Focus and Scope

The Journal of Smart Cities offers a multidisciplinary forum for publishing original research in the area of smart cities, bringing together scholars from the fields of engineering, urban planning, computer science, and information and knowledge management. The Journal of Smart Cities will serve as an international platform by sharing the latest research achievements on smart cities globally, offering a comprehensive access to researchers and the academic communities.

The Journal of Smart Cities adopts a wide perspective on Smart Cities, as the broad use of information and telecommunication technologies to support an innovative and sustainable urban infrastructure and environment; as participatory action within cities, engagement of citizens, and investment in ICT, Internet technologies and smart objects, which increase the intelligence and problem solving capacity of cities; as an urban laboratory, a Living Lab, and a generator of solutions for wicked problems of inclusion, sustainability, climate change, and global competitiveness.

The main objectives of the Journal of Smart Cities are to promote research for the improvement of all sub-systems of cities, including urban infrastructure, construction, mobility, energy saving and renewable energy, health and social care, safety in the public space, work and innovation, and make the city easily accessible, effective, efficient, and an attractive place to live. Information and communication technologies, the Internet, and embedded devices into the physical space of cities is a means to achieve these objectives, which are mainly realized through the empowerment of city institutions, organizations, citizens, and end-users to make better, more informed, and intelligent decisions.

The Journal of Smart Cities aims to publish articles in all areas of smart cities, by scholars and experts in the field, but primarily from the fields of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Urban Planning, and Transport, while relevant contributions about the development of smart city technologies from the fields of Electrical Engineering, Informatics, and Computer Science are also welcome. Emphasizing on brilliant-quality research and timely publication, the Journal of Smart Cities invests in the management of best technological platform in an innovation context.

Smart city development and structure

• Case studies of smart city development
• Human smart cities
• Frameworks and models for smart city initiatives
• Mechanisms for motivating behaviour change in smart cities
• Architectures an ontologies of smart cities
• Smart city bibliometrics
• Upcoming, future trends

Smart city planning and applications design

• Planning and design challenges for smart cities
• User-centred and participatory design of services and systems for smart cities
• Innovation labs, living labs, experimental test-beds and simulation environments
• Service innovation and design to support smart cities
• Case studies on smart city strategies and projects

Smart city infrastructure and data

• Intelligent materials and structures for smart city infrastructures
• Intelligent manufacturing technology for smart city infrastructures
• Internet-of-Things enabled infrastructures and services
• Sensor-based networks and applications
• Big data and urban data analytics
• Platforms for smart cities
• Smart city clouds, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS
• Safety, security, and privacy for smart cities

Structural control and health monitoring (SC&HM) in smart cities

• Cost-efficient wireless sensor nodes and sensor networks for SC&HM
• Sensing and control technology and algorithms accounting for uncertainty
• Nanocomposite technologies for smart sensing of large-scale structures
• Power management and energy harvesting for SC&HM applications
• Structural health monitoring data management and processing for smart cities
• Structural health monitoring data interpretation for asset management
• Case-studies of SC&HM for smart cities

Smart city financial engineering

• Financing mechanisms for smart cities
• Business models for smart cities
• Monitoring and assessment of smart cities

Applications for smart cities

• Case studies and innovative applications for smart(er) cities
• Intelligent Transport Systems and traffic and fleet management
• Car pooling and car sharing applications
• Intelligent building management systems
• Smart grids
• Smart energy
• Smart water and drainage systems
• Smart food systems
• e-Health systems
• Applications for smart economy
• Applications for smart city governance
• Urban monitoring and optimization

Section Policies

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

EDITORIAL

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

REVIEW ARTICLE

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

CONFERENCE ABSTRACT

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to Journal of Smart Cities undergo rigorous peer review. 

• Initial submission is reviewed by in house editors to ensure adherence to policies of the Journal of Smart Cities.
• The editor-in-chief decides on the manuscript to be sent out for review process and assigns the manuscript to one of the associate editors according to the particular topic.
• The associate editor chooses the reviewers inside the editorial board or outside depending on the topic.
• After evaluations by the reviewers have been received, the associate editor makes one of the following recommendations: accept, reject, accept with minor revision, accept with major revision.
• The editor-in-chief makes a final decision.
• If decision is minor revision, the authors have 30 days to resubmit the revised manuscript.
• If decision is major revision, the authors have 90 days to resubmit the revised manuscript.
• Upon resubmission, the same procedure is applied as for the initial submission. .
• Authors may appeal for a rejected submission. Appeal requests must be made in writing to editorial@udspublish.com with detailed reasons for the appeal and point by point responses to the reviewers remarks. Decisions on appeals are final without exception.

