Author Guidelines

CNSS Journal for National Security Studies (CNSS)
Research and Publication Ethics Policies
The Centre for National Security Studies (CNSS) aims to publish content that meets its high standards of research acumen and publication integrity, also aimed at ensuring the accuracy, indigeneity and inclusivity of research to the people. CNSS encourages the authors, editors and reviewers to acquaint themselves with the Publication Ethics Policies to ensure that the submissions meet the standards of the journal. In case published articles are found to fall short of these standards, we will correct or retract the article according to our corrections and retractions policies.
1. General Research Ethics
To ensure the conduct of an ethical study and its publication, the following points are to be considered:
i. The authors are requested to confirm that the research work which has local relevance should be conducted in collaboration with the concerned local communities. In that process, the inclusion of local scholars is preferable, with proper authorship given to them. Please refer to the Authorship Guidelines for more information on authorship. Joint first and/or joint senior authorship is an option here.
ii. The authors must confirm that a local ethics review was pursued and if not, please explain the reasons why (not).
iii. It is to be mentioned whether the research work involved any risk to participants. Please describe the measures taken to ensure their safety and well-being that were agreed upon with local partners.
iv. The authors are required to explain how the communication between the author and the participants was done to ensure that informed consent by the participants was freely given. Any potential cultural sensitivities that were explored in advance are also required to check the ethical considerations.
v. It is compulsory that the authors confirm that all research work was conducted to the highest possible ethical standards, regardless of the requirements of the local setting.
2. Authorship Guidelines
To ensure fair and transparent credit for all authors involved in the research, CNSS follows the following guidelines while considering a research article for publication. To learn more about the guidelines regarding the criteria for authorship, author roles, group authorship, author affiliations, changes and disputes related to authorship, and issues regarding deceased and incapacitated authors, please check our comprehensive Authorship Guidelines.
2.1 Name Change Requests
Please refer to the Name Change Policy for a detailed instruction.
3. Declaration of Conflicting Interests
A conflict of interest can be defined as any direct or indirect interest that might influence the assessment of or conducting of the research reported in the article. Any interests within five years before beginning the research are considered relevant. However, if any interests before this time influence the research, the authors must disclose them in this section.
To make informed judgements about the research article and its potential biases, the authors are required to disclose any direct or indirect interests that relate to their submission to any CNSS journal. The following interests may present a conflict and should be declared upon submission:
3.1 Financial Interests
Whenever the author receives a grant from a funding agency or a commercial entity and such organisations benefit from the research financially, such information should be written under this section. It is also to be mentioned in this section when the researcher(s) are affiliated with or employed at an organisation that benefits from the research work. Stocks, shares, patents, patent applications or other forms of financial holdings that are likely to benefit from the publication and dissemination of the research are supposed to be declared in the ‘Conflict of Interest’ section. Any kind of payments made to the author to carry out the research and any close relatives to the author who may financially benefit from the research work should also be explained in this section.
3.2 Non-Financial Interests
Affiliation to or membership at an organisation that has an interest in the outcome of the research work constitutes a non-financial conflict of interests. Such interests also include the ideology, beliefs and faith relevant to the research topic and advocacy work related to the research should be mentioned in this section. Political inclinations or legal action relevant to the research or its potential conclusion, research competition, previous personal disagreements, and close working relationships with editors and editorial board members are to be mentioned in this section. In case the authors have editorial responsibilities at CNSS or membership of the editorial board of the journal, it is to be declared as a conflict of interest.
3.3 Procedure of Declaration
The author(s) should declare their conflicting interests under the heading “Declaration of Conflicting Interests” after the Acknowledgement section and preceding the sections like Funding, Notes and References. Please check our Submission Guidelines for more information.
If there are no conflicting interests, we will publish the following statement:
‘The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article’.
3.4 Contributor Agreement
In the Contributor Agreement, the author will be asked to certify that:

