Submission and editorial process
All papers for consideration by Design Science should be submitted online through ScholarOne Manuscripts at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.c...
Submitted manuscripts are first sent to one of the Editors-in-Chief who will determine the suitability of the paper for the Journal. The Editor-in-Chief may render an immediate ‘reject’ decision on manuscripts without review should he deem them unsuitable or inappropriate. After a submission is approved, a single-blind peer review process will be initiated. Generally a manuscript is sent to at least three reviewers to assess its strengths and weaknesses. Reviewers make recommendations on the suitability of the manuscript for the Journal based on several criteria including originality, significance and impact, and style and organization. Authors can check the status of their papers in review by logging on to the online submission system. After an editorial decision is made, an email containing the comments from the reviewers and the editor will be sent to the author. The decision email is also accessible at the Author Center of the online system.
Rules of submission
To be considered for publication in Design Science a manuscript must contain original work (even in the case of a review paper, which does not report original research, the article should form an original contribution to the field in terms of its curation of original research material). A submitted manuscript cannot have been published previously and should not be under review for publication elsewhere. Papers with multiple authors are reviewed with the assumption that all authors have approved the submitted manuscript and concur about its submission to Design Science. A license to publish agreement must be executed before an article can be published. The authors shall retain copyright in the published article. Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission from the copyright owners (authors, editors, or publisher) to reprint or adapt any previously published material included in their article. These permissions must be provided before an article can be published.
ORCID
We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Licence to publish
Before Cambridge can publish your manuscript, we need a signed licence to publish agreement. Under the agreement, certain rights are granted to the journal owner which allow publication of the article. The original ownership of the copyright in the article remains unchanged. For full details see the publishing agreement page.