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Ethics Statement

Our Commitment to Integrity (Broadly Defined)

At I3E TPAMI, we take research ethics seriously — we just take other things more seriously, such as impact factor metrics, page charges, and the unbroken optimism of authors who believe their 14th revision will finally satisfy Reviewer #2.

Data Fabrication and Falsification

We maintain a strict policy against data fabrication, which we define as “inventing data with no plausible basis whatsoever.” Exploratory fabrication — that is, generating data that could have been observed under conditions that might have existed — falls under our liberal methodology category and is classified as “speculative empiricism.” We find it enriches the literature considerably.

Authors are encouraged to report results that are “consistent with” their hypothesis. If results are inconsistent, authors are encouraged to reframe the hypothesis post-hoc until consistency is achieved. This practice, known in lesser journals as HARKing (Hypothesizing After Results are Known), we prefer to call “retroactive alignment of theoretical framing.”

Plagiarism

Verbatim copying without attribution is not permitted. However, we recognize that ideas, like good review scores, recirculate through the academic ecosystem. Substantial paraphrasing of prior work — especially your own prior work — constitutes a tribute, not a violation. We encourage authors to cite themselves generously, as this strengthens our journal’s impact factor and their h-index simultaneously. This is called synergy.

Open Access Policy

What “Open Access” Means to Us

At I3E TPAMI, we are proud to support Open Access publishing in the same way that a landlord supports affordable housing: with enthusiasm in principle and firm resistance in practice.

Our Open Access model is called TPAMI-OA Gold™, which means that for a modest Article Processing Charge (APC) of $12,000 USD — a figure we arrived at by asking “what is the maximum amount a desperate postdoc’s grant can cover?” — your article will be made freely available to anyone who navigates our website, solves the CAPTCHA, creates an account, verifies their institutional affiliation, and clicks the correct button, which we relocate quarterly to prevent habituation.

What Is Freely Visible

The following portions of every article are accessible without payment or login:

  • The title
  • The first name of the first author (the last name requires login)
  • An abstract truncated at 150 characters, ending mid-sentence
  • A JPEG thumbnail of Figure 1, rendered at 72 DPI

We consider this sufficient for readers to “get the gist,” which is honestly all most people want anyway.

Peer Review Process

Overview

I3E TPAMI employs a rigorous double-blind peer review process, in which both authors and reviewers are blind — the authors to the realistic prospects of acceptance, and the reviewers to the actual content of the paper, which they assess primarily by abstract length, number of figures, and whether they personally know the author (which they can always tell, despite the anonymisation).

How Peer Review Works at TPAMI

Upon submission, manuscripts are assessed by the Editor-in-Chief, who determines fitness for peer review using criteria that have not been published and cannot be appealed. Approximately 73% of submissions are desk-rejected within 72 hours. The remaining 27% are sent for review, of which 91% will eventually be rejected anyway, typically after 9–14 months, three rounds of revision, and the complete rewriting of the introduction.

Our Reviewer Pool

TPAMI maintains a curated pool of approximately 2,400 reviewers, of whom roughly 40 respond to review invitations. Reviewers are selected for their expertise in the general vicinity of the submission’s topic and for their availability (defined as: not currently reviewing for six other journals simultaneously). Each submission receives two to three reviews, though we count “I have not read this paper carefully but I have concerns” as a full review.