Publishing Guidelines
The Cybersecurity Skills Journal (CSJ) is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal published by the National CyberWatch Center Digital Press. CSJ seeks to stimulate professional discussion and advance the interdisciplinary field of cybersecurity through the publication of scholarly works of value and interest to the profession by integrating and expand the methods, processes, and evidence of effective practices which underlie skilled performance. CSJ focuses on valued, measured results; considers the larger system context of people’s performance; and provides valid and reliable measures of effectiveness.
Please refer to our Manuscript Content Guidelines for information on the types of papers CSJ seeks, and to our Author Guidelines for details on submitting manuscripts to CSJ.
Editorial Policy. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of all submitted materials including references, quotations, and spellings. All materials other than specific quotations must be the author’s own work. If there is substantial use of copyrighted materials, the author is responsible for securing permission to use the material. The author agrees that any manuscript accepted for publication in CSJ will provide a non-exclusive right for CSJ to publish the article, including any derivative products, and permits CSJ to sublicense such rights. Authors are required to sign a Copyright Assignment Agreement. All manuscripts submitted for publication must conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), sixth edition. In addition, CSJ uses Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, eleventh edition, as a standard reference for spelling, hyphenations, and definitions. CSJ will apply its own style guidelines to ensure consistency.
All questions in regards to editorial content should be directed to publications@www.nationalcyberwatch.org.
Permissions. Reproduction of an unaltered figure, table, or block of text from any non-federal government publication requires permission from the copyright holder. All direct quotations should have a source and page citation. Acknowledgment of source material cannot substitute for written permission. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain such written permission from the owner of the rights to this material. Authors must also receive permission to use figures that have been adapted.
Length. Although there is no fixed length, average articles (including tables and figures) are approximately 5,000 to 12,000 words. If you wish to submit a longer manuscript, discuss it with the CSJ editor prior to submission.
Manuscript Format and Author Information. Please refer to our Author Guidelines document for detailed author and submission guidelines. We prefer that articles be written in first person. Whether written in first person or third person, your point of view should be consistent throughout the manuscript. The manuscript must provide a structured, extended abstract of less than 500 words to summarize the manuscript. The abstract must answer the “what” and “why” questions below to indicate how the paper will make a substantial contribution to our understanding of skilled performance of cybersecurity practices.
- Problem Statement: What is the primary problem that the study investigated? Why is this an urgent and/or severe problem?
- Research question(s): What questions related to the problem have not been answered by prior research? Why are practitioners or prior research lacking an understanding of the phenomenon being studied?
- Contribution: What is the contribution made by this manuscript to a current conversation in the literature? Why are the concept relationships, method, findings, or conclusions surprising or contributing new and important insights?
- Rationale: How is the paper’s argument addressing the research questions? Why are the claims and propositions warranted?
- Investigative Approach: What is the approach followed (e.g. field study, experience with a new or existing method, review, empirical, etc.) or what is the paper’s empirical rationale? Why is the method appropriate to develop or test the theoretical claims and propositions?
- Lessons Learned: What are the primary findings from the study? Why might we expect a substantive impact on practice from the factors analyzed in this study?
- Implications for practice: What advances in cybersecurity workforce capabilities are implied? Why is the study advancing cybersecurity workforce capabilities?
- Implications for research: What advances in research are implied or new questions have been raised which future research should investigate? What new investigations are suggested by the findings?
Figures and Tables. CSJ pages are 7” wide by 10” long. Figures and tables should be pre-sized to fit in a 5.5” x 8” space. Please use the typeface Arial (light, regular, and bold) for all tables and figures. Do not use any type of background color (shading) behind the text of figures or tables. CSJ reserves the right to modify the size and shape of figures and artwork, provided their meaning is not substantially changed, and to reject any figures or artwork not meeting CSJ standards.
Figures should be professionally rendered. The resolution of computer-generated images (figures) should be at least 300 dpi and scanned, created, or saved in in an acceptable format that preserves image quality. Images copied from the World Wide Web are not acceptable. Each figure must be on a separate page at the end of the manuscript with its number and title at the top of the page. A placement indicator should appear in the text with a line above and below the figure title.
Tables should be clearly formatted using Microsoft Word’s table-making feature. They should appear in the body of the manuscript where they belong followed by the table number and title. Do not apply shading to the table unless doing so imparts information, in which case a legend must be supplied.
Bibliography. The bibliography, formatted in APA (sixth edition) style, should contain only those works cited in the text. The bibliography should be titled References.
Copyright. If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email prompting them to login into the EasyChair manuscript review submission; where they will be able to complete the license agreement on behalf of all authors on the paper.
Note to Contributors on Deposit of Accepted Version. Authors are permitted to self-archive a version of the Contribution on the Contributor’s personal website, in the Contributor’s company/institutional repository or archive, and in certain not for profit subject-based repositories such as PubMed Central, subject to an embargo period of 12 months for scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals following publication of the final Contribution. If the article is accepted for publication, instructions on final submission will be sent to the corresponding author.
Version 2.4. January, 2020