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Submitted papers must eventually be classified into one of two groups: papers or correspondences, except papers submitted to a special section which includes only regular papers. The distinction between these categories is discussed below. The author will make it clear that the paper being submitted is intended for one of these categories. However, you must make an editorial decision, hopefully with the input of the referees, as to which category the paper belongs and make this clear in your decision. Your decision need not coincide with the original intent of the author.

In making your decision regarding paper classification, you should consider the nature of the contributions made. The distinction between the two should be one of nature and scope, not one of quality or length. Transactions correspondences include comments on published papers, corrections, as well as new high quality technical contributions primarily representing enhancements or extensions of previous work.

Care must be taken in interpreting the reviewer's input. The recommendation options for the reviewer don't necessarily clarify correspondence vs. regular paper. Hopefully the reviewer has noted the author's intention and commented on this in the comments section of the review.

Given the reality that the Transactions can publish only a fixed number of pages per year, the length of accepted regular papers must be carefully monitored. Editors play a key role in determining the length of accepted submissions. The appropriate paper length should be set on a case-by-case basis by each Editor. All Editors are asked to consider the appropriate length for each paper and to explicitly let the authors know how the authors can achieve the appropriate length for the final version of their paper. Editors and reviewers play a valuable role in helping authors to remove redundant or unimportant material from their papers by specifically noting such material to the authors and requesting them to remove/revise this material.

For a correspondence, the length limit is 12 pages for the main text (with 12-point font size and about 26 lines per page), and a total of 7 figures and tables (a subfigure is counted as one figure).