The Data-Centric Engineering (DCE) journal is delighted to be collaborating with the organisers of the Turing Institute workshop on Future of Automotive Electronics and Software: Towards a Research Roadmap on the following special collection (virtual special issue) in the journal. 

Note: the submission deadline has been extended to 30th May 2025. For more details see below. 

Jump to: 

• Introduction
• Topics
• Key dates
• Why Submit to DCE?
• How to submit
• Templates
• Open materials
• Guest Editors

Introduction

The current generation of automotive systems stand to be fundamentally disrupted given impending developments in AI, quantum, position, navigation, timing, sensing and connectivity. Such systems are expected to feature higher levels of autonomy bringing together advances in sensing and intelligent decision making, and increasing levels of interconnectivity, where communication is opportunistic and ad hoc. The economic shifts in terms of evolving car ownership and globally-shifting supply chains would also be influential, along with challenges involves in safety and security assurance of such systems. 

This special collection in the open-access journal Data-Centric Engineering (Cambridge University Press; 2022 Impact Factor: 3.6) seeks to bring together a collection of papers exploring emerging areas of science and technology underpinning the future state of automotive electronics and software. This embraces disciplinary areas across computer science and AI, engineering sciences, economics, human factors and user-centred design, policy and governance.  

Topics

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Automotive and Mechnical Engineering
• ML, AI and Autonomous Systems
• PNT and Sensing  
• Electronics and Embedded Systems
• Vehicular Communication and Networking
• Modelling and Simulation
• Economics and Supply Chain
• Regulation and Governance
• Safety, Security and Resilience 
• Human Factors and User-Centred Design

Key dates

• Full paper submission: 29th November 2024 30th May 2025

Articles will go through the standard DCE review process, which involves obtaining two expert reviews before decision. Articles accepted for publication will be published as soon as ready and tagged to a special collection page dedicated to the theme (Emerging Trends and Concepts for Future Automative Electronics and Software). An editorial introducing the articles will be published in 2025.

Why Submit to DCE?

✔ A venue dedicated to the potential of data science for all areas of engineering.
✔ Welcoming research and translational articles from authors, whether they are based in academia or industry.
✔ Well-cited (2023 Impact Factor: 2.4; 2022 Cite Score: 5.6) and indexed in Web of Science, Scopus and Directory of Open Access Journals.
✔ #OpenAccess with support for unfunded authors thanks to the Lloyd's Register Foundation - no hard requirement to pay an article processing charge (APC).
✔ Promotes open sharing of data and code through Open Science Badges.

How to submit

Key considerations for submitting are below, with full details available in the DCE Instructions for Authors. 

Article Types

DCE particularly encourages the submission of Translational Articles from contributors based in industry or academic-industry collaborations and we believe this special issue holds a lot of potential for this type of contribution.

Translational Articles should be concise (around 5,000 words), with a focus on the environment or setting in which data science has been applied, the challenges encountered during deployment, and the lessons learned. The methods used to enable knowledge transfer should also be discussed.

DCE also encourages the submission of: 

• Research articles using data science methods and models for improving the reliability, resilience, safety, efficiency and usability of engineered systems.
• Data papers that describe in a structured way, with a narrative and accompanying metadata, important and re-usable data sets in open repositories with potential for re-use in engineering research and practice. These papers promote data transparency and data re-use
• Survey papers providing a detailed, balanced and authoritative current account of the existing literature concerning data-intensive methods in a particular facet of engineering sciences.
• Tutorial reviews providing an introduction and overview of an important topic of relevance to the journal readership. The topic should be of relevance to both students and researchers who are new to the field as well as experts and provide a good introduction to the development of a subject, its current state and indications of future directions the field is expected to take
• Position papers providing an overview of an important issue for this emerging field. (Typically 6,000 words or less).

Note that DCE is an open-access journal that is funded through a mixed model of Transformative Agreements, article processing charges (when accepted authors have funds and aren't already covered by the agreements) and support from the Lloyd's Register Foundation. We'd like to stress that no author is excluded from publication on financial grounds or due to institutional affiliation: unfunded authors are supported through the LRF waiver fund and Cambridge's discretionary waiver policies, as explained on the Open Access options page.

Templates

Authors have the option but are not required to use the following templates:

• DCE LaTeX template files (for research articles)
• DCE LaTeX template files (for Translational Articles)
• Use Overleaf (a LaTeX-based collaborative authoring tool; read about benefits of this tool)
• DCE Word template

Note that authors should provide both an abstract that summarizes the paper (250 words or less) and beneath it an impact statement (120 words describing the significance of the findings in language that can be understood by a wide audience). Competing interest, funding and data availability statements should be provided at the end of the main text above the references (see disclosure statements).

Articles should be submitted through the DCE ScholarOne Manuscript Central system, but note that if you use the Overleaf tool you can submit directly into the system without having to reupload files.

Open materials

Authors are encouraged to make code and data that supports the findings openly available in a recognised repository and to link to them in the Data Availability Statement in the article. We recognise this may not be possible in all circumstances. See the DCE Research Transparency policy. Open Data and Open Materials badges will be displayed on published articles that link to replication materials, as a recognition of open practices.

Cambridge’s Open Engage platform is a location for sharing early research outputs and additional materials. It can, for example, be used to host working papers, pre-prints, presentations and posters. Materials uploaded to Open Engage will receive a DOI (and therefore be citable objects), allowing authors to link to them in their submitted article.

Guest Editors

• Prof. Siraj Shaikh (Swansea University)
• Prof. Subramanian Ramamoorthy (University of Edinburgh)
• Prof. Valentina Donzella (University of Warwick)