Submissions

Author Guidelines

Authors are invited to make a submission to this journal. All submissions will be assessed by an editor to determine whether they meet the aims and scope of this journal. Those considered to be a good fit will be sent for peer review before determining whether they will be accepted or rejected.

Before making a submission, authors are responsible for obtaining permission to publish any material included with the submission, such as photos, documents and datasets. All authors identified on the submission must consent to be identified as an author. Where appropriate, research should be approved by an appropriate ethics committee in accordance with the legal requirements of the study's country.

An editor may desk reject a submission if it does not meet minimum standards of quality. Before submitting, please ensure that the study design and research argument are structured and articulated properly. The title should be concise and the abstract should be able to stand on its own. This will increase the likelihood of reviewers agreeing to review the paper. When you're satisfied that your submission meets this standard, please follow the checklist below to prepare your submission.

Furthermore, Cognitive Security operates on a cost recovery basis and pays reviewers a fair rate for their services. As such, we charge a $249USD submission fee (with an optional expedited processing add-on for additional fee). Payments can be made by Zeffy Payment to the CSI Press. Review will not commence until payment is confirmed. We have a robust fee waiver system setup for underserved persons. Please reach out to the editor to request options for a hardship waiver.  

APCs:

Original Research Articles, Case Studies, Conceptual Analysis, and Review:
$1749USD 

Brief Research Report / Mini-Review / Case Report / Data Report / Perspective 
$749USD

Manuscript Format

Manuscripts are based on the 1.8b IEEE Computer Society LaTeX template which is available from Overleaf.com (Word Template pending) or here.  This 8.5” x 11” maintains:

• Top Margin: 0.75 inches (19 mm)
• Bottom Margin: 1.0 inch (25.4 mm)
• Left/Right Margins: 0.625 inches (15.875 mm) to 0.75 inches (19 mm), depending on the specific publication venue
• Column Structure: Two-column format is standard, with a 0.25-inch to 0.34-inch gutter (space between columns)
• Print Area: All text, figures, and tables must fit within a print area of approximately 6-7/8 inches (17.5 cm) wide by 8-7/8 inches (22.54 cm) high.

Manuscript Submission Instructions

Articles cannot be concurrently submitted, under review, or published by any other publication, print or electronic. The Cognitive Security Institute and CSI Press are not responsible in the event that any manuscript, or any part thereof, is lost. All materials are submitted and edited electronically using Open Journal System.

The editorial staff reviews all contributions to the journal with respect to suitability, quality, and formatting. Those submissions that pass this screening will be peer-reviewed. All submissions are received with the understanding that the Editor and editorial staff have the right to require revisions in conformity with Journal standards and style. Notification of all decisions concerning the status of a submission, including acceptance of the submission into the system for screening, will be sent to the corresponding author.

Manuscripts may also be screened, including with services provided by third parties, to help detect integrity issues such as inappropriate image alteration and papermill activity.

Scope/Categories of Manuscripts

Original Research Articles, Case Studies, Conceptual Analysis, and Review

Original Research Articles cover original research such as behavioral investigations, modeling and simulation results, systematic reviews, in-depth case studies, meta-analyses, or other original scholarly work that have previously not been published. Original studies may encompass confirming studies and disconfirming results which allow hypothesis elimination or directly report on the non-reproducibility of previously published results. Original Research articles are peer-reviewed and have a minimum word count of 8000 and maximum word count of 16,000. In practice, this is a minimum length of 10 pages and maximum length of 20 pages in the CSI Press template.  

For design and reporting, systematic reviews must conform to the reporting guidelines (e.g., PRISMA) and include the PRISMA flow diagram http://prisma-statement.org/prismastatement/flowdiagram.aspx (if applicable).

Brief Research Report / Mini-Review / Case Report / Data Report / Perspective / Commentaries

These brief reports should cover focused investigation and recent developments on a specific topic. Furthermore, Critical Commentaries provide a critical review on a previous publication or interpretation of recent findings in a given research area, addressing strengths and weaknesses of the given method or approach. They should not provide unpublished or original data. They should be supported by evidence, be fully-referenced, and encourage constructive discussion in the community. Papers in this section should be no more than 5 pages (4000-5000 words).

Data Availability Statement

The journal encourages all authors, where ethically possible, to publicly release all data underlying any published paper. Authors must include a Data Availability Statement in their published article.

Ethics of Investigation

Authors should specify within the manuscript whether ethical standards were used in their research, whether it is considered human research, and how it was determined that the research is derived from human subjects.

Human Studies

If the results of a project involving data derived from human subjects are reported, the manuscript must include a statement that the research was approved by the responsible ethics committee of the institution, e.g., an Institutional Review Board or equivalent oversight group that has been formally designated to review and monitor biomedical research, and that the research was consistent with the principles outlined in an internationally recognized standard for the ethical conduct of human research. In general, investigators are unable to make this determination on their own. The Editors of Cognitive Security take ethics committee review and informed consent very seriously. Authors may be questioned about the details of consent forms or the consent process. On occasion, the Editors may request a copy of the approved IRB outcome letter or equivalent from the author. Lack of appropriate consent or documentation may be grounds for rejection. Ethics committee approval does not guarantee acceptance by the journal; the final decision will be made by the Editors.

