Conceived and founded by Prof. Dr. José Mariano da Rocha Filho, was created by Law no. 3,834-C, of ​​December 14, 1960, with the name of University of Santa Maria – USM. The Federal University of Santa Maria was the first federal university established in the interior of Brazil, outside of a capital city. This event represented an important milestone in the process of expanding public university education in Brazil and contributed to Rio Grande do Sul becoming the first state in the Federation to have two federal universities. The institution offers 106 postgraduate courses, 34 of which are doctoral, 59 master’s, 12 specialization and one postdoctoral program.

The Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM), 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 Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM). 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.