Topics    Refereeing process    Board   Submission   Copyright   Referees   Mirror sites     Paper status   Issues    Benches   Open problems   Other useful sites    Archival
 
 

The Electronic Journal of Computational Kinematics is a new, all-electronic, peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the International Federation on the Theory Of Machines and Mechanisms (IFToMM) that welcomes articles on computational kinematics and its applications.

We understand here under this term that branch of kinematics research involving intensive computation not only of the numerical type, but also of a symbolic or geometric nature. This include for
example:

• forward and inverse kinematics of mechanisms and robots
• advances in theoretical kinematics
• workspaces computation
• singularity evaluation
• path planning, trajectory interpolation
• performance evaluation of mechanisms
• optimal design of mechanisms
• methodology for designing new mechanisms

EJCK  aims to act as a complement to classical Journals while retaining their high quality
and  to improve the availability of scientific materials through electronic distribution.
Accordingly, EJCK seeks high quality, rigorous papers of interest to the scientific and engineering community. In this regard we will borrow the philosophy
of the computer graphics community: publishing in EJCK should be considered quite an accomplishment.
Submissions must be original. The work cannot have previously been published or pending publication in another journal, and submissions cannot be under review by any other forum. We will, however, publish work that has previously been reported in conferences or workshops. If the work has appeared in an "archival" conference we require that the submission substantively extend the conference paper.

The journal is essentially unlimited by size. Therefore, there will be (almost) no restrictions on length of articles. But authors should take into consideration that papers will be downloaded from the EJCK  site (or the soon-to-come mirror sites): being given the current restriction on the
bandwidth of the Net very large papers will be probably not be read :-)
Information  networks, multimedia developments and other technological advancements lead us to think about the formats of the scientific publications, rescuing those essential aspects to guarantee the seriousness and reliability of the process and incorporating the facilities
 that an electronic, tridimensional, instantaneous and animated media offers.
The full use of the computer media will be  therefore encouraged: this include computer animation through the Web (possibly interactive), possibility of free software downloading, interactive use of softwares. Another possibility will be to provide an update of some paper of a previously published paper: this update will be refereed. This possibility enable to write evolving papers with a minimal amount  of work from the authors, the reviewers and the readers. We will encourage
online discussion of articles or the submission of open problems, a process as vital to the community as the formal publication process itself.  If you wish to contribute commentary on one of our papers, please mail your comments to the Editor. A special care will be given to the acknowledgment of contributions of predecessors.

We are clearly aware of the evaluation problem: EJCK intend to be quickly recognized as one of the
leading journal in this field, thereby attracting high quality papers which will be referenced using the
guidelines of a classical Journal.  One of the mission of the editorial board of EJCK will be to give a high visibility to this journal.
Articles are electronically submitted (see submission information) and will be published on-line without charge to readers or authors. We expect to be able to publish papers within one week of final acceptance, provided the filling out of a copyright form (see Copyright). Our editorial process will be expedited to the fullest extent possible, in order to achieve our goal of rapid dissemination of the highest quality work in the field of computational kinematics.
 

Refereeing of articles is conventional and of high-standards (with at least 3 reviewers by paper, together with the comments of the relevant members of the  board of EJCK), and is being carried out electronically.

The details of the refereeing process (received the..., reviewed by .. referees and .... members of the board,modified on ..accepted on ...) will be indicated in the header of each published paper.

The board will take all the decisions regarding the scope/existence/policy of EJCK.
Major changes on these topics will be adopted using a 2/3 rules: they will be adopted only if  approved by at least 2/3 of the members of the board.

Among the board there will be  one editor-in-chief, 3 editors, all the others members of the board being  associate editors. The editor-in-chief and the editors will assign submitted papers to one associate editor which will be in charge of choosing the three referees and inform the editor-in-chief on the status of the refereeing process.  All the members of the board will however have to offer comments on all the proposed papers as soon as they are in their
area of competence.

Being members of the board is not a life-long assignment: although there will be no formal rule the
board will be as a living body as EJCK domain.

Once a year the Editorial Board of EJCK will  grant "Best paper" awards to  published
papers which  make the best use of the computer media while presenting  outstanding scientific results.
 
 

