Submissions

Author Guidelines

The manuscript has to prepared in accordance with the double-blind review process i.e.:

1. the author(s) must retain from using explicit indications of the authors’ names and institutions;
2. the author(s) should make sure that the manuscript does not reveal author’s identity in any implicit manner.

Author names, institutions, and acknowledgments should appear only in the separately submitted title page of the submission. So the submission contains two (2) separate files: the title page and the blinded-manuscript. Both files should be submitted as Word and pdf files in a zipped folder.

Please use the following Word templates for your submission:

CIJ_article_template_blinded
CIJ_titlepage_template
CIJ_data_template_blinded
CIJ_methodological_note_template_blinded

All submitted papers must adhere to the following formatting guidelines throughout the manuscript (main body, references, appendices, and footnotes):

• A4 paper
• Margins: 3.95 cm top and 1.9 cm left, right and bottom
• 10pt Times New Roman font
• 1.0 spacing
• around 3000 words (excluding abstract, acknowledgement, supplementary material description and references)

A word limit is imposed because the intention of the CIJ is to provide fast and reliable communication tool for researchers communicating the most recent results of their empirical experimentations. Therefore, the shortness of the contributions facilitate that

1. the papers focus on their main contribution;
2. the papers are quicker and easier to review;
3. shorter papers are easier to read and grasp the core ideas.

The prospective authors may wish to follow below guidelines:

Abstract: a brief less than 150 words abstract is required

Introduction: brief, one paragraph establishing the importance and relevance of the research topic and second paragraph establishing the existing research gap and research question(s). Limit the number of research questions to the most important ones;

Theoretical background: brief, to-the-point theoretical discussion only on the most important relevant literature establishing concepts of the study necessary for establishing the current level of knowledge and the research gap

Methods and data: shortly describe the core elements of your method, so that it facilitates replication logic but does not go into the details of the method

Results: concentrate on the most important, core results of your study, do not discuss results in detail, and also limit the number of results (and answer to the limited number of research questions)

Discussion and conclusions: only conclude what can be said based on the results and core limitations of the research, not repetition of results, research question(s), future research directions, etc.;

References: Do not use linked fields (produced by referencing software) but rather, remove field codes produced by referencing software before saving the final version of your manuscript that you are going to submit. Please follow the APA 7 referencing style.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary materials (like video material stating the core results, supplementary data files, additional robustness checks etc.) should be provided as additional files for the manuscript submission. These files are not counted toward the word limit of the submission. The contents of supplementary material should not be critical for the proper evaluation of the paper and delivering the core results of the paper (otherwise include these in the main text).

Submission instructions

All manuscripts must be submitted electronically via https://e-publishing.cern.ch/index.php/CIJ/about/submissions. Authors are advised to follow the detailed instructions in the system. Authors should contact the Editor-in-Chief if they have any questions or encounter any problems in the system.

During the submission process authors may upload additional materials (data, questionnaires, videos, additional analyses, etc.) that they feel will support the review process. Authors submitting a revised version of their manuscript must submit a document that summarizes the changes that they have made containing a detailed response to each of the reviewers’ comments from the previous review.

Data Disclosure

CIJ encourages (but does not require) the disclosure of data associated with the manuscripts to support and facilitate scientific work to continue based on the published works. All the data submitted will be open-source licensed.

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in CIJ articles

CERN IdeaSquare Journal of Experimental Innovation sees the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) as a fruitful aid to proofreading, formatting, summarising, and other text processing tasks. While generative AI can even aid with ideation, it is also emphasised that generative AI has acknowledged issues around bias, representativeness, context awareness, and accuracy. Hence, authors of papers are to be transparent about how they used AI in papers, which AI was used. This is to be explained in either acknowledgements or methodology – which is more appropriate. However, AI should not be listed as an author and authors remain fully responsible for the content of their submissions.

Data publications

CIJ encourages authors to publish datasets on the IdeaSquare Zenodo community (https://zenodo.org/communities/ideasquare). Zenodo is a free open repository hosted by CERN for researchers to deposit datasets, software and other digital artefacts.

CIJ also publishes descriptions of such datasets that are already available at an open repository (e.g., Zenodo) and cover the data’s relevance to the field, necessary theoretical bases to understanding it, and in detail how the data was obtained. The template for data publications is made available similarly to templates of other types of publications.