacturing system with human-in-the-loop" (Vol. 76, 2022, DOI: 10.1016/j.rcim.2022.102321) is another widely referenced contribution in the same vein.
• Reinforcement learning and autonomy. Papers such as Kim, Choi, Um and Ji's digital-twin work for autonomous collaborative robots using synthetic data and reinforcement learning (2024, DOI: 10.1016/j.rcim.2023.102632) show the journal's pull toward learning-based control.

The journal's special-issue program is itself a source of landmark collections: a 2026 call for papers on "Intelligent Maintenance for Robots" (guest editors Ruqiang Yan, Peng Wang, Weihua Li, and Mien Van), a 2026 collection edited by Sichao Liu, Alexandra Brintrup, Yuejiang Liu, Yali Du, Jianjun Wang, and Adam Sobey, and 2022 collections on cloud/edge and digital-twin themes edited by Lihui Wang, Sotiris Makris, Jörg Krüger, Yuqian Lu, and others. Readers can reproduce the journal's most-cited list at any time by sorting articles by citation count on ScienceDirect or in Scopus.

Most-cited ranking per research.com (secondary). DOIs and article details from Crossref-indexed records and science-press coverage, accessed October 2026. Citation counts change over time — treat as approximate.

How to Publish Here / Author Tips

1. Run the scope test first. Ask: does the paper apply research to industrially relevant robotics or manufacturing, and does it include experimental validation? If the work is purely theoretical, a conventional machining study, a simulation-only exercise, or a supply-chain analysis, RCIM's own scope statement says it belongs elsewhere — a desk rejection is the likely outcome.
2. Lead with the industrial payoff. The journal prefers theory-plus-experiment. Frame the abstract and introduction around the manufacturing problem solved, the system built, and the measured improvement — not just the algorithm.
3. Craft highlights ruthlessly. Highlights are mandatory and capped at 85 characters per bullet (3–5 bullets). Write them as search-engine-friendly claims of novelty: what is new, what was demonstrated, by how much it improved.
4. Invest in the graphical abstract. It is encouraged and heavily used in online discovery; a clear pictorial summary of the system or experiment will earn clicks from interdisciplinary readers.
5. Consider a special issue. RCIM runs an active special-issue program (e.g., the 2026 "Intelligent Maintenance for Robots" call). A well-matched special issue can put the paper in front of the exact community that will cite it, and review follows the same standards as regular submissions.
6. Use the preprint option. Posting on SSRN during submission does not count as prior publication, establishes priority, and can attract early citations — with no effect on the editorial outcome.
7. Disclose GenAI use properly. If generative AI assisted with writing or analysis, include the required disclosure statement before the references. Do not list AI tools as authors.
8. Budget for open access early. At USD 4,640 (excl. taxes), the gold OA fee is substantial — check whether your institution has an Elsevier open-access agreement that covers or discounts it, or plan for the subscription route with 24-month green self-archiving.
9. Set timeline expectations. The journal's published statistics — 1 day to first decision, 55 days to a post-review decision, 141 days to acceptance — suggest a fast desk stage but a thorough review cycle; plan revisions accordingly.
10. Target the right reviewers' mindset. With a minimum of two independent reviewers under single-anonymized review, expect scrutiny of both the technical contribution and the experimental evidence. Reproducibility details (datasets, parameters, testbeds) strengthen the case considerably.

FAQs

1. What is the Impact Factor of Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing?

Secondary metric directories report a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 12.3. This figure is not published on Elsevier's own journal pages, so it should be verified against the official Journal Citation Reports before being cited formally.

2. What is the article processing charge (APC)?

The official gold open-access APC is USD 4,640 excluding taxes for all article types, per Elsevier's open-access options page for the journal. A personalized (often lower) price may be shown during submission based on country, institution, and memberships.

3. Who is the Editor-in-Chief?

Lihui Wang, PhD, of the Department of Production Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

4. What is the journal's acceptance rate?

RCIM does not officially publish an acceptance rate. Any acceptance-rate figure found online is unverified and should not be quoted as fact.

5. How long does peer review take?

The journal's published statistics: 1 day to first decision, 55 days to decision after review, 141 days to acceptance, and 10 days from acceptance to online publication.

6. Is the journal open access?

It is a hybrid journal: authors choose gold open access (USD 4,640 APC) or the subscription route (no author fee), with green self-archiving permitted after a 24-month embargo.

7. Which open-access licenses are available?

CC BY, CC BY-NC, and CC BY-NC-ND. A CC BY license can be requested after acceptance to satisfy funder mandates.

8. What is the green open-access embargo period?

24 months from formal online publication before the accepted manuscript may be shared publicly in a repository.

9. What are the journal's ISSNs?

Print ISSN 0736-5845; online ISSN 1879-2537 (official ScienceDirect journal page).

10. What topics are out of scope?

Conventional machining processes, modelling and simulation, supply chain management, resource optimisation, and overly theoretical or mathematical papers are generally considered out of scope.

11. Are preprints allowed?

Yes. Preprint sharing (e.g., via SSRN, including the journal's free posting service) does not count as prior publication and does not affect the editorial outcome.

12. What peer-review model does the journal use?

Single-anonymized review: submissions are desk-assessed by editors, then typically sent to at least two independent reviewers. Editors make the final decision.

13. Can I appeal a rejection?

Yes — one formal appeal per submission is allowed under Elsevier's appeal policy, and the appeal decision is final.

14. What is the policy on generative AI?

Authors must declare GenAI/AI-assisted tool use in a statement before the references; AI tools cannot be authors. Reviewers and editors are not permitted to use generative AI in peer review.

15. Where is the journal indexed?

Scopus and Web of Science's Science Citation Index (per secondary directories — verify against the official title lists), with full text on ScienceDirect and DOIs via Crossref (10.1016/j.rcim).

16. How frequently is the journal published, and when was it founded?

Secondary directories describe it as bimonthly and founded in 1984 — both figures are approximate, as the official journal pages do not state them.