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Policies

Contents

Philosophy: Every link must hold.

As stated in our Aims and Scope, the mission of the International Journal of Nuclear Security is to share and promote research and best practices in all areas of nuclear security. Recognizing the importance of each link the chain of nuclear security, the journal provides a multidisciplinary forum for scholarship and discussion. It encourages diversity in theoretical foundations, research methods, and approaches, asking contributors to analyze and include implications for policy and practice.

Who May Submit?

Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in International Journal of Nuclear Security provided he or she owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article.

General Submission Rules

Before you begin, please be sure you read all of our policies.

To submit your manuscript, click on "Submit Article" and create a user login. After you complete the submission process, you will receive a confirmation email.

The submission process consists of the following steps (also listed on the "Submit Article" page once you create a user account):

  • Read and accept the Article Submission Agreement
  • Provide information about yourself
  • Provide information about any authors
  • Upload your article and related items
  • We have created a video with information about us and how to write a good manuscript - IJNS Video Guidelines

Also, before you begin, please have the following items:

  • Article Title
  • An abstract (separate from the article body)
  • Keywords for your article (optional)
  • Article in one of the following formats: Microsoft Word or RTF
  • (Optional) Cover letter with suggested reviewer names and email addresses
  • Articles must be submitted without a title page, abstract, or page numbers. These will be provided by the system. Additionally, do not include author names in the initially submitted file.

You may later revise any of these elements by clicking the submitted article's title on your My Account page.

Authors: you must assume all responsibility for accuracy of the information in your submission as well as clearance of your submission for dissemination to the public. It is your responsibility to clear the content of your article with your organization, your government, and whatever other agencies or organizations—professional, academic, national, or international—are relevant to release of the information in your submission. The International Journal of Nuclear Security and the University of Tennessee Institute for Nuclear Security are not responsible for the accuracy and clearance of any information in your submission.

In addition: you must not submit to the International Journal of Nuclear Security any material currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) or other form of publication, and you must not submit the same material to another journal (electronic or print) or any other form of publication, until the IJNS editorial decision process is complete. Authors wishing to pursue other venues for publication for material they have submitted to IJNS must first withdraw their manuscript from consideration by IJNS. Any concerns about IJNS submission rules should be directed to Publications Manager Rachel Brooks at rachel.ijnsutk@gmail.com.

IJNS's digital archiving service is with DuraCloud.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The International Journal of Nuclear Security (IJNS) is committed to upholding the highest ethical standards for publication in the interest of contributing to the international nuclear security conversation. IJNS adheres to the publication guidelines outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which can be found at https://publicationethics.org.

Editors' Responsibilities

  • IJNS editors will be responsible for selecting which manuscripts will be published. In some instances, publication decisions may require several rounds of correspondence and peer review before a final decision is made. Additionally, in an effort to avoid cases of plagiarism, we run all manuscripts through the iThenticate detection online software. Publication decisions will be based exclusively on the academic merit of the submission, criteria which includes an article’s originality, clarity, cogency, validity, importance to the global nuclear security conversation, and relevance to the journal’s purview. Manuscripts will be considered without consideration of the authors’ race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, religious belief, citizenship, political ideology or institutional affiliation.
  • Editors will not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author(s), reviewers, potential reviewers, other editors of the journal, and the journal’s publisher.
  • Editors, members of the editorial board and reviewers will not use unpublished materials of submitted manuscripts for their own research purposes without the explicit written consent of the manuscript’s author.

Authors' Responsibilities

  • Authors must ensure that the submission has not been previously published and is not under current consideration for publication elsewhere.
  • All listed authors must have significantly contributed to the content of the submission. All contributing authors must confirm their level of involvement with their co-authors prior to submission.
  • All submissions must be the original work of the author(s). Original work means that the References to other sources should be clearly and properly documented, including references to the authors' previously published work.
  • Authors should acquire all relevant permissions prior to publication. If an image is used that is not the original creation of the authors, the authors must obtain reuse permission from the owner of the image.
  • Authors must notify journal editors of any possible conflicts of interest that could affect, or be perceived to affect, the content of the article. For example, conflicts of interest could consist of sources of research funding, including financial support and supply of equipment or materials.
  • If at any point (before or after publication) an author notices a significant factual error in the manuscript, the author will be responsible for writing a retraction statement or correction.

Reviewers' Responsibilities

  • Reviewers must keep confidential the contents of all manuscripts received.
  • Reviewers should make the editors aware of any significant similarity between the manuscript under consideration and published articles of which the reviewer is aware.
  • Reviews should be conducted objectively and should present their views about the manuscript being considered in clearly reasoned arguments.
  • Reviewers should inform editors of any conflicts of interest arising from relationships with any parties affiliated with the journal or with submissions under consideration.
  • If a reviewer cannot complete a review in a timely manner, the reviewer should inform the editor and withdraw from the review process.

IJNS adheres to a double-blind peer review model, in which neither the author(s) nor the reviewers are aware of each other’s identities. After a submission is screened for relevance to the journal, the article will be reviewed by at least two external peer reviewers with relevant subject-matter expertise. These reviewers will provide reports on the article and recommendations regarding publication. The editors base their publication decisions on these reports and recommendations, which will be made available to the author(s) when a publication decision is made.

Open Access

Open access to scholarship ensures that scholarly works will be broadly disseminated and are easily discoverable. Open access digital publishing is freely available to internet users.

However, open access is a distribution model, not a financial model. That is, open access publishing is free to read, but not free to produce. In some cases, institutions bear those costs. In others, open access publishers charge processing fees or per-page fees to cover the costs of preparing and distributing their work. IJNS currently does not require payment to publish in the journal.

Our scholarly open access publications include editorial and blind peer review to assure the highest standards of quality in keeping with other excellent open access academic journals.

Formatting Requirements

When submitting your manuscript to the International Journal of Nuclear Security, we ask that you please follow these guidelines for formatting and submission. Following these guidelines will ensure an easier upload of your manuscript and show you, before upload, how a final, published version will appear. Please be sure to double check everything before submission so the file appears free of error.

We also ask that you please upload your manuscript as a Microsoft Word document unless you are otherwise incapable.

Author Rights/Attribution/Usage

In keeping with best practices for open access publication, IJNS licenses all works under the Creative Commons CC Attribution (CC-BY) license. Considered a gold standard in open access publishing, a CC-BY does not replace a copyright. Rather, by accepting its terms, a copyright owner participates in a standardized method for granting certain permissions to users, ensuring maximum dissemination of their works as well as optimal circulation of research and ideas.

All CC licenses require attribution. The CC-BY is the most flexible, allowing users to distribute, adapt, or build-upon the works so long as the copyright holder is attributed. Works licensed under the CC-BY are considered “Approved for Free Cultural Works”, which are defined as readily used, shared, and remixed by others, and go furthest in creating a commons of freely reusable materials.

Our license terms and self-archiving policies are listed with SHERPA/RoMEO.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Copyright holders retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International CC-BY that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

2. Copyright holders are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.

3. All accepted articles will be available without delay with no embargo period.

Article download statistics are available for authors with registered accounts.

Contact Us

ijns@tennessee.edu

VOL Journals: General Terms and Conditions of Use

The publisher of this journal is in a partnership with UT VOL Journals, the Volunteer Open-Access, Library-hosted Journals of the University of Tennessee University Libraries. Users of the website, services, and/or software(s) affiliated with VOL Journals agree not to misuse the website, services, or software(s) in any way. Users also agree to abide by The University of Tennessee System Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources policy.

To seek an exception to the above terms, or if you have questions on rights or re-use, please contact the journal editors.

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