Prof. J. Angeles McGill University Department of Mechanical Engineering 817 Sherbrooke St. W. Montreal, Quebec CANADA H3A 2K6 Tel. (514) 398-6315 Fax: (514) 398-7348 e-mail: angeles@cim.mcgill.ca http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~angeles/	Prof. Gregory S. Chirikjian Johns Hopkins, Dept. of Mechanical Eng. 124 Latrobe Hall,3400 N. Charles Street Baltimore MD 21218-2686, USA Tel. 410 516 7127 Fax: 410 516 7254 e-mail: gregc@jhu.edu http://caesar.me.jhu.edu/directory/greg.html
Prof. Pietro Fanghella Dipartimento di Meccanica e Costruzione delle Macchine Universita degli Studi di Genoval Via Balbi, 5 16126 Genova, Italy Tel. 010-3532965 e-mail: fanghell@mcae.dimec.unige.it	Prof. Clement M. Gosselin Departement de Genie Mecanique Universite Laval Quebec, Quebec, Canada, G1K 7P4 Tel. 418 656-3474 Fax: 418 656-7415 e-mail: gosselin@gmc.ulaval.ca http://wwwrobot.gmc.ulaval.ca
Prof. Manfred Husty Inst. f. Engineering Mathematics University Innsbruck Technikerstr. 13 A-6020 Innsbruck Austria Tel. +43 512 507 6830 Fax: e-mail: Manfred.Husty@uibk.ac.at	Pr. A. Kecskeméthy Lehrstuhl für Mechanik Gerhard Mercator Universität Duisburg Tel.: +49 (0) 203 379-3344 Fax.: +49 (0) 203 379-2494 e-mail: a.kecskemethy@uni-duisburg.de
Prof. Vijay Kumar Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics University of Pennsylvania Room 222, Towne Building GRASP Lab - Room 301C 220 S. 33rd Street 3401 Walnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19104-6315 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228 USA Tel. 215 898-3630 Tel. 215 898-5814 Fax: 215 573-6334 Fax: 215 573-2048 e-mail: kumar@central.cis.upenn.edu http://www.cis.upenn.edu/ kumar	Prof. Jadran Lenarcic The Jozef Stefan Institute,University of Ljubljana Jamova 39,61111 Ljubljana Slovenia Tel. 386 61 1773 378 Fax: 386 61 219 385 e-mail: jadran.lenarcic@ijs.ac.mail.si http://www.ijs.si/ijs.html
Prof. Vicente Mata Amela Dpto. de Ingeniería Mecánica y de Materiales Universidad Politechnica de Valencia Spain Tel.963877621 (Ext.:76212 ) Fax: 963877629 (Ext.:77629 ) e-mail: vmata@mcm.upv.es	Pr. Joao Carvalho Mendes University of Uberlandia Brazil e-mail: jcmendes@mecanica.ufu.br
Dr. Jean-Pierre Merlet INRIA-Sophia-Antipolis 2004, route des Lucioles B. P. 93 06902 Sophia-Antipolis Cedex FRANCE Tel. (+33 93) 65 77 77 Fax: (+33 93) 65 77 65 Jean-Pierre.Merlet@sophia.inria.fr http://www.inria.fr/hephaistos/personnel/merlet/merlet_eng.html	Prof. Erika Ottaviano Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale Universita di Cassino Via Di Biasio 43 - 03043 Cassino (Fr) Italy Tel. +39-776-299663 Fax: +39-776-310812 e-mail: ottaviano@unicas.it http://www.unicas.it/ingegneria/gruppi-ricerca/labri96/lari96.htm
Prof. Frank Chongwoo Park Mechanical Design and Production Engineering Seoul National University Kwanak-ku Shinlim-dong San 56-1 Seoul 151-742, Korea Tel: +82-2-880-7133 Fax: +82-2-883-1513 Email: fcp@cad.snu.ac.kr, fcp@plaza.snu.ac.kr  http://plaza.snu.ac.kr/~fcp/	Prof. Ian Parkin Dept. of Computer Science Madsen Building F09 The University of Sidney, NSW2006, Australia e-mail: ian@cs.usyd.edu.au
Prof. Moshe Shoham Department of Mechanical Engineering Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Technion City, Haifa 32000 Israel Tel. 972 4 829 3264 Fax: 972 4 832 4533 e-mail: shoham@tx.technion.ac.il http://meeng.technion.ac.il/Faculty/Staff/Shoham.htm	Prof. Satoshi Tadokoro Department of Computer and Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kobe University Rokkodai, Nada, Kobe 657-8501 Japan Tel. +81-78-803-1195 Fax: +81-78-803-1217 e-mail: tadokoro@in.kobe-u.ac.jp http://orc.cs.kobe-u.ac.jp/index.html
Dr. Tanio K. Tanev Central Laboratory of Mechatronics and Instrumentation, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Acad. G. Bonchev Str. Bl. 1 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria Phone: +359 2 7132422 Fax: +359 2 723571 e-mail: tanio@bgcict.acad.bg	Dr. Phillipe Wenger IRCyN (Institut de Recherche en Cybernetique de NANTES) UMR CNRS 6597 1, rue la Noe BP 92101 44321 Nantes Cedex 3 France Tel. +33 0 240371671 Fax: +33 0 240747406 e-mail: Philippe.Wenger@irccyn.ec-nantes.fr

The official language of EJCK is english. Papers should be submitted either by
electronic e-mail (ejck@sophia.inria.fr). Four different formats will be accepted:

html (version 3.2): this will be the preferred format as it enable the full use of the computers as a media. Note that papers written in LaTeX may be translated into html using latex2html  from Nikos Drakos or hevea   from Luc Maranget. Most text editor provide now ways to save files into html format. This html file should be Netscape compatible.

