Control Engineering Practice

Control Engineering Practice is published by Elsevier Ltd and is in Zone 2 of Computer Science in the CAS Journal Ranking (2025 upgraded edition). By OpenAlex counts of its recent articles, its largest topics are Advanced Control Systems Optimization, Fault Detection and Control Systems and Adaptive Control of Nonlinear Systems, together about 35.9% of its articles. Its main subfields are Control and Systems Engineering. (generated from OpenAlex topic counts and CAS ranking data)

A journal of IFAC, The International Federation of Automatic Control. Control Engineering Practice strives to meet the needs of industrial practitioners and industrially related academics and researchers. It publishes papers which illustrate the direct application of control theory and its supporting tools in all possible areas of automation. As a result, the journal only contains papers which can be considered to have made significant contributions to the application of advanced control techniques. It is normally expected that practical results should be included, but where simulation only studies are available, it is necessary to demonstrate that the simulation model is representative of a genuine application. Strictly theoretical papers will find a more appropriate home in Control Engineering Practice's sister publication, Automatica. It is also expected that papers are innovative with respect to the state of the art and are sufficiently detailed for a reader to be able to duplicate the main results of the paper (supplementary material, including datasets, tables, code and any relevant interactive material can be made available and downloaded from the website). The benefits of the presented methods must be made very clear and the new techniques must be compared and contrasted with results obtained using existing methods. Moreover, a thorough analysis of failures that may happen in the design process and implementation can also be part of the paper.The scope of Control Engineering Practice matches the activities of IFAC.Papers demonstrating the contribution of automation and control in improving the performance, quality, productivity, sustainability, resource and energy efficiency, and the manageability of systems and processes for the benefit of mankind and are relevant to industrial practitioners are most welcome.Fields of applications in control and automation: •Automotive Systems •Aerospace Applications •Marine Systems •Intelligent Transportation Systems and Traffic Control •Autonomous Vehicles •Robotics •Human Machine Systems •Mechatronic Systems •Scientific Instrumentation •Micro- and Nanosystems •Fluid Power Systems •Gas Turbines and Fluid Machinery •Machine Tools •Manufacturing Technology and Production Engineering •Logistics •Power Electronics •Electrical Drives •Internet of Things •Communication Systems •Power and Energy Systems •Biomedical Engineering and Medical Applications •Biosystems and Bioprocesses •Biotechnology •Chemical Engineering •Pulp and Paper Processing •Mining, Mineral and Metal Processing •Water/Gas/Oil Reticulation Systems •Environmental Engineering •Agricultural Systems •Food Engineering •Other Emerging Control ApplicationsApplicable methods, theories and technologies: •Modeling, Simulation and Experimental Model Validation •System Identification and Parameter Estimation •Observer Design and State Estimation •Soft Sensing •Sensor Fusion •Optimization •Adaptive and Robust Control •Learning Control •Nonlinear Control •Control of Distributed-Parameter Systems •Model-based Control Techniques •Optimal Control and Model Predictive Control •Controller Tuning •PID Control •Feedforward Control and Trajectory Planning •Networked Control •Stochastic Systems •Fault Detection and Isolation •Diagnosis and Supervision •Actuator and Sensor Design •Measurement Technology in Control •Software Engineering Techniques •Real-time and Distributed Computing •Intelligent Components and Instruments •Architectures and Algorithms for Control •Real-time Algorithms •Computer-aided Systems Analysis and Design •Implementation of Automation Systems •Machine Learning •Artificial Intelligence Techniques •Discrete Event and Hybrid Systems •Production Planning and Scheduling •Automation •Data Mining •Data Analytic •Performance Monitoring •Experimental Design •Other Emerging Control Theories and Related TechnologiesFor more details on the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), visit their home page.

From the journal's Aims & Scope

Research area (LetPub): Engineering, Electrical & Electronic

Editor-in-chief Knut GraichenPublisher website

Editorial board by country: 30 in mainland China (about 18%); most named Mainland China 30, Italy 24, United States 15, Canada 12, France 11 (164 members with a country) Editorial board ↗Publisher website · 2026-10-01

CAS Journal Ranking

Database indexing

SCIEScopusLetPub

International journal early-warning lists: not listed in any editionLetPub

Editions, and major and minor categories, are shown separately and never merged into one zone; check which edition your institution uses before you submit or report.

Impact

Impact factor

5.22LetPub · 2026-09-13

Impact factor (publisher)

5.3Publisher website · 2026-10-01

CiteScore 2026-06

9.1LetPub · 2026-09-13

CiteScore (publisher)

9.1Publisher website · 2026-10-01

SJR 2026-06

1.22LetPub · 2026-09-13

SNIP 2026-06

1.73LetPub · 2026-09-13

h-index

104LetPub · 2026-09-13

h-index

165OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

i10-index

4,081OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

2-year mean citedness

4.66OpenAlex · 2026-10-01

Self-citation rate

13.2%LetPub · 2026-09-13

Share of gold OA articles

23.55%LetPub · 2026-09-13

Volume

Articles per year

395LetPub · 2026-09-13

Sources count differently and were observed at different times, so each source's own value is kept; "publisher" marks figures from the journal's website.

Figures by source

Average review time (community reports)

4–8 weeksLetPub · 2026-09-13

Average acceptance (community reports)

EasyLetPub · 2026-09-13

Submission to first decision

2 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

First decision after review

62 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

Submission to acceptance

149 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

Acceptance to publication

15 daysPublisher website · 2026-10-01

Peer review

Single anonymous peer reviewPublisher website

Community reports come from authors' own submissions (confidence 0.5) and are not a promise from the journal; for publisher figures, the journal's own definitions apply.

A hybrid journal charges the APC only when the author chooses open access; publishing under the subscription model is usually free.

The journal's website is authoritative for fees; sources were observed at different times and each keeps its own value, without averaging.

Excerpts are quoted from the journal's website; "model summary" lines are written by Workers AI and checked against the text. The journal's website is authoritative.

Publisher

Elsevier Ltd

Country or region

ENGLAND

Language

English

Frequency

Bimonthly

Founded

1993

ISSN

0967-0661

Electronic ISSN

1873-6939

Official links

• Journal homepage ↗LetPub
• Submission system ↗Publisher website
• Special issues ↗Publisher website