--- name: science-robotics description: Use when targeting Science Robotics (Sci Robot) or deciding whether a robotics manuscript fits this AAAS venue. Encodes the journal's fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics. --- # Science Robotics (science-robotics) ## Journal positioning Science Robotics is an AAAS journal dedicated to robotics research with demonstrated capability and broad scientific or societal significance. It occupies a position analogous to other Science-family specialty journals: the bar is not incremental technical improvement in a niche robotic system but a result that shifts what is possible or understood in robotics and is legible to scientists outside the immediate sub-field. Demonstrated performance in realistic or challenging environments — not just simulation — is a recurrent editorial requirement. The readership includes roboticists, engineers, biologists, materials scientists, and clinical researchers who engage with robotics as a tool for scientific discovery or societal benefit. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the AAAS / Science Robotics site and the submission system. ## When to trigger - The author names Science Robotics or Sci Robot as the target venue. - A robotics paper claims broad significance and demonstrated capability and the author is evaluating AAAS tier versus IEEE or Nature-family alternatives. - A paper from an adjacent field (materials, biology, medicine) involves a robotic system with field-level significance and needs venue framing. - The author wants to identify the most common desk-reject risks for this venue. ## Scope & topic fit - Novel robotic systems demonstrating new locomotion, manipulation, sensing, or actuation capabilities in realistic conditions. - Soft robotics, bioinspired robotics, and morphological computation with demonstrated mechanical capability and conceptual insight. - Human-robot interaction and collaborative robotics with demonstrated safe, effective performance in human-scale environments. - Medical robotics, surgical systems, and rehabilitation devices where demonstrated clinical or preclinical performance is central. - Autonomous systems and robot intelligence (perception, planning, learning) where the robotic integration and demonstrated task performance are the primary contribution. - Robotic exploration, environmental monitoring, or disaster response with documented field performance. ## Method & evidence bar - Demonstrated capability is the primary bar: results must show the robot doing something genuinely new, not a slightly better version of existing capabilities; real-world or realistically constrained experiments are preferred over pure simulation. - Physical performance claims must be quantified with appropriate metrics, repeated trials, and statistical characterization; single-run demonstrations are insufficient for central claims. - For learning-based robotics, the training environment and sim-to-real transfer assumptions must be clearly stated; evaluation in conditions that differ from training is expected. - Fabrication and hardware reproducibility: materials, manufacturing processes, and key parameters should be described with sufficient detail for the robotics community to assess reproducibility. - Videos and supplementary demonstrations are expected and strongly influence editorial evaluation; production quality of videos should match the significance of the claim. - Comparison to relevant prior robotic systems is required; the performance advance must be quantified relative to credible baselines. ## Structure & house style - AAAS format: Research Article format with abstract, introduction, results, discussion, materials and methods; re-check current Science Robotics specific requirements. - The abstract and introduction must establish broad significance: what barrier in robotics or in the broader science/society this work removes. - The structured abstract (if required by current instructions) should be drafted; check current AAAS requirements for this venue. - Video supplementary material is expected for experimental results; the editorial office reviews video evidence alongside text claims. - Main text figures should demonstrate the system in action; schematics, performance plots, and comparison tables should be integrated logically. - Supplementary Materials carry extended methods, fabrication protocols, additional experimental data, and video captions. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked. - Search the live AAAS site for "Science Robotics information for authors" and follow the current version. - Re-check article type (Research Article, Review, Research Resource, Focus, Perspective), length, and figure limits. - Prepare supplementary video(s) meeting current format and size requirements; include video captions. - Confirm data availability statement and any requirements for hardware design files or code. - Complete AAAS ethics, competing-interest, and author-contribution disclosures. - Check AI-use disclosure requirements. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] One sentence stating what robotics capability this paper enables that was not possible before, and why it matters broadly. - [ ] Central performance claims are supported by repeated experiments with quantified statistics, not single demonstrations. - [ ] Physical hardware demonstrations are the primary evidence; simulation results (if any) are positioned as supporting analysis. - [ ] Supplementary video is prepared and directly substantiates the key performance claims. - [ ] The paper positions its advance against the most capable prior robotic systems with quantitative comparisons. - [ ] Fabrication/hardware details are sufficient for the community to assess reproducibility. ## Common desk-reject triggers - Incremental improvement on an existing robotic system without a novel capability or conceptual advance. - Primary evidence from simulation alone, with no physical demonstration or compelling argument for why physical results are unnecessary. - Performance claims not supported by repeated trials and statistical characterization. - Missing or low-quality supplementary video for experimental claims. - Narrow technical robotics contribution without articulated broader significance beyond the immediate sub-community. ## Re-routing decision Robotics papers with strong ML/AI framing and broader AI significance → `nature-machine-intelligence`. Computer vision or perception methods not tightly tied to physical robotic performance → `ieee-transactions-on-pattern-analysis-and-machine-intelligence`. Excellent robotics methods work that is rigorous but narrower in significance → IEEE Transactions on Robotics or the International Journal of Robotics Research. Soft-materials or actuator advance without full robotic system integration → `nature-materials` or advanced materials venues. ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Science Robotics [Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics> [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check]
[Re-route suggestion] ```