Animation: Animation within an html file could be provided using Java (with Java Virtual Machine version 1.1.6 or later).
Following the links you can download a Java Virtual Machine for windows  for Mac or for  most current workstations

An alternate format for animation may be to use MPEG files (see here to download an MPEG viewer for your platform).

LaTeX: although no guidelines will be provided papers using fancy styles will be rejected. It will be asked to the author to provide if possible a stand alone file. Figures will be provided in Postscript and should be included in the LateX file only by using some widespread  packages (e.g. includegraphics). The Editors reserve the right of converting a paper submitted in LaTeX format to html format using latext2html or hevea: therefore it will be the responsibility of the author to check is such conversion is possible before submitting a paper.

Postscript: this format will be acceptable only if it has been checked that the file can be displayed using the free  AladdinPostscript previewer ghostview  version 5.50 or later.

PDF: this format will be acceptable
 

An electronic mail for the submission of paper should begin with the electronic mail address of the author to contact for revisions or corrections and any other pertinent information about the paper. This electronic mail should be sent to ejck@sophia.inria.fr.

Once the manuscript is received, it is assigned  a number and an Editor who will  distributethe manuscript for the referees. Questions regarding the status of the manuscript can sent to ejck@sophia.inria.fr or the status can be examined on line (see Papers status).
Posting of articles will be immediate following acceptance and receipt of a signed copyright agreement (see Copyright section).

Important Notices:
 

• Another purpose of EJCK is to provide benches for classical problems in Computational Kinematics.  It is compulsory for algorithm presented in a paper  to provide results on the  available benches of EJCK or , if no EJCK bench is available for the problem, to provide a separate HTML describing the problem, the data  on which the result  have been obtained. For more details see here

•  Submission of updated papers will be possible  only if the original version of the paper was provided in LaTeX, html, Postscript or PDF format

Paper title

Author(s)

Affiliation

E-mail

Abstract: Abstract  should be written in italic font

Key-words:  it is the responsibility of the authors to provide a list of key-words which should be
written in bold font

Instruction for the contact author

An author may propose an update of  a paper previously published in EJCK, for example if the
previously proposed algorithm has been improved, leading to a reduced amount of computation
time, better solutions or more general problems being solved.  Submission of an updated paper will
be possible only if the previously published paper was provided in LaTeX, html or PDF format.

In that case a lighter submission process will be possible:

• the author will provide only the files for the sections of the previously published paper which  are to be updated
• the author will provide a separate html file describing the new results, computation time, solutions of the improved algorithm

       Referees will be contacted by E-MAIL to see if they are available to review a manuscript for EJCK within the required time period. A quick response is essential - the journal reserves the right to find alternative referees if   a reply is not received within one week.  In order to speed up the reviewing process, referees may be required to download manuscripts from our FTP space and upload their  amendments to it. Please e-mail Editor  upon receipt or return of a manuscript by this method. Alternatively, at the referees request, EJCK will execute file transfers to/from a server at the referees  location if this proves easier.

The names of the referees who authorize the journal to make their names available to the authors will be disclosed to the latter.

 When reviewing manuscripts, referees should assess if the manuscript is fit for publication on the grounds that it is (a) of broad  international interest; (b) it is worthy of publication in a first class international journal. Referees should pay particular attention to:

• whether  the title and abstract adequately convey the contents of the manuscript.
• the list of key-words is adequate
• the references to previous works is excellent

EJCK reference form can be found here

2202: Vol 1, number 1 (May 2002)
 
 

Coming soon:
Search by authors
Search by keywords

Soon to come: the mirror list for EJCK

Another purpose of EJCK is to establish benches for classical problems in Computational Kinematics
in order to be able to compare the efficiency of algorithms dealing with the same problem.
Two cases may occur:

1. an author presents an algorithm which deal with a new problem. He (she) will be requested to provide in a separate HTML file a short presentation of the problem and all the necessary data which are needed to run another algorithm on the same problem together with all the solutions of the problem. The computation time together with the type of computer on which they have been obtained will also be indicated.
2. an author presents an algorithm which deal with a problem which is part of the EJCK benches:  he (she) will be requested to present  in the paper the results of  his (her) algorithm on the EJCK benches and to provide a separate HTML file with the results (solutions, computation time and computer on which these results have been obtained).  Failure to provide result on the existing benches or the HTML file will lead to an automatic rejection of the paper

A list of open problems is maintained in EJCK. See the list of open problems here

The board of EJCK is concerned by the the long-term preservation of the papers published in EJCK.
Two possible options are under consideration:

• issue a paper copy of EJCK each year: this can be done quite easily but has the drawback that animation will be lost
• issue a CD copy of EJCK each year: this is more costly and difficult than the previous solution but has the advantage of preserving the  full content of the Journal

Reference to papers published in EJCK should indicate:
 

• Volume and issue number
• Date of publication
• URL of the issue
•  a "Best paper award" from the Editorial Board of EJCK  may be mentioned

Topics    Refereeing process    Board   Submission   Copyright    Referees  Mirror sites     Paper status   Issues    Benches  Open problems   Other useful sites   Archival