The Journal of Communication and Information Systems (JCIS) - ISSN: 1980-6604, features high-quality, peer-reviewed technical papers in several communications and information systems areas. The JCIS is jointly sponsored by the Brazilian Telecommunications Society (SBrT) and the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). 

There are no article publication or submission charges. Previous editions of the JCIS can be accessed here.

JCIS is a gold open-access journal, meaning that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution, permanently accessible online immediately upon assignment of the DOI. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles or use them for any other lawful purpose without asking the publisher's or the author's prior permission. This is under the BOAI definition of open access.

Focus and Scope

The Journal of Communication and Information Systems publishes original papers containing original research and development results, representing an effective and novel contribution to knowledge related to Telecommunications. We publish Regular papers, Letters, and Tutorials. Regular papers should present a well-rounded treatment of a specific problem with significant contributions, whereas Letters are short communications of recent results. Tutorial papers are intended to disseminate knowledge of a topic in communications to non-experts readers. At the Editor's discretion, other papers may be published if relevant or interesting to the journal audience. Responsibility for the content of the papers rests upon the authors only.

Indexing Services

All articles published in JCIS are included in Latindex and Google Scholar. The full text of all articles is deposited using the LOCKSS Program, providing open-source technologies for high-confidence, resilient, secure digital preservation.

Peer Review Process

JCIS publishes Regular Papers, Letters, and Tutorials. Since the SBrT is a sister society of IEEE-COMSOC, the final version of accepted papers must be provided according to the IEEE Transactions template in the two-column format.

Manuscripts judged to be of potential interest to our readership are sent for an Associate Editor who will assign the reviewers, typically two or three, but sometimes more if special advice is needed. The editor then makes a decision based on the reviewers' advice. There are four possible editorial decisions for a proposed manuscript:

  • Accept Submission: Only a manuscript that is publishable exactly as written should receive this decision.
  • Minor Review: The manuscript is publishable but needs simple improvements, e.g., grammar and typo corrections, additional plots, discussion, etc. When the revision is submitted to the JCIS system, the Editor will check the revisions him/herself or call on a subset of the original Reviewers.  The maximum number of permitted Minor Revisions is two (2). The deadline for a minor review is 30 days.
  • Major Review: The manuscript is somewhat flawed but has enough potential to warrant a revision. Considering the comments from the previous review round, the resubmitted manuscript should be significantly improved.  The maximum number of permitted resubmissions after a Major Revision decision is two (2). The deadline for a major review is 90 days. If the resubmission is made after the deadline established by the Editor, it will be treated as a new submission.
  • Reject Submission: Due to lack of matching on the journal’s scope, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance, or major technical and interpretational problems.

Reviewers are welcome to recommend a particular course of action, but they should bear in mind that the other reviewers of a particular paper may have different technical expertise and viewpoint, and the editors may have to decide based on conflicting advice. The most useful reports, therefore, provide the editors with the information on which a decision should be based. Setting out the arguments for and against publication is often more helpful to the editors than a direct recommendation one way or the other.

Editorial decisions are not a matter of counting votes or numerical rank assessments, and we do not always follow the majority recommendation. We try to evaluate the strength of the arguments raised by each reviewer and by the authors, and we may also consider other information not available to either party.

Appeals: Authors can appeal decisions. The first appeal should go to the Editor who handled the manuscript directly. If the Authors and the Editor cannot reach an agreement, then the EiC will make a final decision after a thorough review of the material and discussions. The EiC should be copied on all correspondences related to an appeal.

Otherwise, when resubmitting a previously declined manuscript, the authors must significantly improve it. In this case, the Authors must include a document with the submission explaining how the manuscript has changed and why it warrants a new review. The EiC will evaluate this appeal in consultation with the original Editor.

For any general questions and comments about the peer-review process, the journal, or its editorial policies that are not addressed here, we encourage the authors to contact the Editors-in-chief.

Questions about a specific manuscript should be directed to the editor who is handling the manuscript.

Publications Ethics

The Journal of Communication and Information Systems (JCIS) expects and enforces the highest standards of ethics for the publisher - namely, the Brazilian Telecommunication Society (SBrT), editors, reviewers, and authors. This policy ensures that the peer-reviewed articles published in this journal are essential building blocks in developing a coherent and respected body of knowledge and thus serve their purpose of supporting and embodying the scientific method. This goal can only be achieved if the published works directly reflect the quality of the work of the authors and publisher.

Publication and Authorship

An author is generally considered an individual who has made substantial intellectual contributions to an article.

