Publishing Policy

Defence Science Journal, a bi-monthly Journal of the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), publishes original research papers having a direct bearing on Military/Defence applications.

It covers natural science, technology, and engineering. Generally papers are covered under: Aeronautical Systems, Armaments & Explosives, Combat Engineering, Electronics & Communication Systems, Materials Science & Metallurgy, Missile System, and Naval Systems.

Typescript required for consideration in Defence Science Journal are:

  • Research articles (Technical contents: 4000 words) are expected to contain original research findings in a clear and concise manner. Papers reporting theoretical, laboratory and field test results are considered for publication.
  • Review articles (Technical contents: 6000 words) are expected to survey, integrate, and critically examine new information accumulated in recent years in a particular subject field. A theme-based topic is relevant in the area defence science & technologies.  
  • Short communications/research notes (Technical contents: 2000 words) are normally brief reports or technical notes on the progress of ongoing research and/or an application.
  1. Submission Policies

When you submit a manuscript to Defence Science Journal (DSJ), we will take it to mean that the manuscript has not already been published or submitted elsewhere. You may not submit your manuscript elsewhere while it is under consideration at DSJ.

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done and amount of actual work of each should be reflected in the Contributors. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may also be stated.

We reserve the right to reject a paper even after it has been accepted, if it becomes apparent that there are serious problems with its scientific content, or our publishing policies have been violated.

Article Processing or Publication Fee: NIL

(No fee is charged for publication in Defence Science Journal)

(Journal is Institutionally Supported)

  1. Transfer Policy

Defence Science Journal is editorially independent, and Editorial Board Members make decisions independently. It is for authors alone to decide where to submit their manuscripts. Papers that undergo for peer-review process, technical comments of the Reviewers were forwarded to the author after peer-review without disclosing the details of Reviewers.

  1. Peer Review Process

Defence Science Journal follows double-blind and two-round of independent peer-review process. DSJ makes full confidentiality among authors and reviewers and does not take biased decision. DSJ editorial team takes comments/opinion of minimum two Reviewers on a manuscript before taking any decision.

  1. Authors’ Responsibilities

Being an author DSJ require all authors of a research paper to sign the cover letter upon submission, impose an order on the list of authors. Submission to DSJ is taken by the publication to mean that all the listed authors have agreed to all of the contents. The corresponding (submitting) author is responsible for having ensured that this agreement has been reached, and for managing all communication between the publication and all co-authors, before and after publication.

English language

All manuscripts must be presented in native standard English. Authors for whom English is a second language are encouraged to seek assistance in writing from a native speaker. Manuscripts written in poor English will not be sent for review.

The author has to submit a 'Language Editing Certificate' from any professional agency or a native English-language expert, whenever the editorial team asked for it.

Author contributions statements

Authors are required to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript that specifies the contribution of every author. Before submission of the manuscript, Authorship pattern should discussed by communicating Author and same consent in the scanned copy signed by all author should be communicated to DSJ. 

Acknowledgement

Due credit should be given to Funding Agency and other associated who are directly or indirectly involved in the research work.

Correcting the record

Authors of published material have a responsibility to inform DSJ promptly if they become aware of any part that requires correcting. Proof of the accepted papers after copyedit will be communicated to the corresponding author for final OK before publishing.

Pre-publication responsibilities

The corresponding (submitting) author is solely responsible for communicating with DSJ and for managing communication between co-authors. Before submission, the corresponding author ensures that all authors are included in the author list, its order has been agreed by all authors, and that all authors are aware that the paper was submitted.

After acceptance, the proof is sent to the corresponding author, who deals with DSJ on the behalf of all co-authors; DSJ will not necessarily correct errors after publication if they result from errors that were present on a proof that was not shown to co-authors before publication. The corresponding author is responsible for the accuracy of all content in the proof, in particular that names of co-authors are present and correctly spelt, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

A confidential process

Defence Science Journal treats the submitted manuscript and all communication with authors and reviewers as confidential. Authors must also treat communication with DSJ as confidential: correspondence with DSJ, referee reports and other confidential material must not be posted on any website or otherwise publicized without prior permission from the DSJ publishing team, regardless of whether or not the submission is eventually published.  

