Author Guidelines

1 General Information

1.1 Aims and Scope

The topic of the manuscript must fit the scope of the journal. Please refer to Aims and Scope for more information. 

1.2 Open Access and Copyright

JICN adopts the Gold Open Access publishing model and distributes content under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyright is retained by authors. Please refer to Open Access Policy for more information.

1.3 Research and Publication Ethics

You will be required to accept the FFSP Publishing Policies and Ethics for Authors when you submit your paper to the journal. The statement covers authorship, Research ethics and conflicts of interest.

Please read through our Editorial Policies to ensure your submission complies: https://www.ffspub.com/index.php/jicn/Policies

2 Preparing Your Manuscript

2.1 Submission Checklist 

Before completing the submission of your manuscript, we advise you to read our submission checklist:

• Read the Aims & Scope and confirm that your manuscript is suitable for this journal;
• Prepare your manuscript use our template;
• All necessary files have been uploaded, including manuscript, cover letter, supplemental files and ethical approval et al.;
• One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details;
• Ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript and provide the Conflict of Interest;
• Journal publication policies detailed have been reviewed;
• All authors understand that they are responsible for payment of the article publishing charge (APC) if the manuscript is accepted. Payment of the APC may be covered by the corresponding author’s institution, or the research funder.

2.2 Cover Letter

A cover letter is required to be submitted accompanying each manuscript. It should be concise and explain why the work is significant, why it fits the scope of the journal, why it would be attractive to readers, and so on. If you want to submit your  manuscript to a particular special issue, please refer to its specific name in your cover letter. If the methods and/or ideas of the submitted paper have been presented partly or entirely at a conference/seminar/congress, the authors should disclose this in their cover letter.

All cover letters are required to include the following statements:

• We confirm that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration for publication with or published in another journal.
• All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission to JICN.

2.3 Article Types

We welcome the submission of various types of articles, including Article, Reviews, Editorial et al.

Articles should report substantial advances regarding an important scientific problem,  the study in which a hypothesis is tested using appropriate scientific methods. The manuscript file contains all essential sections: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion (including strengths and limitations), References, Figure, Tables. Articles are suggested to be limited to 15 pages, including references, captions and notes.

Reviews articles should provide a critical and comprehensive overview and evaluation of a research area,  offer novel insights or interpretation of a subject, provide recommendations for future research. Reviews are suggested to be limited to 20 pages, including references, captions and notes.

A Scoping Review type can be submitted as a Review. Scoping reviews should strictly follow the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews checklist (https://www.prisma-statement.org/scoping) and submit the checklist when submission.

Editorials are  non-peer-reviewed article written by editorial board members or guest editors of the journal, they usually invited by the journal office. Editorials are opinionated pieces, policy statement, or general commentary of the journal or the special issue.

2.4 Article Template

We recommend using our templates to prepare the submission files.

Download LaTeX template.

2.5 Article Structure

Title: The title of article should concisely and accurately specify the main result or conclusion presented in the manuscript.

Authorship: Please clearly indicate the full names of each author. Author names must be listed in correct order, with affiliation details for where the research took place. We encourage authors to include ORCID IDs, which will be requested on submission. Please indicate who the Corresponding Author is.

Abstract:The abstract should be completely self-contained,  provide a brief summary of the research conducted, the main method used and results obtained. It is suggested not more than 250 words in length, without abbreviations, footnotes, or references.

Keywords:The authors need provide 4 to 8 keywords for indexing purposes. The keywords should indicate the main subject matter of your paper, and strive to use standardized keywords.

Graphical Abstract: This summarises the content of the article in a concise, pictorial form to attract more attention to the online article. Graphical abstract is optional, but its use is encouraged.

• Submit your graphical abstract as a separate file in the online submission system.
• Image size: Ensure the image is a minimum of 531 x 1328 pixels (h x w) or proportionally more and is readable at a size of 5 x 13 cm.
• File types: TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files.
• Avoid large blocks of text or large blank spaces in the image.

Main Text: The main text contains all essential sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion (including strengths and limitations).

  Introduction: The introduction section includes a review and analyze of the existing literature，clearly  state the objectives and novelty of your work in light of previous findings.

  Methods: A brief description of the methods/techniques used. A detailed methodology section will make your article be sufficient to allow for the work to be reproduced. If the method you are used has already been published or propose a improved method based on a existing methods, please provide a brief summry and citation of the originally published method and describe any modifications that you have made to existing methods.

  Results: Results should be clear and concise. The results section provide a description of the experimental results  you obtained in your research. We advise you to use the figures and tables to illustrate your results.  

  Discussion:The Discussion section should discuss the significance and impact of the findings, potential limitations and shortcomings, and implications for future research. A discussion should not be a repetition of the results section.

Conclusions: The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results section.

Supplementary Materials: Supplementary Materials are not compulsory. Extra or supplementary information and technical details can be presented in the Supplementary File.

Funding: This section is necessary. Please provide the grants and grant numbers. If not applicable, state "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors." in this section.

Author Contributions: This section is necessary. Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data, or the creation of new software used in the work, or have drafted the work or substantively revised it. Please refer to Authorship and Contributorship in Publishing Policies for more information. 

