Authors Guidelines

Please, read these instructions carefully before submitting your manuscript:

The Journal on Interactive Systems (JIS) is published and maintained by the Brazilian Computing Society (SBC). JIS is inherently interdisciplinary, and its main goals include:

• To disseminate original scientific works on (and across) the areas related to the design, evaluation, and study of interactive computing systems in different domains.
• To introduce scientific projects under development by research groups focused on contributing to the state-of-the-art of related themes.
• To openly disseminate high-quality research results to a broad audience, favoring open science and knowledge sharing.

Review Process

JIS operates under a single-anonymous peer-review system, where reviewers are aware of authors' names and affiliations, but review reports provided to authors are anonymous. 

Publication of research articles by JIS depends primarily on their scientific quality and contribution as judged by our external expert editors and peer reviewers. The review process will also assess whether the writing is comprehensible and whether the work represents a valuable contribution to the field.

Submitted manuscripts are generally reviewed by two or three experts. Reviewers evaluate whether the manuscript helps the scientific community to advance on its capacity to deal with a clear and relevant research problem, whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. Reviewers will also be asked to indicate how interesting and significant the research is. Editors will reach a decision based on these reports, and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Cover Letter

Authors must present a cover letter stating the research problem the paper is approaching and the main contribution it is offering to advance our capacity to understand, solve, or deal with the problem. 

The cover letter must also list up to five key original contributions the paper offers to the scientific community (research highlights).

Authors are encouraged to outline, both in the cover letter and at the end of the manuscript, their individual contributions to the paper, following the CRediT taxonomy. 

The cover letter must also suggest the name of three reviewers, with no conflicts of interest with the authors, who are specialists in the article's subject.

If you are submitting an extended version of a previously published conference paper, ensure that the paper is a non-trivial extension from the version that has appeared at the conference. Please, pay attention to these three requirements:

1. Authors must ensure that the extended paper, in English, contains at least 35% new material compared to the previously published work. 
2. The new version must explicitly cite the original work, indicating it is an extended and revised version of that work. 
3. The .pdf file of the original published work must be provided (use the Article Component "Other") when submitting the extended paper.  

Authors must also explain in the cover letter why the manuscript is suitable for publication in the journal, thus indicating how the paper was extended and why it constitutes a worthwhile extension of the original work. Authors should, for instance, point out areas where new text or results have been included, where the text has been re-written, and where extra depth is provided. 

The cover letter may also present:

• An explanation of why your manuscript is suitable for JIS
• An explanation of any issues relating to journal policies
• A declaration of any potential competing interests
• The name of the special issue you are submitting for (if this is the case)
• The title and venue of the previously published paper the article extends (if this is the case)

Contributions

JIS publishes research articles that present contributions in several manners:

• Concluded scientific works presenting algorithms, concepts, new devices, models, or techniques.
• On-going research presenting new ideas with preliminary results and critical discussions, addressing important problems, describing systems´ implementations, etc.
• Surveys with a critical vision of a specific area, including a complete state-of-the-art revision and presenting a rigorous methodology (e.g., systematic reviews).
• Essays, Position articles, or tutorials deeply covering a specific topic from a theoretical or practical point of view.

Please, use the "Comments for the Editor" field during submission to provide any extra information.

The 3 Rs

JIS values Rigour, Responsibility, and Reproducibility (or rationale). Articles must be clear regarding how rigor was applied to research design, development, and analysis; the reported work must be seen through the lens of social responsibility; and the article must present authors' critical thinking, discussions, communicated in a good style and improving reproducibility (offering everything readers need to reproduce or replicate the work, or to understand the research rationale and the researcher reasoning line).

Ethics

Manuscripts must explicitly indicate how the ethical issues of the research were addressed and managed, including the research approval by an ethics committee when applicable. Authors are invited to critically examine their references, background, and methods, striving to avoid and fight different biases in science (e.g., gender bias, race, ethnicity, social class, disability, etc.).

JIS requires each author to authenticate their participation in the submission via ORCID.

Open and Fair Science

Articles must offer the conditions to replicate, reproduce, or understand the research design and results.

JIS encourages the authors to make their datasets, methods, software, transcripts, and other additional materials available for the readers. All the supplementary material the authors provided will appear on the paper's publication page.  

JIS encourages its authors to ensure that their research recognizes contributions from underrepresented groups in science, not only in their related work section, but also in theories and applied methods.

Language

JIS publishes original research in the English language. Translations to other languages (e.g., Portuguese) can be included as supplementary materials. The document must begin with the following statement: "This document is a free translation made by the authors. Original article in English: <doi>.

Templates

Submissions must be in pdf, following the JIS LaTex template. Although we strongly recommend using the template for the first submission, adherence to the template will be enforced only upon acceptance.

Articles published until 2023 follow JIS 2023 LaTeX template, while articles published from 2024 onwards must follow JIS 2024 LaTex template. When compiling the sbc-sample.tex file on Overleaf, pay attention to the error messages as overleaf may require changing the default compiler. Change the compiler to XeLaTex or LuaLaTex in the Menu\Compiler option.

JIS is free of charge for both authors and readers

JIS is maintained and supported by the Brazilian Computer Society through three special interest groups: Human-Computer Interaction, Games, and Virtual Reality. JIS is funded by these communities, which, in turn, obtain their resources primarily from membership fees and registrations for students and researchers. That is why JIS has a non-negotiable commitment to open, rigorous, and quality science and the struggle for democratic and inclusive science for all people.

All papers published by JIS follow the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license and authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions.