Author Guidelines

Review the Spectrum Journal Editorial Policies here.

Templates and Submission Requirements

Please review the requirements for publication by downloading the article template, available in both Microsoft Word and LaTeX formats.

Types of Manuscripts

All manuscripts submitted to Spectrum, regardless of category, must be between 5 and 11 pages in length, following the journal’s official templates.

Editorial: Editorials are written at the invitation of the Editors-in-Chief. They should address broad aspects of Operations Research, Defense Technology, or Operational Applications with significant scientific and doctrinal content. These manuscripts are not subject to peer review.

Original Papers: These are full-length articles reporting the results of original scientific research. Spectrum focuses on innovative models, algorithms, and technical-scientific developments within the journal's scope. Manuscripts must provide a clear methodology and robust analysis of results.

Review Articles: Review articles provide a comprehensive and critical summary of subjects relevant to the journal's scope. Authors are expected to have recognized expertise in the field being reviewed. These manuscripts must offer a clear synthesis of the state-of-the-art and suggest future research directions.

Communications: Communications are intended for brief reports on preliminary results of ongoing research, technical notes, or specific operational findings that require dissemination. Although more concise in nature, they must still meet the minimum length requirement of 5 pages.

Thematic Sections (Special Issues): Spectrum may publish thematic sections exploring specific subjects of high importance to the defense and aerospace community. The Editorial Committee defines the themes and may invite Guest Editors to oversee the evaluation process. Contributions to thematic sections undergo the same rigorous peer-review process as original papers.

Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT)

To ensure transparency and appropriate recognition, Spectrum requires that the individual contributions of each author be explicitly documented using the CRediT taxonomy.

At the time of submission, authors must provide a statement indicating the specific roles performed by each contributor, using the following standardized terms:

• Conceptualization: Formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
• Methodology: Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
• Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
• Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication and reproducibility of results, data, or experimental tests.
• Formal Analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
• Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments or data collection.
• Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, patients, laboratory samples, equipment, animals, computing time, or other necessary tools.
• Data Curation: Management activities (such as anonymization) to annotate (produce metadata), scrub, and maintain research data.
• Writing – Original Draft: Preparation, creation, or presentation of the original work (including initial text drafting and formatting).
• Writing – Review & Editing: Preparation, creation, or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically in relation to critical reviews, commentary, or revision.
• Visualization: Preparation, creation, or presentation of the published data in the original work.
• Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
• Project Administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
• Funding Acquisition: Acquisition of financial support for the project.

Collective Responsibility: Regardless of the division of tasks described in the CRediT statement, all authors assume full legal, ethical, and scientific responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of all submitted and published content.

Conflict of Interest Statement

Transparency regarding potential biases is fundamental to the credibility and reproducibility of scientific research. Spectrum requires all authors to explicitly and mandatorily declare, at the time of submission, any condition that could be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest in the conduct of the study or the writing of the article.

The declaration must be included at the end of the manuscript and must cover:

• Financial Conflicts: Receipt of funding, grants, fees, consultancies, stock ownership, or patents linked to companies and organizations that may benefit positively or negatively from the study's results.
• Non-Financial Conflicts: Personal, academic, hierarchical, or institutional affiliations that may influence impartiality in data interpretation or the conclusion of the work.
• Absence of Conflicts: If no conflict exists to be reported, authors must include the following standard statement in the article: "The authors declare that there are no financial, commercial, political, academic, or personal conflicts of interest related to the conduct and publication of this research."

The intentional omission of conflicts of interest constitutes a serious ethical violation, subject to the rejection of the manuscript or the retraction of the published article.