Referee suggestions

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable independent reviewers when they submit their manuscript, but these suggestions may not be used by DSJ.  

  1. License agreement and author copyright

DESIDOC is the Copyright holder of all the contents published in the Defence Science Journal.

Prior permission is required from the DESIDOC if more than permissible content is reproduced in any form for publication with any publisher. 

However, DESIDOC provides permission to its authors/users of Defence Science Journal over digital copies of articles authored/co-authored by them under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/in (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerives 2.5 India).

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

Non-Commercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

  1. Availability of materials and data

An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Supporting data must be made available to Editorial Board Members and reviewers at the time of submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. Reviewers may be asked to comment on the terms of access to materials, methods and/or data sets; DSJ reserves the right to refuse publication in cases where authors do not provide adequate assurances that they can comply with the publication's requirements for sharing materials.

  1. Digital image integrity and standards

High-resolution images are required at the initial submission. When a paper is accepted, the publishing team will request high-resolution files suitable for publication.

All digitized images submitted with the final revision of the manuscript should be 300 DPI if possible.

A certain degree of image processing is acceptable for publication (and for some experiments, fields and techniques is unavoidable), but the final image must correctly represent the original data and conform to community standards. 

Authors should list all image acquisition tools and image processing software packages used. Authors should document key image-gathering settings and processing manipulations in the methods.

Images gathered at different times or from different locations should not be combined into a single image, unless it is stated that the resultant image is a product of time-averaged data or a time-lapse sequence. If juxtaposing images is essential, the borders should be clearly demarcated in the figure and described in the legend.

The use of touch-up tools, such as cloning and healing tools in Photoshop, or any feature that deliberately obscures manipulations, is to be avoided.

Processing (such as changing brightness and contrast) is appropriate only when it is applied equally across the entire image and is applied equally to controls. Contrast should not be adjusted so that data disappear. Excessive manipulations, such as processing to emphasize one region in the image at the expense of others (e.g. through the use of a biased choice of threshold settings), is inappropriate, as is emphasizing experimental data relative to the control.

When submitting revised final figures upon conditional acceptance, authors may be asked to submit original, unprocessed images.

  1. Rejections, complaints and corrections

Correction and retraction policy

Defence Science Journal operates the following policy for making corrections to its peer-reviewed content.

Publishable amendments must be represented by a formal online notice because they affect the publication record and/or the scientific accuracy of published information. Where these amendments concern peer-reviewed material, they fall into one of three categories: erratum, corrigendum or retraction.

Erratum- Notification of an important error made by the journal that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Corrigendum- Notification of an important error made by the author(s) that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Retraction- Notification of invalid results. All co-authors must sign a retraction specifying the error and stating briefly how the conclusions are affected, and submit it for publication. In cases where co-authors disagree, the publishing team will seek advice from independent reviewers and impose the type of amendment that seems most appropriate, noting the dissenting author(s) in the text of the published version.

Editorial decision-making

Decisions about types of correction are made by the journal's publishing team, with the advice of the reviewers, Editorial Board Members. This process involves consultation with the authors of the paper, but the publishing team makes the final decision about whether an amendment is required and the category in which the amendment is published.

When an amendment is published, it is linked bi-directionally to and from the article being corrected.

Authors sometimes request a correction to their published contribution that does not affect the contribution in a significant way or impair the reader's understanding of the contribution (e.g. a spelling mistake or grammatical error). DSJ does not publish such corrections. The online article is part of the published record and hence its original published version is preserved. DSJ does, however, correct the online version of a contribution if the wording in the html version does not make sense when compared with the PDF version (e.g. 'see left' for a figure that is an appropriate phrase for the PDF but not for the html version). In these cases, the fact that a correction has been made is stated in a footnote so that readers are aware that the originally published text has been amended.