Note: You may suggest up to four academically qualified reviewers to review your submitted manuscript. Please insert the current contact details of the reviewer and state the reason for recommendation under the "Comments for the Editor" section. However, please take note that this does not confirm that the recommended reviewers will be selected to review your manuscript.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Editorial Policies

A manuscript would not be accepted if it has been published or is under consideration for publication in any other journal. The author also needs to notify the journal if the data presented in this paper has been ever presented in conferences.

Authorship

Authorship should be limited to people who have contributed substantially to the work. The corresponding author must have obtained permission from all the authors mentioned in the manuscript. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring adherence to all editorial and submission policies and for any communications and actions that may be necessary after publication. A maximum of two corresponding authors are allowed for the responsibilities associated. The corresponding author must include written permission from the authors of the work concerned for any mention of any unpublished material included in the manuscript, for example, data from manuscripts-in-press, personal communication, or work in preparation. Authors must indicate their specific contributions to the published work. This information will be published as a footnote in the paper. Examples of contributions include: designed research, performed research, contributed new reagents or analytic tools, analyzed data, wrote the paper.

Conflict of Interest

The author has to provide the authorization of no conflict with any financial body or funding agency that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All authors, members, reviewers and editors must disclose any association that poses a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript. The corresponding author will be asked to sign a form behalf of all of the authors regarding potential conflicts of interest at the time of acceptance.

Plagiarism

Journal of Smart Cities does not approve any Plagiarized manuscripts. We use plagiarism detection software to verify the originality of submitted manuscripts.

If a manuscript uses a text copied directly from another source, this text must be written in quotation marks and original source must be cited. If any kind of plagiarism is detected during the review process the manuscript may be rejected.

Publication Fees

Publication fees would be waived off for the first two issues.

Language

UDS Publishing Pte Ltd offers its own professional editing services. By using this service, you can be sure that your English-language manuscript will be polished and ready for submission to your publication of choice at a very reasonable price. For further details about the Language Editing Services, please contact us at editorial@udspublish.com. Please note that utilizing a language editing service is not a guarantee of acceptance.

Submission of Revised Manuscripts

Revised manuscripts must contain a detailed point by point response to the comments of the reviewers. The response to reviewers has to be uploaded as a separate file.

Withdrawal of Manuscript

If you withdraw your manuscript after it has been accepted (but not yet published), you will be charged for  costs incurred at USD200.

Information Sharing

According to Journal of Smart Cities policies authors agree to make data and information freely available for replication by other researchers. If there are restrictions to availability of any data, or information, these must be disclosed in the cover letter and in methods section of the manuscript at the time of submission.

Supporting Information

Authors can include detailed materials and methods in this section to provide a reader to follow the experiments and results. However, the main paper should stand on its own without the SI and should be submitted as a separate file.

Data Processing Policy

Authors are expected to have minimum amount of post-acquisition processing of data. In case of processing; alterations must be applied to the entire image (e.g., brightness, contrast, color balance). Any kind of alteration if being done has to be clearly stated in the figure legend and in Methods section.

Grouping of data (e.g., cropping of images of removal of lanes from gels and bolts) must be made apparent and should be explicitly indicated in the appropriate figure legends. Data comparisons should only be made from comparative experiments, and individual data should not be utilized across multiple figures. If inappropriate image/data manipulation is identified after publication, we reserve the right to ask for the original data and, if that is not satisfactory, to issue a correction or retract the paper, as appropriate.

Waiver Policy

We encourage authors to publish their papers with us and don’t wish the cost of article processing fees to be a barrier especially to authors from the low and lower middle income countries/regions. A range of discounts or waivers are offered to authors who are unable to pay our publication processing fees. Authors can write in to apply for a waiver and requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Authors based in these countries/regions listed below may apply to receive up to a 50%-100% waiver of the standard article processing fee; Waiver subjected to approval.We encourage authors to publish their papers with us and don’t wish the cost of article processing fees to be a barrier especially to authors from the low and lower middle income countries/regions. A range of discounts or waivers are offered to authors who are unable to pay our publication processing fees. Authors can write in to apply for a waiver and requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis.Priority for this waiver program will be given to applications by authors from countries eligible for the Research4Life program.

If you are residing in a developing country and need to apply for a waiver please email our editorial department (editorial@udspublish.com) with the following information:

• Your name and institution with full address details
• Title of journal you wish to submit a manuscript to
• Reason for applying for a waiver
• Title of your paper
• Country of residence of any co-authors.

 

Digital Preservation Policy

UDS Publishing will preserve e-journals with Portico, ensuring that they will be secure and available into the future.

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statements

UDS is committed to maintaining high standards through a rigorous peer review, together with strict ethical policies. Any infringements of professional ethical codes such as plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, or bogus claims of authorship should be taken very seriously by the editors, with zero tolerance. 

UDS follows the Code of Conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and follows the COPE Flowcharts for Resolving Cases of Suspected Misconduct. 

The submitted manuscript should not have been previously published in any form and must not be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.