Born as a university in Mossoró, UERN is today a University of Rio Grande do Norte. Or more than that: it is a University of the Northeast. Students from several northeastern states, mainly Ceará and Paraíba, flock to its courses. Created in 1968 as a municipal university, UERN is currently present, with its advanced campuses and higher education centers, in 17 cities in Rio Grande do Norte. There are 7 campuses, including the Central Campus in Mossoró, the second largest city in the state, and 11 centers. The advanced campuses are located in Assu, Pau dos Ferros, Patu, Natal, Caicó and, more recently, the Apodi campus was created. The centers are located in the cities of Areia Branca, Apodi, Caraúbas, Umarizal, São Miguel, Alexandria, João Câmara, Touros, Macau, Nova Cruz and Santa Cruz. UERN’s presence in the state is so distributed that there is not a single city more than 70 km away from one of these university units.

The Universidade do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte (UERN), through the national contract between CAPES and IEEE has an unlimited open access agreement with IEEE that enables researchers to publish articles as open access without open access fees in all IEEE fully and hybrid open access journals. The agreement applies to all original research articles accepted for publication between 5 November 2024 – 30 October 2027. To benefit from this agreement, the corresponding author has to be affiliated with Universidade do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte (UERN). Please use the correct institution name and your institutional email address during submi​​ssion. It is recommended for authors to select the CC BY 4.0 license. The open access funding request will be approved by an OA administrator at CAPES. Overlength page charges or color fees are not covered by the agreement and will be charged to authors.