Conflict of Interest: JICN requires all authors to declare all competing interests in relation to their work. All submissions must include a ‘Conflict of Interest’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no competing interests”. The Editor may ask for further information relating to competing interests.

Data Available: JICN encourages authors submit the data in web repositories, i.e., GitHub, OSF, for the sake of transparency.  Authors should state that "The data and materials used in this study are available upon request from xx".

Ethical Approval: Ethical Approval is not compulsory. Research works involving humans and/or animals must be performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by an appropriate ethics committee. Please provide project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board in this section. If ethical approval is not required, authors must either provide an proof of exemption.

Acknowledgements: Acknowledgements are not compulsory.  List here those individuals who provided help during the research who do not qualify as authors, and/or institutions provide non-financial support.

2.6 References

2.6.1 In-text Citations

References should be completeness and accuracy, and must be relevant to the content of the article. In the text, reference should be should be cited numerically in consecutive order in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. Please ensure that all references are cited in the text (and vice versa).

The journal also recommends that authors prepare references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references.

2.6.2 Reference Style

When listing the references, please refer following style.

Journal Articles

Author 1, A, B., Author 2, C, D.: Title of the Article. Journal Name Volume(Issue), First page–Last page/Article Number (Year)

Park, S., Lee, K. H., Ko, B., Kim, N.: Unsupervised anomaly detection with generative adversarial networks in mammography. Scientific Reports 13(1), 2925 (2023)

Yang, J., Zhou, K., Liu, Z.: Full-spectrum out-ofdistribution detection. International Journal of Computer Vision 131(10), 2607-2622, (2023)

Conference Proceedings

Author 1, A, B., Author 2, C, D.: Title of conference paper. In Name of the Conference, pp. First page–Last page/Article Number (Year). Publisher(optional)

Achanta, R., Susstrunk, S.: Saliency detection for content-aware image resizing. In 2009 16th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), pp. 1005–1008 (2009). IEEE

Aulinas, J., Petillot, Y., Salvi, J., Llado, X.: The slam problem: a survey. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the Catalan Association for Artificial Intelligence, pp. 363–371 (2008)

Books and Book Chapters

Author 1, A, B., Author 2, C, D.: Book Title, Edition (if available)., Publisher (Year)

Author 1, A, B., Author 2, C, D.: Chapter Title in Book Title, Edition (if available)., Publisher (Year)

Author 1, A, B., Author 2, C, D.: Book Title, Editor 1, A, B., Editor 2, A, B.,( Eds), Publisher (Year)

Santos, O., Salam, S., Dahir, H. The AI revolution in networking, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies, 2nd ed., Addison-Wesley Professional (2024)

Aggarwal, C.C.: Machine Learning with Shallow Neural Networks in Neural Networks and Deep Learning, Springer Cham (2018)

Thesis

Author 1, A, B.: Title of Thesis. Level of Thesis, Degree-Granting University (Year)

Li, T.: Computational Foundations of Multi-Agent Learning in Cyber-Physical-Human Networks under Amorphous Information Attributes. PhD Thesis, New York University (2025)

Website and Online Resources

Author (if available): Title of Website. URL Accessed date

Rose, K., Eldridge, S., Chapin, L.: The internet of things: An overview. https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2015/iot-overview/ Accessed 2025-05-15

Preprint

Author 1, A, B., Author 2, C, D.: Title of the preprint. Preprint platform name Article Number (Year)

Djurisic, A., Bozanic, N., Ashok, A., Liu, R.: Extremely simple activation shaping for out-of-distribution detection. arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.09858 (2022)

2.7 Tables

• Tables should be inserted at the main text an editable format, not as images.
• Tables should consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text be numbered as Table 1, Table 2, etc.
• Ensure that each table is cited in main text and in numerical order.
• Table captions should be concise and accurate, must be placed immediately before the table.
• It is allow to use the table notes below the table body.
• Avoid vertical rules and shading within table cells.
• Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.

2.8 Figures

• Figures should be inserted at the mian text  at the appropriate position.
• Figures should consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text be numbered as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.
• Ensure that each table is cited in main text and in numerical order.
• Figure captions should be concise and accurate, must be placed immediately after the figure, and explain all symbols and abbreviations used.   
• For figures with more than one subfigures, subfigures should be clearly indicated using labels (a), (b), (b), (d), etc.
• Times New Roman in size 8–10.5 pt is advised in the figures.
• Individual figures should not be longer than one page and with a width that corresponds to one column (86 mm) or two columns (178mm).
• Please make sure that artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF (or JPEG), EPS (or PDF), or MS Office files), with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.
• The use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools in the production of artwork such as for graphical abstracts is not permitted.
• The journal is published online with colour graphics. Please note low contrast colours may not show clearly in print article.

3 Submission 

When you are ready to submit your paper, please submit it from following link:

https://www.ffspub.com/index.php/jicn/login?source=%2Findex.php%2Fjicn%2Fsubmission

4 After Acceptance

After paper is accepted, we will invite all authors to edit the accepted version, including latex files and PDF files. To ensure a fast publication process of your work, we kindly ask authors to provide us with their proof corrections within two workdays.

5 Author Inquiries

If you have any questions, please contact the Editorial Office:

Email: jicn.office@ffspub.com