The only eligibility criteria for your paper to be considered under this initiative is that has to be a "new", direct-to-journal paper and not an "evolved" paper from a conference. Also it should not be a review paper.
How do you know if your paper is "new" of "evolved"? It is simple. If your paper was originally presented in a conference, then you extended it by adding some new results and submitted in the journal and got accepted there, then it is an "evolved" paper.
Sometimes the TPC of a conference announces a Special Issue of the journal inviting selected conference paper authors to submit the extended papers in that issue of the journal. Usually, a conference paper is 3-4 pages long and a journal paper is 6-10 pages long. In order to extend your paper you discuss the same results in more detail, add a few more results, but the central technical idea/content remains the same. In such cases, these papers are not eligible for conference presentation under this initiative.
Examples of some of these Special Issues of IEEE Sensors Journal are:
The intent of keeping an "evolved" paper from presenting in a conference under this initiative is to promote significantly 'new' and 'novel' ideas/material only to be presented in the conference. Because of this reason we don't allow a review paper also.
However, a paper published in our journals cannot be considered as an "evolved" paper from a paper that previously appeared in any other journal including our own journals.