Effective Date: January 1, 2026
As a journal published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in partnership with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Integrated Circuits and Systems (ICAS) is dedicated to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and research integrity. ICAS is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and adheres to its principles and guidelines. This document outlines the editorial policies governing the publication process, clarifying the responsibilities of authors, reviewers, and editors, and defining our procedures for handling academic misconduct. These policies are aligned with the best practices of both COPE and IEEE.
ICAS is committed to the highest standards of research integrity. All research published in the journal must be conducted in accordance with the core principles promoted by COPE:
Honesty: Sincere and transparent communication in all aspects of research.Any individual who believes that research published in ICAS has not been conducted in line with these principles should raise their concerns with the Editorial Office at icas_editorial@sjtu.edu.cn. Concerns will be investigated following COPE and IEEE guidelines, and if necessary, escalated to the SJTU and/or IEEE Ethics Committees.
ICAS maintains strict editorial independence. All editorial decisions are based solely on the scientific merit of a manuscript and its relevance to the journal's scope. These decisions are free from any influence by commercial, financial, or political interests. The in-house editorial staff are not involved in the final decision to accept or reject manuscripts. We expect Academic Editors (Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors) to base their decisions on:
The scientific excellence, originality, and significance of the work.ICAS operates a rigorous single-blind peer-review process. Each manuscript is typically assessed by at least two independent expert reviewers. The final decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief or a designated Associate Editor. The Editor-in-Chief has ultimate responsibility for the academic quality of the journal. A detailed overview of our workflow can be found on the Editorial Process page.
The following article types undergo peer review: Research Article, Review, Communication, and Letter to the Editor. Other article types, such as Editorials, are typically not peer-reviewed.
All submissions are managed through a state-of-the-art online manuscript submission and peer-review system (e.g., ScholarOne Manuscripts), which adheres to international publishing standards.
To be published in ICAS, a manuscript must demonstrate high quality, originality, strong evidence for its conclusions, and be of significant interest to researchers in the field of Integrated Circuits and Systems. All submissions are screened using iThenticate's Similarity Check software. Typically, a manuscript's similarity score should not exceed 20% from multiple sources and 5% from a single source.
Based on reviewer feedback, the editor will make one of the following decisions:
Accept: The manuscript is accepted as is or with minor editorial revisions.Reviewers are selected based on their expertise, reputation, and absence of conflicts of interest. Authors may request the exclusion of specific individuals, which the editor will consider. Reviewer identities are kept confidential from authors.
ICAS is a Gold Open Access journal. All articles are published under a CC BY 4.0 license and are immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, and share.
To support the academic community, all Article Processing Charges (APCs) are waived for manuscripts submitted before January 1, 2027. This policy is in place to encourage submissions and facilitate the widest possible dissemination of research during the journal's foundational years.
ICAS takes publication ethics extremely seriously and has a zero-tolerance policy for misconduct.
Authors must guarantee the originality and integrity of their work, avoid duplicate submission, disclose all conflicts of interest, and ensure all listed authors meet the authorship criteria.
Reviewers must conduct their reviews objectively, maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript, and declare any potential conflicts of interest.
Editors are responsible for the scientific quality of the journal, ensuring a fair and timely peer-review process, and making unbiased editorial decisions.
Allegations of misconduct (including plagiarism, data fabrication/falsification, authorship disputes) are investigated thoroughly following COPE and IEEE guidelines. This may involve contacting authors' institutions. Confirmed cases of misconduct will result in appropriate actions, which may include rejection of the manuscript, publication of a retraction, and notification of the authors' institutions and relevant ethics bodies, including the IEEE Publications Services and Products Board (PSPB) Ethics Committee.
Integrated Circuits and Systems (ICAS) believes that authorship should be based on significant intellectual contribution and a shared responsibility for the published work. In line with the principles established by leading international bodies like the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), ICAS defines an author as someone who has made substantial contributions to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All authors are expected to have been involved in drafting or critically revising the manuscript, have given their final approval for publication, and agree to be accountable for the work's integrity. Individuals whose contributions do not meet the threshold for authorship should be recognized in the Acknowledgements section.
The corresponding author serves as the primary liaison between the journal and all co-authors. This role involves facilitating communication, ensuring that all authors meet the principles of authorship, have approved the final manuscript, and have agreed upon their specific contributions as declared in the CRediT statement. The corresponding author is entrusted with ensuring the accuracy of all administrative and ethical details throughout the submission and publication process.
To promote transparency and acknowledge the diverse contributions of individuals to scholarly work, ICAS has adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT). CRediT provides a standardized framework for describing each author's specific contribution to the manuscript.
Mandatory Author Contribution Statement:
Effective January 1, 2026, all new manuscripts submitted to ICAS must include a mandatory "Author Contributions" section. This section should be placed immediately before the "Acknowledgements" or "References" section. The statement should list the role(s) of all authors using the CRediT categories below. Authors may have contributed in multiple roles.
The 14 CRediT roles are defined as follows:
| Term | Definition |
| Conceptualization | Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims. |
| Methodology | Development or design of methodology; creation of models. |
| Software | Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components. |
| Validation | Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs. |
| Formal Analysis | Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data. |
| Investigation | Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection. |
| Resources | Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools. |
| Data Curation | Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse. |
| Writing – Original Draft | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation). |
| Writing – Review & Editing | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages. |
| Visualization | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation. |
| Supervision | Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team. |
| Project Administration | Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution. |
| Funding Acquisition | Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication. |
Sample CRediT Author Statement:
Author Contributions: David Chen: Conceptualization, Methodology. Kenji Tanaka: Software, Validation. Aisha Khan: Data Curation, Writing – Original Draft. Maria Petrova: Investigation, Visualization. Emily Williams: Supervision, Writing – Review & Editing.
