R&D Board · Editors
Guidelines for editors
Editors manage each paper from screening to publication in the R&D & Journal portal, independently and free of conflicts of interest.
Workflow
From submission to publication
Stage 1 · Author
Submitted
The manuscript is submitted through the portal (or the public form) with an anonymised file and declarations.
Stage 2 · Editor
Editorial screening
A handling editor checks scope, format, originality and ethics within 14 days, then sends it to review or declines it.
Stage 3 · Peer reviewers
In review
At least two independent reviewers with no conflict of interest assess the paper under double-blind review, normally within 21 days.
Stage 4 · Author
Revision requested
The author receives anonymised reviewer comments, uploads a revised manuscript and a response letter.
Stage 5 · Editor
Accepted / Rejected
The handling editor decides on the basis of the reviews. Reasons are given to the author in every case.
Stage 6 · Author
Galley proof
The editor sends the typeset proof in the GCSB Journal layout. The author confirms the proof checklist and approves it, or returns corrections, within 3 working days. Only spelling, grammar and typesetting errors may be corrected at this stage.
Stage 7 · Editor
Published
Papers with an approved proof receive a GCSB-J reference number, are published in the archive and deposited in the GCSB Zenodo community, and the author receives a free certificate of publication.
R&D Board · Editors
Guidelines for editors
1. Screening
- Screen new submissions within 14 days for scope, anonymisation, format and similarity.
- Decline out-of-scope papers promptly with a reason (desk rejection): medicine, agriculture, or general IT and security topics without a converged security focus.
- Check every paper is directly relevant to converged security. Do not require alignment with GCSB documents.
2. Choosing reviewers
- Assign at least two approved reviewers who have no connection to the author.
- Never assign yourself to your own paper, or a paper by someone connected to you - pass it to another editor.
- Chase overdue reviews and replace a reviewer 14 days after the review deadline has passed.
3. Making decisions
- Decide on the evidence of the reviews, not on the author's position, nationality or GCSB status.
- Explain every decision to the author in the decision note.
- Record the reasons in the workflow history.
4. Publishing
- Assign a GCSB-J-YYYY-NNN reference and volume.
- Check the final file is the accepted version.
- Include the authors’ copyright notice and CC BY 4.0 licence link in the galley proof and final article. Confirm author permission and identify excluded third-party material in credit lines.
- Check the Zenodo deposit is accepted and record its DOI on the article page; keep any existing DOI.
- Issue the free certificate of publication.
5. Integrity
- Handle misconduct, appeals and corrections under the Journal policies.
- Keep all manuscripts and reviews confidential, and never upload them to AI tools.
Open access
Copyright and reuse
Authors retain copyright and grant GCSB a non-exclusive licence to publish. Published Journal articles are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
You may share and adapt the work for any purpose, including commercially, provided you give appropriate credit, link to the licence and indicate any changes. You must not imply endorsement or impose additional legal or technological restrictions. Third-party material identified as excluded in a credit line requires separate permission where applicable. This licence does not apply to confidential submissions or unrelated GCSB materials.
Zenodo repository and DOIs
Final approved publications are deposited in the GCSB Zenodo community, where all Converged Security Framework standards, procedures and playbooks are already published with registered DOIs. Eligible articles without an existing DOI receive a free Zenodo DOI when the deposit is published following community acceptance. Articles with an existing DOI retain it. No submission, review or publication fee is charged. A reserved DOI is not yet registered, and deposit does not guarantee external indexing. Confidential submissions and private drafts are excluded.
Read the CC BY 4.0 licence