Manuscripts that Pose Potential Security Risks

Authors and reviewers are expected to notify editors if a manuscript could present a risk for disclosing classified information or sensitive research of concern (e.g., research that could be misused by others to pose a threat to public health and safety, agriculture, plants, animals, the environment, or material). The editor will evaluate manuscripts that report such research and, if necessary, consult necessary authorities or additional reviewers.

Approvals and Clearances to Publish

Authors are responsible for obtaining all other required approvals and clearances to publish from their own institutions, military services, or any other governing authorities.

Publication Ethics

Authors should observe high standards with respect to publication ethics as set out by the Commission on Publication Ethics (COPE). Falsification or fabrication of data; plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work without proper citation; and misappropriation of work are all unacceptable practices. Cases of ethical misconduct are treated very seriously and will be dealt with in accordance with COPE guidelines.

The US Office of Research Integrity defines scientific misconduct and includes these behaviors:

• Falsification of data: ranges from fabrication to deceptive reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or willful suppression and/or distortion of data.
• Plagiarism: The appropriation of the language, ideas or thoughts of another without crediting their true source and representation of them as one’s own original work.
• Improprieties of authorship: improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, inclusion of individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published, or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
• Misappropriation of the ideas of others: an important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.
• Violation of generally accepted research practices: serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results.
• Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research: including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, willful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biological or chemical materials.
• Inappropriate behavior in relation to misconduct: this includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding of information relevant to a claim or misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation.

Many journals also consider misconduct to include redundant publication and duplicate publication, lack of declaration of competing interests and of funding/sponsorship, and other failures of transparency. 

Managing allegations of misconduct

Authors alone are responsible for the content and opinions expressed in the paper. If issues arise pre-publication regarding the possibility of plagiarism, conflicts of interest, scientific misconduct, disputes over authorship, or any other such concerns, the manuscript will be tabled until the situation is resolved to the satisfaction of the journal. These cases may be referred to appropriate institutional and/or regulatory officials; however, each situation will be handled on a case by case basis by the Editor. If issues arise post publication, Cognitive Security will consider each situation on a case by case basis and take any indicated actions to inform readers and correct the published literature, including notifications to the readership, notifications to authors’ institutions, corrections and retractions.

Authorship

Authorship is limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the design and execution of the work described. Any contributors whose participation does not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged but not listed as an author. The Journal will contact all listed authors at the point of submission to confirm their role.

The Journal does not allow ghost authorship, where an unnamed author prepares the article with no credit, or guest/gift authorship, where an author who made little or no contribution is listed as an author. The Journal follows Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidance on investigating and resolving these cases.

It is the responsibility of the authors to designate a single corresponding author who is responsible for forwarding information to the other authors, maintaining the author account, and who will serve on behalf of all co-authors as the primary correspondent with the editorial office during the submission and review process. This author is the “guarantor” for the article and should be listed on the title page as such. In the cover letter for the article, it should be stated who the guarantor is and that they have advised the co-authors of the intent to submit the manuscript.

Natural language processing tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) do not qualify as authors, and the Journal will screen for them in author lists. The use of AI (for example, to help generate content or images, write code, process data, or for translation) should be disclosed both in cover letters to editors and in the Methods or Acknowledgements section of manuscripts. Please see the COPE position statement on Authorship and AI for more details.

After manuscript submission, no authorship changes (including the authorship list, author order, and who is designated as the corresponding author) should be made unless there is a substantive reason to do so. The editor and all co-authors must agree on the change(s), and neither the Journal nor the publisher mediates authorship disputes.

Originality

By submitting a manuscript to the journal, the authors affirm that it is an original manuscript, is unpublished work, and is not under consideration elsewhere.

Conflict of Interest and Financial Disclosure

A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence (or bias) the author’s decisions, work, or manuscript. All authors must disclose any potential conflict of interest they may have as authors, such as having a financial interest in the topic covered by the manuscript.  Not all conflicts of interest will necessarily invalidate a paper or disqualify an author. Full disclosure to the editor of the particular circumstances will allow the journal to make an informed and reasonable decision. If an author has any questions concerning a possible conflict of interest they should contact the journal. 

Authors are also required to report all financial and material support for the research and work, including but not limited to grant support, funding sources, and provision of equipment and supplies, on the Title Page of the manuscript.

Third-Party Copyright

In order to reproduce any third party material, including tables, figures, or images, in an article authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder and be compliant with any requirements the copyright holder may have pertaining to this reuse. When seeking to reproduce any kind of third party material authors should request the following:

• non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the specified article and journal;
• print and electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium;
• the right to use the material for the life of the work; and
• world-wide English-language rights.

It is particularly important to clear permission for use in both the print and online versions of the journal, and we are not able to accept permissions which carry a time limit because we retain journal articles as part of our online journal archive.

Open Access License

Articles published under an open access licence are made freely available online immediately upon publication through a CC BY-NC-ND (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives Licence). This allows users to download and share the article for non-commercial purposes, so long as the article is reproduced in its entirety without changes, and the original authors are acknowledged.

All Creative Commons licences state that the author’s moral rights are in no way affected by the licence terms. More information about Creative Commons licenses is available on the Creative Commons website.

If you choose to publish your journal article under an open access licence, you are also entitled to deposit the final published version of the article to an open access repository (e.g., your institution’s repository and/or a separate subject repository). You may make the deposit immediately following publication, as long as you include a link to the published version of the article on the journal website and attribute the journal and CSI Press for the original publication, with a correct citation.