AI and AI-assisted technologies (e.g., Large Language Models, chatbots) do not meet the criteria for authorship and cannot be listed as an author. The use of such technologies in the preparation of a manuscript (e.g., for generating text, images, or analyzing data) must be transparently disclosed in the Methods or Acknowledgements section. The disclosure should specify which tool was used and for what purpose. Authors are fully responsible for the integrity and accuracy of all content, including any material produced by an AI tool.
Any request to add, remove, or reorder authors after the initial submission must be sent to the Editorial Office by the corresponding author. The request must include:
1. A clear reason for the change.
2. A written confirmation (e.g., email) from all authors, including those being added or removed, that they agree with the change.
Changes to authorship are not permitted after a manuscript has been accepted for publication.
The Integrated Circuits and Systems (ICAS) journal is committed to ensuring the highest standards of integrity and transparency in academic publishing. In accordance with the principles set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), ICAS requires all participants in the publication process—including authors, peer reviewers, and editors—to disclose any relationships or interests that could be perceived as potentially influencing their work.
A Conflict of Interest (CoI), also known as a Competing Interest, exists when an individual's professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain or personal relationships). A conflict can arise for individuals or their institutions, employers, or sponsors.
Full disclosure is essential for transparency. The editorial office will use this information to inform editorial decisions and will publish such disclosures to assist readers in their evaluation of the article. In some cases, the Editor-in-Chief may decide not to publish an article based on the nature of a declared conflict.
? Authors: At the time of submission, all authors are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. This is a mandatory step in the submission process.
? Editors and Editorial Board Members: Editors (including the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, and Guest Editors) must recuse themselves from the review process of any manuscript where they have a conflict of interest. They must also disclose their own financial and non-financial interests relevant to the journal's scope.
? Peer Reviewers: Reviewers are required to decline an invitation to review if they have a significant conflict of interest. They must inform the editorial office of any potential conflicts that might impair the objectivity of their review and must not use knowledge of the work they are reviewing for their own personal advantage.
To ensure full transparency, any association that could be perceived by others as a conflict of interest must be declared, whether financial or non-financial.
Examples of Financial Conflicts of Interest include (but are not limited to):
Employment: Current or recent employment (including voluntary involvement) with any organization that may gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript.
Funding: Research grants from any entity, paid to an author or their institution, that is related to the work.
Personal Fees: Receipt of honoraria, royalties, consulting fees, lecture fees, or expert testimony fees from an organization that may be affected by the publication.
Patents and Royalties: Holding patents (or being in the process of applying for them) or receiving royalties related to the research or its potential applications.
Stock Ownership: Holding stocks or shares in a company that may be affected by the publication of the manuscript.
Other Benefits: Receipt of benefits related to the development of products or technologies discussed in the work.
Examples of Non-Financial Conflicts of Interest include (but are not limited to):
Professional Relationships: Collaborations with advocacy groups, holding a position on the board of an industry body or private company that might be affected by the publication.
Personal Relationships: Close relationships with individuals whose professional or financial interests could be affected by the publication.
Academic and Intellectual Beliefs: Strong personal, political, religious, or ideological beliefs that are directly relevant to the published content and could be perceived as biasing the work.
Support: Use of writing assistance, administrative support, or specialist equipment/data provided by an organization or person that might benefit or be disadvantaged by the findings.
Legal Involvement: Involvement in any legal action related to the work.
Editorial Roles: Authors who are members of the ICAS Editorial Board must declare this relationship upon submission.
To standardize and enforce our commitment to transparency, ICAS is implementing a mandatory declaration policy.
Effective January 1, 2026, all new manuscripts submitted to ICAS must include a "Conflicts of Interest" section. This section must be placed in the manuscript file before the "References" section.
Authors must use one of the following two standard statements:
1. If conflicts of interest exist:
"Conflicts of Interest: Author A has received research grants from Company X. Author B is a consultant for Company Y. Author C holds a patent related to the technology described in this paper. Author D declares no conflicts of interest."
(Please provide specific details for each author as applicable.)
2. If no conflicts of interest exist:
3."Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest."
Submissions received on or after this date that do not include this mandatory section will be returned to the authors for revision before being sent for peer review.
ICAS supports the posting of preprints on non-commercial servers (e.g., arXiv) prior to submission. Authors must disclose the preprint's DOI upon submission.
Submissions that extend previously published conference papers (e.g., from IEEE conferences) are welcome, provided they contain substantial new material (typically at least 30% new content). The original conference paper must be cited, and any necessary permissions must be obtained.
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Copyright is retained by the authors. Upon acceptance, authors are required to sign an IEEE License to Publish agreement, which grants Shanghai Jiao Tong University and IEEE the exclusive license to publish and disseminate the article.
ICAS strongly encourages authors to make all data, code, simulation models, and materials associated with their research publicly available. This can be done by depositing them in a recognized public repository (e.g., Figshare, Dryad, GitHub) and including a "Data Availability Statement" in the manuscript. For the field of integrated circuits, this may include design files (e.g., GDSII, Verilog/VHDL code) where appropriate and permissible.
All published content is permanently archived in the IEEE Xplore® digital library, ensuring long-term global access and preservation. The journal's content is also archived with Portico.
ICAS will issue corrections, retractions, or expressions of concern in accordance with COPE guidelines to maintain the integrity of the scholarly record.
Authors have the right to appeal editorial decisions. Appeals should be submitted in writing to the Editorial Office, providing a detailed explanation of the grounds for the appeal. Complaints will be handled constructively and in accordance with COPE guidelines.
For any questions regarding these policies or to raise a concern, please contact the ICAS Editorial Office at icas_editorial@sjtu.edu.cn.