Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly

Focus and Scope

The aim of the journal is to publish peer reviewed original research papers reporting on studies of the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural, social, socio-technical, and artificial systems that store, process, access, and communicate information. It concerns data, information, and knowledge fundamentals, models, and management from the points of view of their discovery, engineering, and application.

The journal publishes four regular issues per year in the following areas:

Social, Socio-technical, Organization and Business Informatics, which includes but is not limited to

• Social Systems Informatics
• Socio-technical Systems Informatics
• Organization Informatics
• Business Informatics
• Natural Systems Informatics
• Artificial Systems Informatics

High Complexity Information Systems Engineering, which includes but is not limited to

• Intelligent Systems Engineering
• Complex Systems Modeling and Software Development
• Adaptive and Adaptable Information Systems Engineering
• Networked Systems Engineering
• Emergent and Virtual Systems Engineering

Data and Knowledge Analytics, which includes but is not limited to

• Data Intensive Computing
• Semantic Data Analysis and Management
• Big Data Analytics
• Knowledge Analytics
• Business Analytics
• Social Networks Analytics
  

Supercomputing, which includes but is not limited to

• High Performance Computing
• High Throughput Computing
• Grid Computing
• Cloud Computing
• Supercomputing for Engineering Applications
• Mathematical and Analytical Methods for Scientific Computing
• Supercomputing for Social Systems
  

Special issues can be published upon the request.

The main principles of the journal are the following:

• Usefulness and relevance of papers
• Comfort for authors and readers
• Flexibility in publishing
  

Section Policies

Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

The review process is organized in the OJS as a single-blinded peer review performed by the External Reviewers and the members of the  International Editorial Review Board. For each article, the minimum number of article reviewers is 2 (the average number of reviewers is 3). At least one External Reviewer participates in the review process of each article. For each issue, the review process is managed by the Issue Editor(s) in cooperation with the Area Editors and the Managing Editor. Each issue is submitted for approval to the Editor in Chief of the journal. 

CSIMQ considers primary scientific articles and extended versions of papers selected by program committees of scientific events. The review process is initiated and supported by the Managing Editor of the journal. In the review process, the following rules are applied to different types of the articles:

Simplified scheme of the article handling workflow 

Each submission is checked for suitability when received by the editorial office, and may be rejected without reviewing if it is outside the scope of the journal, is obviously of insufficient quality, is missing important sections, the authors have not provided their institutional e-mails; or plagiarism is detected. The desk reject decisions are made by the Area Editors of CSIMQ.

Authors have an opportunity to indicate conflict of interest when submitting the article.

The accepted articles, on the request of the authors, can be  pre-published on the Webpage of CSIMQ immediately after the technical editing of the article is finished.

Reviewers of CSIMQ follow the following criteria in evaluation:

1. Usefulness

2. Scientific Contribution

3. Practical Relevance

4. Clarity

5. Technical Quality (To provide as much comfort for authors as possible, formating is not considered here - the authors are free to choose the format of submission. The only requirements for formating are as follows: page format is A4, figures are well readable, references are fully described according to academic standards). Nevertheless, the formating guidelines and templates are provided and the journal team appreciates very much if the articles are submitted in CSIMQ format.

Publication Frequency

CSIMQ is published quarterly

• March/April
• June/July
• September/October
• December/January 

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Archiving

Plagiarism Detection Policy

All CSIMQ content is screened for possible plagiarism using SimilarityCheck  https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/. 

SimilarityCheck compares submitted manuscripts against a comprehensive large database of published technical papers (as well as over 6 billion Web pages), and provides a summary report that highlights the similarity to previously published work. The CSIMQ editorial team can then follow up to isolate and review the high-scoring papers as necessary.

Plagiarism detection systems are only as effective as the amount and quality of the source content within them. SimilarityCheck’s significant advantage over all other similar services is that it includes the indexed, full-text content of participating CrossCheck member publishers.

In case on high similarity percentage the author is contacted and the percentage is discussed. In the process of the discussion, COPE guidelines for handling plagiarism in a submitted article are followed  https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts/plagiarism-submitted-manuscript. 

Licence Agreement

This journal is published Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0) which allows readers to reuse the content without restriction. Readers are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of its articles and to use them for any other lawful purpose. Open Access allows for unrestricted sharing of scholarly information and helps to promote knowledge throughout the world. RTU supports Open Access as an equitable means of ensuring that scholarly research, usually funded by public institutions, is made available to all. Open Access publications are more likely to be discovered, read, cited, and used for future research than those published in closed journals, and we believe it is in the best interests of authors and their parent institutions, as well as the journals themselves, to make all our content freely available and reusable.

Published final versions of the articles are distributed via Abstracting and Indexing services of the journal.

Authors retain copyright in their articles, but grant RTU Press the right of the first publication

Download https://files.rtu.lv/public/Licence_to_Publish_CSIMQ.PDF

CC BY 4.0

Authors who publish with CSIMQ agree to the following terms:

1. The authors  grant international journal "Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly" (CSIMQ), currently published by RTU Press, the right of first publication of the Work, complying to Creative Commons Attribution License , as far as it is not stated differently in this Form, that allows others to share the Work with an acknowledgement of the Work's authorship and initial publication in CSIMQ. With this the authors also grant to the publisher of CSIMQ the following rights: to print the Work; to publish the Work; to distribute the Work; to make the Work available to the public by wire or by other means, in an individually selected location and at an individually selected time; to rent or to publicly lend copies of the Work; to translate the Work; and to use the Work in other ways permitted by the normative acts.
2. The authors warrant that the Work submitted to CSIMQ is original, there is no third party that holds copyright to the Work (or the copyright transfer from this party is attached to this Form), and any excerpts from any other copyrighted material are included in the Work only with the permission of their copyright holders.
3. The authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, website, or publish it in a book) with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in the international journal "Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly" (CSIMQ), as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as to greater citation of the Work.
4. The authors certify that they bear the responsibility for any damage or expenses that may arise for RTU in the event of breach of these license agreement terms.
5. The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions.

