Journal Author Guidelines and Peer Review Policy
How to prepare and submit a paper to the IIoET Journal, and how it will be reviewed.
- Reference
- IIOET-POL-0013
- Version
- 1.0
- Issued
- 8 October 2026
- Approved by
- Board of IIOET Limited
- Classification
- Public
1. Aims and scope
The IIoET Journal publishes rigorous, peer-reviewed work on the practice, assurance and governance of emerging technology. It is written for practitioners as well as researchers: every paper should leave a reader better able to build, secure, assure or govern the systems it describes.
The Journal covers IIoET’s four domains, artificial intelligence, quantum, blockchain and cyber security, and particularly welcomes work on where they meet, such as the security of AI systems, cryptographic transition in the face of quantum computing, and the assurance of decentralised systems that host autonomous agents. It publishes original research, accounts of applied practice and reviews of a field.
IIoET publishes in two streams, kept distinct. The Journal carries peer-reviewed papers, published in volumes and issues. Insights carries articles, essays, commentary and briefings under editorial review, published continuously. This policy governs the Journal. Every page IIoET publishes is labelled with its stream, so that the Journal’s peer-reviewed status is never in doubt.
2. Article types
The Journal publishes three types of paper. Typical lengths, excluding references, are shown below. The editor may accept a longer paper where its content justifies it.
| Type | Description | Typical length |
|---|---|---|
| Research paper | Original research that advances knowledge or practice in one or more of the domains. | 6,000 to 8,000 words |
| Practice paper | A rigorous account of applied work, what it achieved and what others can learn from it. | 4,000 to 6,000 words |
| Review | A systematic or critical review of a field or question. | 6,000 to 10,000 words |
3. Submission
3.1 Papers are submitted through iioet.org/journal/submit, as a PDF or Word (.docx) file of up to 15 MB. The submitting author confirms that the work is original, is not under consideration elsewhere, and that all authors have agreed to its submission.
3.2 Manuscripts are stored privately and are never publicly accessible before publication. IIoET acknowledges each submission by email.
3.3 Membership of IIoET is not required to submit, and confers no right to publication.
4. Preparing a manuscript
4.1 Manuscripts are prepared for anonymous review: author names, affiliations, acknowledgements and identifying self-citations are removed from the review copy and supplied separately.
4.2 Each paper has a title, an abstract of no more than 250 words and up to six keywords. It names the article type and the primary domain.
4.3 References follow the IEEE numbered style, applied consistently and completely. DOIs are included wherever they exist.
4.4 Figures and tables are numbered, have captions and are cited in the text. Figures carry alternative text for accessibility. Data and code underlying the findings are made available where possible, and their availability is stated.
4.5 Each manuscript includes declarations of funding, competing interests, ethical approval where relevant, and any use of generative AI tools in its preparation.
5. Authorship and contribution
5.1 Authorship reflects a substantial contribution to the work, to drafting or critically revising the paper, and to approving the final version, together with acceptance of responsibility for the work. Everyone who meets these criteria is listed as an author, and no one who does not is listed.
5.2 Each author’s contribution is described in a contribution statement. Others who contributed are acknowledged.
5.3 The corresponding author handles communication with the Journal on behalf of all authors. Changes to the author list after submission require the agreement of all authors and of the editor.
5.4 Artificial intelligence tools cannot be authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work.
6. Conflicts of interest
Authors declare any financial or personal relationship that could be seen to influence their work, including funding, employment, consultancy, shareholdings and commercial interests in technologies discussed in the paper. Reviewers and editors declare conflicts and step aside where one exists. Papers by members of the editorial board, and by directors or officers of IIOET Limited, are handled by another editor and receive the same review as any other paper.
7. Research ethics and the use of AI tools
7.1 Research involving people, or personal data about them, must have appropriate ethical approval and consent, which the paper describes. Research involving security testing must have been authorised by the owner of the systems tested, and vulnerabilities must have been disclosed responsibly before publication.
7.2 Plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, fabrication and falsification of data, and the manipulation of citations are not accepted.
7.3 Authors who use generative AI tools in preparing a manuscript, beyond basic spelling and grammar checking, declare which tools they used and for what. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy and originality of everything in the paper, including any content produced with such tools.
7.4 Reviewers and editors do not upload manuscripts, or any part of them, to generative AI tools, because doing so would breach the confidentiality of the review.
8. Peer review
8.1 Editorial screening. The editor first checks each submission for scope, originality, completeness and compliance with these guidelines, within two weeks. Papers that do not pass screening are returned to the authors with reasons.
8.2 Review model. Papers that pass screening are reviewed under a double-anonymous model, in which neither authors nor reviewers know each other’s identity.
8.3 Reviewers. Each paper is reviewed by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise, who have no conflict of interest. Authors may suggest or ask to exclude reviewers; the editor decides.
8.4 Timescales. Reviewers are asked to report within four weeks, and IIoET aims to give authors a first decision within ten weeks of submission.
8.5 Decision. The editor decides to accept, to request minor or major revisions, or to reject, giving reasons drawn from the reviews. Reviewers’ reports are shared with the authors, anonymised as the review model requires.
8.6 Revision. Revised papers are returned with a response to each point raised and may go back to the original reviewers.
8.7 Dates. Each published paper shows the dates it was received, accepted and published.
9. Editorial independence
Decisions to accept or reject a paper are made by the Editor-in-Chief and the editors on academic and professional merit alone. The Board of IIOET Limited sets the Journal’s policies and appoints the Editor-in-Chief, but cannot direct the acceptance or rejection of any paper. Membership of IIoET, at any grade, confers no right to publication, and the contribution commitments of Fellows are met through papers that pass the same review as any other.
10. Appeals
Authors may appeal against a decision to reject a paper by writing to contact@iioet.org with “Journal” as the subject, within 28 days of the decision, setting out why they believe the decision was wrong. Appeals are considered by an editor who was not involved in the original decision, who may seek further review. The outcome of an appeal is final. Complaints about the conduct of the Journal are handled in the same way.
11. Corrections and retractions
Errors in published papers are corrected openly. A correction is published for an error that does not undermine the paper’s findings. A retraction is published where findings are unreliable or where there has been misconduct, such as plagiarism, fabrication or a serious undisclosed conflict of interest. Corrections and retractions are linked from the original paper, which remains available and is clearly marked. Allegations of misconduct are investigated following the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
12. Publication ethics
The Journal follows the COPE Core Practices. IIoET intends to apply for COPE membership once the Journal is established. Where a member of IIoET is found to have committed research or publication misconduct, the matter may also be referred under the Complaints and Disciplinary Procedure (IIOET-PRC-0007).
13. Open access and licence
Every paper in the Journal is published open access, free to read online and to download, with no article processing charge, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Authors keep copyright and grant IIOET Limited a licence to publish through an author agreement signed on acceptance.
14. Identifiers and archiving
IIoET applies to the UK ISSN Centre at the British Library for an ISSN for the online edition, and registers DOIs for papers through Crossref. Both are shown on every paper once assigned. Each paper has a permanent web address and PDF and carries the metadata used by scholarly indexes.