Duplicate publication

Material submitted to DSJ must be original and not published or submitted for publication elsewhere. This rule applies to material submitted elsewhere while the DSJ contribution is under consideration.

Author(s) have to furnish the following certificate at the time of submission of the manuscript along with covering letter.

[This is to certify that the reported work in the paper entitled “..........” submitted for publication in the Defence Science Journal is an original one and has not been submitted for publication elsewhere. I/we certify that citations to the previously reported works have been given and no data/tables/figures have been quoted verbatim from the other publications without giving due acknowledgement and without permission of the author(s). The consent of all the authors of this paper has been obtained before submitting.

[Signatures and names of all the authors]

Also, specify in one/two-sentence the substantial contribution made by each author in the Study. 

Authors submitting a contribution to DSJ who have related material under consideration or in press elsewhere should upload a clearly marked copy at the time of submission, and draw the Editorial Board Members' attention to it in their cover letter. Authors must disclose any such information while their contributions are under consideration by DSJ – for example, if they submit a related manuscript elsewhere that was not written at the time of the original DSJ submission.

If part of a contribution that an author wishes to submit to DSJ has appeared or will appear elsewhere, the author must specify the details in the covering letter accompanying the submission. Consideration by DSJ is possible if the main result, conclusion, or implications are not apparent from the other work, or if there are other factors, for example if the other work is published in a language other than English.

Defence Science Journal is happy to consider submissions containing material that has previously formed part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification.

  1. Confidentiality and pre-publicity

Confidentiality

Defence Science Journal keeps all details about a submitted manuscript confidential and does not comment to any outside organization about manuscripts that are either under consideration or that have been rejected. After a manuscript is submitted, correspondence with DSJ, reviewers' reports and other confidential material, regardless of whether or not the submission is eventually published, must not be posted on any website or otherwise publicized without prior permission. Reviewers of manuscripts submitted to DSJ undertake in advance to maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts and any associated supplementary data.

Pre-publicity

Defence Science Journal authors must not discuss contributions with the media (including other scientific journals) except in the case of accepted contributions, which can be discussed with the media once an embargo date has been set. Presentation and discussion of material submitted to DSJ at scientific meetings is encouraged. Authors are free to publish abstracts in conference proceedings and to distribute preprints of submitted or 'in press' papers to professional colleagues, but not to the media. Material in a contribution submitted to DSJ may also have been published as part of a PhD or other academic thesis.

  1. Plagiarism and fabrication

Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else's work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author re-uses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals, to 'salami-slicing', where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper.

Plagiarism can be said to have clearly occurred when large chunks of text have been cut-and-pasted. Such manuscripts would not be considered for publication in DSJ. However, minor plagiarism without dishonest intent is relatively frequent, for example, when an author re-uses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper. 

DESIDOC is a member of CrossCheck, an initiative to help editors verify the originality of submitted manuscripts. As part of this process, DSJ spot checks submitted manuscripts to be scanned and compared with the CrossCheck database.

Manuscript having less than 10 % similarity as reported by an anti-plagiarism software is considered for further peer-review by Reviewers. Deviation in the similarity percentage is finally taken care of by the Editorial Team of DSJ.

Due credit for others' work

If an author of a submission is re-using a figure or figures published elsewhere, or that is copyrighted, the author must provide documentation that the previous publisher or copyright holder has given permission for the figure to be re-published. DSJ Editorial Board Members consider all material in good faith that the publication has full permission to publish every part of the submitted material, including illustrations.

Discussion of unpublished work: Manuscripts are sent out for a review on the condition that any unpublished data cited within are properly credited and the appropriate permission has been sought. Where licensed data are cited, authors must include at submission a written assurance that they are complying with originators' data-licensing agreements.

Reviewers are encouraged to be alert to the use of appropriated unpublished data from databases or from any other source and to inform DSJ of any concern they may have.

Discussion of published work: When discussing the published work of others, authors must properly describe the contribution of the earlier work. Both intellectual contributions and technical developments must be acknowledged as such and appropriately cited.

For promoting integrity in research and its publication, DSJ follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) available at https://publicationethics.org