Institute for Complexity Science
and Advanced Computing

Author Guidelines

You do not need a template. You do not need a specific citation style. You do not need a particular file format, layout, or word count. What we evaluate is the work — the methodology, the evidence, the argument. What we do not evaluate is whether your manuscript matches the house style of a journal you have never published in.

Two routes

DOI route — for already-deposited work

If your work is already on Zenodo or arXiv:

  • Paste the DOI into the submission form.
  • ICSAC fetches the deposited version directly. The deposited version is what the panel reviews.
  • You do not re-submit, re-format, or re-export. Whatever is on the deposit, that is what we read.
  • Choose the license of the published article (CC BY 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC0). Your preprint keeps its own.
  • On acceptance the paper is published in Persistence with its own DOI under the Institute’s prefix, linked to your preprint’s DOI. The preprint stays where it is.

Upload route — for unpublished work

If your work has not been deposited, or is a preprint on a server other than Zenodo or arXiv:

  • Upload a PDF. The PDF must contain extractable text (at least 2,000 characters via pdftotext). Image-only scans are rejected automatically.
  • Maximum file size 100 MB.
  • Fill the metadata fields — title, abstract, keywords, authors, license, etc.
  • If it is a preprint, give its DOI (any server). The preprint stays where it is; on acceptance the Persistence article gets its own DOI, linked to it. The DOI of a paper already published in a journal is refused.
  • If you grant deposit consent, ICSAC registers a DOI under its own prefix on accept and archives the paper in the ICSAC Zenodo community on your behalf.

What we require

  • ORCID identifier. Mandatory for the submitting author; identity is verified at submission.
  • Real human authors. Every listed author is a real person who substantively contributed to the work.
  • Resolvable citations. References must point to real, locatable work. Fabricated or hallucinated citations are grounds for decline — the citation-integrity check runs before the panel sees the manuscript.
  • An abstract. Whatever the work is, summarize it.
  • A public link for any code or data your paper says is available. Give it when you submit: GitHub, Zenodo, Harvard Dataverse or anywhere public you choose. ICSAC links to it and doesn’t host it. A paper that says it has code or data but gives no link is returned for revision before review.
  • Scope fit. Material sciences — natural, formal, computational, quantitative. Humanities and qualitative-only submissions fall outside the scope of Persistence.

What we do not require

  • A LaTeX template, Word template, or any specific layout.
  • A specific citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, AMS — pick one, be consistent).
  • A specific abstract length.
  • A maximum reference count.
  • A specific figure DPI or vector format.
  • Anonymization or de-anonymization — the panel sees what you submit.
  • An institutional affiliation.
  • A cover letter. There is no field for one; the panel reads the paper.
  • AI-use disclosure (encouraged but not required — see Publication Ethics).

What we additionally welcome

  • Code repositories — Zenodo, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, whatever.
  • Datasets — Zenodo, OSF, Dryad, Figshare, whatever.
  • Supplementary materials — in the PDF or linked out.
  • Plain-language summaries.
  • Prior preprint deposit — does not affect eligibility. That is the point of the DOI route.

Things that will cause problems

  • AI scratch / unresolved prompt placeholders / “as an AI language model” disclaimers left in the manuscript.
  • Fabricated citations or substantive misattributions.
  • Duplicate or substantively identical work already published in a peer-reviewed venue (preprints are fine).
  • Authorship lists that include non-contributing or fabricated authors.
  • Submissions outside the material-sciences scope.
  • Attempts to prompt-inject the AI curation system (see Publication Ethics → System Integrity).

Process

  1. Submit via /submit. Pick DOI or upload.
  2. The intake handler verifies ORCID, metadata, and (for the upload route) the PDF text layer. Confirmation email follows.
  3. The AI panel evaluates the work and produces a recommendation. The curation team confirms or overrides the recommendation; the curation team's call is the verdict. See /review-process for the full mechanism.
  4. Decision typically lands in 5 to 10 days. The decision email carries the panel report and the RQC audit as attachments.
  5. On accept: the curation record publishes at a permanent URL on /publications. The accepted paper is published in Persistence online first and is eligible for the next annual print edition.

Questions

[email protected]