Policy on Declaration of Conflict of Interest

When a researcher, author, editor, or reviewer has a financial or personal interest or belief that could affect his/her objectivity, or inappropriately influence his/her actions, a potential conflict of interest exists. Such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties. Anything that could interfere with full and objective peer review, editorial decision making, or publication of research submitted to the journal is defined as conflict of interest.

Having a conflict of interest is not in itself unethical, and there are some that are unavoidable. Therefore, authors, reviewers and editors related to the submitted article should assess possible financial and non-financial interests that could influence objectivity of their report, unbiased work with the manuscript or its reviewing, the decision on publishing, and if in doubt, declare the respective conflicts of interest.

The authors have an opportunity to declare their conflicts of interest when submitting the article. Reviewers can declare their conflicts of interest to the issue editor(s). 

These suggestions and requirements comply with RTU Press Policy on Declaration of Conflict of Interest available here.

Publication Ethics Guidelines

The journal's ethical oversight policy complies with RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines that are available here and are based on adherence to ethical principles set out in “Latvian Council of Science Code of Researcher’s Ethics “, “RTU Code of Ethics of Students and Personnel” and in Codes of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines of Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE). 

These guidelines include the following:

Ethical guidelines for authors:

• Authors should adhere to national and international copyright laws and the RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines.
• Publishing of a manuscript should be agreed with the project manager or leader of the research group and all co-authors.
• Using text of publication of another author without reference to the author is qualified as plagiarism and violation of copyright.
• Tables, figures or extensive quotations should be reproduced only with appropriate permission from the author or publisher, should be properly acknowledged with reference to the source.
• When quoting scientific discoveries, its primary source should be acknowledged. The same research can be used only if the primary source is cited.
• Repeated publishing of previously published work is unethical. It does not relate to inclusion in literature overviews. 
• Authors should ensure that their research is original and has not been published before. Submitting of manuscripts to multiple publishing or simultaneous publishing is considered unethical. 
• On submission of the manuscript authors should present information about all related and similar publications, including translations, published with other publishers. 
• Researchers should ensure that only those individuals are rewarded with authorship who have made real and creative and substantial contribution to the research work. Colleagues who have provided technical assistance (e.g. doing standard analysis using standard methods) or to the publication (e.g. prepared figures or did editing) should be listed in the Acknowledgement section. Acknowledgement should also be given to individuals whose comments during the preparation of the manuscript have helped to interpret the results of the research.
• Authors should declare all possible financial and/or non-financial conflicts of interest.

Ethical duties of peer reviewers of journal articles:

• Assess the academic content, the obtained research results, author’s competence and the scientific significance of the manuscript, and clearly communicate critical comments without being hostile. 
• Ensure that the review is based on the merits of the work and not influenced either positively or negatively, by any financial, or other conflicting considerations or by personal biases (professional, political, religious or ideological).
• Declare all potential conflicting interests and decline to review the manuscript if he/she is not able to be objective.
• Notify the editor or publisher if he/she has concerns about ethical aspects of the work or is aware of similarities between the text of the submitted manuscript to another published article.
• Respect the confidentiality and avoid using the submitted manuscript for his/her personal benefit.
• Only agree to review manuscripts which he/she has the subject expertise required to carry out a proper assessment and decline to review if he/she does not have the respective competencies.

Other issues of Ethical Oversight:

• The journal will handle complaints and appeals promptly and politely, discussing them with the publisher and submitter and seeking for the best ethical solution of the problems.
• Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility follow the COPE guidelines. If the articles refer to data, which are not publicly available, it is expected that the authors will be open to share these data with other researchers upon the request. 
• Authors are expected to provide clear evidence that their research has followed international ethical guidelines in case their research concerns ethically sensitive data or experiments. For research involving human subjects, authors should explain how informed consent was obtained from all participants.  Informed consent should be obtained if there is any reasonable possibility that complete anonymity cannot be maintained. The privacy of human subjects should never be violated without prior informed consent. Identifying information should be excluded from the study data unless the information is essential for the study purposes and the subject (or their legal representative has given prior written informed consent. However, subject information should never be falsified or modified. When informed consent has been given by the subjects, it should be included in the article.
• The journal does not provide a preprint platform for authors to upload manuscript drafts for peer commenting. However it is possible, on the authors request, to pre-publish the article on the journal website if it is accepted for publication in any of the forthcoming issues.
• In case any post-publication issues arise, their handling is done promptly and in cooperation with the authors of the article.   

Fees and Charges

CSIMQ is an Open Access journal with a business model that is based on the principle whereby the journal’s publication expenses are borne by the Riga Technical University.

The journal does not collect any Article Processing Charges (APC) for manuscript processing, editing, publishing and archiving. There are no fees associated with article downloads.