What Are IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials?

IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials is an online, open-access journal of the IEEE Communications Society that publishes peer-reviewed survey and tutorial articles covering all aspects of communications technology. The journal occupies a distinct position in the IEEE publications portfolio: while transactions journals report new results and letters journals communicate compact findings quickly, Surveys and Tutorials focuses on synthesizing and contextualizing the existing literature. Its stated goal is to be the authoritative source for researchers and engineers who need a structured, cited overview of a subfield before entering it or before building on its foundations. The publication is fully open access, making its articles freely available without a subscription through the IEEE Xplore platform.

Each article in the journal is expected to be tutorial in nature and written accessibly for readers outside the specific subspecialty being surveyed. This discipline-wide accessibility requirement is central to the editorial mission and distinguishes the journal from internal review articles that assume expert familiarity.

Surveys and Tutorials: Two Article Types

IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials distinguishes formally between two categories of long-form article. A survey article provides a wide-ranging review of a research area from its origins through its current state, documenting technical evolution through dense citation of the primary literature. A tutorial article, by contrast, is designed to teach the reader a specific technique or body of knowledge rather than to document a full field-wide catalog. In practice, many articles published in the journal blend both functions: they teach a technique while simultaneously situating it within the research context that motivated it. Both types must be written for readers who are technically proficient but not necessarily specialists in the precise area under review.

Scope and Coverage

The journal's scope follows that of the IEEE Communications Society, which means it encompasses physical-layer communications, signal detection and estimation, wireless and optical networks, Internet protocols, network security, and emerging areas including quantum communications, vehicular networks, and machine learning applied to communications systems. Long articles that would be too large for a standard transactions venue are appropriate for this journal, as the format accommodates detailed taxonomies, performance comparisons across algorithms, and annotated reference lists that serve as reference tools for the research community. The journal has published influential surveys on topics including OFDM systems, massive MIMO, network slicing, and deep reinforcement learning for resource management.

Publication Format and Access

IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials is published quarterly in print and continuously in electronic form, with articles made available through early access on IEEE Xplore before issue assembly. The open-access model is funded through article processing charges paid by authors or their institutions, which allows unrestricted distribution and reuse under Creative Commons licensing. This access policy has contributed to the journal's high citation rates: articles that can be read and cited without institutional access accumulate citations faster than comparable paywalled publications, and the journal consistently ranks among the highest-impact publications in the communications literature.

Applications

IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials serves a range of roles in research and engineering practice, including:

• Literature entry points for researchers beginning work in an unfamiliar communications subfield
• Reference tools for graduate students constructing literature reviews for theses and dissertations
• Tutorial resources for engineers adopting new signal processing, networking, or security techniques
• Instructional supplements for advanced graduate courses in communications engineering
• Research roadmaps for identifying open problems and unresolved questions in established areas