All JCIS articles should be original and not published in another journal. For more information on plagiarism and self-plagiarism, please see the section on Author Misconduct. 

Articles should acknowledge and cite the work of others when appropriate to fully and accurately attribute relevant acknowledges.

Articles should acknowledge the funding, sponsorship, and other forms of support (including that of the university, institute, organization, or government).

Author's Responsibilities

Authors must ensure that the submitted article is not under publication consideration or review in another journal.

One co-author should sign a copyright transfer form before the final publication.

All persons who contributed significantly to the article should be included as co-authors. On the other hand, including person(s) who did not contribute to an article in its co-author list is inappropriate.

Authors may be required to correct errors and remove incorrect information from the submitted article.

Authors must agree to make the revisions suggested by the reviewers and the editorial members of JCIS or to argue against some suggestions if this is the case. Refusing to revise without an acceptable reason leads to immediate rejection.

Author Misconduct

Author misconduct includes plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and research misconduct, including falsification or misrepresentation of results. All forms of misconduct are unacceptable and may result in sanctions and other corrective actions. Plagiarism includes copying someone else’s work without appropriate credit or using someone else’s work without clear delineation or citation. Self-plagiarism involves the verbatim copying or reuse of own prior work (even if it involves different co-authors) without appropriate citation, including duplicate submission of a manuscript elsewhere (journal or conference) and submission of different manuscripts presenting substantial overlap in text or technical contribution.

Extensions of Prior Work

The submission of fully-developed papers deriving from conference papers is accepted. Nonetheless, the journal publication is expected to include novelty, such as new experimental results, analyses, or theoretical details. If this is the case, the authors must cite the related prior work. Typically, an extended version of a conference article is expected to present more than 50% of substantially different content than the previous conference paper. The journal publication should describe the novel contributions when citing prior work. Limited reuse of parts of prior publications is allowed only if it is necessary for the paper's readability. The prior work must be cited as the primary source, and, if applicable, the authors must obtain the necessary copyrights.

Reviewers' Responsibilities

All of the submitted papers will be peer-reviewed. The name of all reviewers will be confidential. All reviewers should be academically qualified to review a submitted article, and they should complete her/his review scores and review comments in time. The review comments should be constructive for the authors.

The reviewer should be fair and unprejudiced in reviewing a submitted article.

The reviewer should not have any conflict of interest with the research, author, or the research funding authorities of a submitted article. In case of a conflict of interest, the reviewer should inform the assigned editor, who will assign new reviewer(s) to the article.

The reviewer should not reveal any information related to the assigned article to other parties.

Editorial Responsibilities

The editor in charge (EIC) and editor should ensure the quality of the material they publish.

The editor can decide on the submitted paper based on reviewers' scores/comments or at his/her discretion.

The EIC and editor's decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based only on the paper's importance, originality, clarity, and relevance of the contribution to the journal's scope.

The EIC or any editorial board member should not have any conflict of interest regarding the article under consideration.

The anonymity of reviewers, as well as of the authors, should be maintained by the EIC and editor during the review process.

Publishing Ethics

The editor-in-charge (EIC) and the editorial board monitor and safeguard publishing ethics. Nevertheless, as stated above, the authors are responsible for their contribution to fulfilling the ethical guidelines discussed above. 

The EIC and the editorial board should maintain high intellectual and ethical standards, preventing business and personal needs from compromising intellectual standards.

The EIC should ensure that plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and fraudulent data are not allowed, as mentioned above.

The EIC should be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, withdrawals, and apologies when appropriate.

The JCIS and its Editorial Board do not engage in coercive citation since the correct referencing and identification of prior critical works is part of the authors' responsibility, no matter if they are from journals different from the ones supported by the publisher of JCIS.

Journal History

The JCIS was created in 1986 by the Brazilian Telecommunications Society, named initially "Journal of The Brazilian Telecommunications Society," to document and disseminate research results from the Brazilian telecommunications community. Since 2005, the JCIS has been technically sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc), aiming at an international audience.

Statistics

Published papers per year: 

  • 2023: 22
  • 2022: 20
  • 2021: 22
  • 2020: 36
  • 2019: 28
  • 2018: 34
  • 2017: 16
  • 2016: 27
  • 2015: 14
  • 2014: 08
  • 2013: 05
  • 2012: 05
  • 2011: 05
  • 2010: 05

The current time from submission to the first editorial decision is around 60 days. Papers are published online as soon as the final version (after acceptance) is submitted by the authors, considerably reducing the time from submission to publication.