  Bio-inspired optimization (including Evolutionary Computation and Swarm
Intelligence) is a growing research topic with many competitive bio-inspired
algorithms being proposed every year. In such an active area, preparing a
successful proposal of a new bio-inspired algorithm is not an easy task. Given
the maturity of this research field, proposing a new optimization technique
with innovative elements is no longer enough. Apart from the novelty, results
reported by the authors should be proven to achieve a significant advance over
previous outcomes from the state of the art. Unfortunately, not all new
proposals deal with this requirement properly. Some of them fail to select an
appropriate benchmark or reference algorithms to compare with. In other cases,
the validation process carried out is not defined in a principled way (or is
even not done at all). Consequently, the significance of the results presented
in such studies cannot be guaranteed. In this work we review several
recommendations in the literature and propose methodological guidelines to
prepare a successful proposal, taking all these issues into account. We expect
these guidelines to be useful not only for authors, but also for reviewers and
editors along their assessment of new contributions to the field.