i. All the financial support received from commercial entities or funding agencies is acknowledged in your article.
ii. Any commercial or financial arrangements related to your article have been discussed with your Editor, who will advise whether details should be declared.
iii. You have not signed an agreement with any sponsor that might compromise the impartial reporting of data.
It is to be understood that the submissions will be evaluated impartially and will not necessarily be rejected when any conflicting interests are declared. If a conflict of interest of relevance and importance that was not declared by the author(s) becomes apparent at any time during the peer review or publishing process, the CNSS Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the submission.
3.5 Editor’s Declaration
The Editors associated with the journal’s selection, scrutiny, retraction, rejection, review, and publishing process are required to declare any conflicts of interest that may impact the aforementioned process. If a conflict arises, an alternative member of the Editorial Board must be appointed and the Editor with the conflict must recuse themselves from the decision-making process. These conflicts include financial and non-financial interests listed above.
The CNSS Journal Editors or members of the CNSS Editorial Board submitting their research to their journals may do so and must declare their involvement with the journal as a conflict of interest. In such cases, the Journal Editor or Editorial Board member must recuse themselves from the peer review process and appoint another member of the Editorial Board who will invite two or more subject experts to evaluate the manuscript.
3.6 CNSS Editorial Board
The Editorial Board at CNSS are required to declare their employment at CNSS as a conflict of interest in any submission they send to the CNSS journal. These submissions are treated as any other submissions within the journal.
4. Funding Statements
All submissions must have a funding statement which should appear under the heading “Funding”, after the “Acknowledgements” and “Declaration of Conflicting Interests” sections and before “Notes and References”. For your ease, two statement examples are written below:
If funding was received, the following should be written in bold, followed by the full name of the funding agency, and the grant number in square brackets:
“The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the _______________________ [grant agency and grant number xxxx].
If the author(s) received grants from multiple agencies, they are required to write grant agencies and grant numbers in separate statements in the same section.
In case the research was supported indirectly by grants available to your institution, but not to the author(s) personally, simply include the statement:
“The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.”
The Declaration of Conflicting Interests and Funding Statement(s) will not be included in the document sent for the peer review process.
4.1 Industry-Funded Research
In case the research work is being funded by an industry, the author(s) must mention such collaborations in detail along with the role of such industries in the design of the study or the analysis and interpretation of the data collected. Both direct and indirect funding must be declared in this section. Indirect funding includes the monetary support received by the organisations to which the author is affiliated. It is also to be declared whether the funding is in full or in part.
In the case where the author fails to declare industry-specific funding, the CNSS Editorial Board reserves the right to reject the article. CNSS will also retract the whole article if the oversight comes to light after publication.
5. Ethics approval and informed consent statements
We ensure our high ethical standards in publishing by including clear statements in support of results reported in articles. Here are a few examples:
5.1 Studies involving Humans
All the studies that involve humans and their data must be evaluated in terms of ethical considerations. Ethics statements, apart from being mentioned in the methods section in the article body, must also be written under a separate section “Ethical Considerations”, above the “Declaration of Conflicting Interests”. Please check the CNSS Submission Guidelines for more information.
Ethics Approval
In case the author has been able to be granted ethical approval for the research work, the following examples can be used to write the ethics approval statements:
“This study was approved by the XXXX Research Ethics Committee (approval no. XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY.”
Or, “The XXXX Ethics Review Committee at XXXX University approved our interviews (approval: XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY. Respondents gave written consent for review and signature before starting interviews.”
In any case, if the author has not been able to get approval from their respective ethical committees, it is requested that the author(s) send the details regarding such issues to the CNSS Editorial Board via email.

Participant consent
In all cases, it is necessary to state that consent has been granted to use any personal information, and how that consent has been permitted. Informed consent includes three key components:

i. Communication of information
ii. Comprehension of information
iii. Voluntary participation
Apart from mentioning it in the methods section of the research articles, the author(s) must also state in this section whether the participants provided written or verbal informed consent. This statement should also include whether the participants provided such consent with a sound mind, after understanding the details of the research, its ethical considerations and the implications such research can have on the participants. Therefore, consent from the participants has to be taken to conduct the study, publish the study, and have their photos or other images used (if necessary).
In case the identities of the participants are anonymised, they should be clearly stated too. Since the articles are being published on an open-access basis, the participants must be aware that the article will be available to anyone with an internet connection.
The American Psychological Association (APA) recommends that for those who are legally incapable of giving informed consent, researchers should:
i. Provide an appropriate explanation
ii. Seek the individual’s assent
iii. Consider the person’s preferences and best interests
If the participant is unable to give their consent, the author(s) will need to indicate the steps taken to protect their rights and safety. The participants should be thoroughly informed about:
i. The aim, duration, and method of the research;
ii. The participants have the right to decline their participation. They should also be notified about the process of withdrawing from the research along with the possible consequences of doing so;
iii. The various issues such as potential risks and adverse effects that may be expected to influence their inclination to participate in the research work;
iv. The potential research benefits are to be communicated to the participants. Probable research outcomes must not be sugar-coated to the participants to influence their decision on consent;
v. Any incentive to the participants is to be communicated before they take part in the research work;
vi. The limitations of confidentiality should be communicated to the participants;
vii. The participants should also be given the option to contact a person who can direct them especially to know and understand their (research) participation rights.
Please find the CNSS Consent Form on our website and fill up with the signatures of the participants after a thorough understanding of the nature of their participation. However, do not include the consent forms with your submission as such actions will breach the confidentiality of the participants in front of the Editorial Board and Reviewers. In situations where the CNSS Ethics Committee and Editorial Board think that ethical infringements have been committed, especially with participation consent and maintaining confidentiality, the author(s) would be specifically requested to send it to the Ethical Committee for review.
In the manuscript submitted, the author(s) should confirm that written informed consent has been acquired from the participants and that maximum confidentiality (wherever required) has been practised.
Ethnographic Research and Informed Consent
Ethnographic research requires maximum adherence to the aforementioned ethical considerations. The author(s) who implement such a method of data collection have to follow the ethical guidelines prescribed by CNSS.
Given below are a few examples to write if and how consent was obtained:
i. Written informed consent
“The study was approved by the XXXX (Ethical Clearance Reference Number: XYZ123) on Month DD, YYYY. All participants provided written informed consent prior to participating.
Written informed consent can be written in this format if such consent was obtained from a legally authorised representative for anonymised participant information to be published in this article. Such clearances are also accepted if it is given by your institutional Ethics Committee undersigned by its member(s).
ii. Verbal informed consent
“Informed consent was obtained verbally before participation.”
The consent has to be audio-recorded in the attendance of an autonomous witness. In case verbal informed consent has been taken, the CNSS Ethics Committee will look into the research work to check if any ethical guideline has been breached.
iii. If consent was not obtained
“Informed consent for information published in this article was not obtained because [please state the reason].”