Aims and scope | Article types | Preparing your article for submission | Overleaf | Policy on prior publication | Authorship and contributorship | Author affiliations | Competing interests | Publishing ethics | Supplementary materials | Seeking permissions for copyright material |  Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools | Acknowledgements | ORCID | Author Hub | Editing services

Aims and scope

Network Science (NWS) encourages submissions presenting original work or surveys on mathematical, computational, empirical, and substantive aspects of the collection, analysis, modeling, and visualization of network data in any field of scientific inquiry.

As of 2024, NWS publishes on a fully open access basis, but no author is prevented from publishing if they have no funds. As explained on the Open Access options page many authors have costs covered through Transformative Agreements that Cambridge University Press holds with institutions worldwide. Authors without institutional or grant funding can obtain waivers after acceptance to publish. 

Articles should be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/nws.

Types of article

Network Science encourages the submission of:  

• Research Articles*
• Commentaries*
• End Notes*

Invited Editorials and Introductions (in relation to special issues) are also published by the journal.

* These article types may be covered by one of the agreements Cambridge University Press has made to support open access.

Preparing your article for submission

All manuscripts for consideration for Network Science must be submitted electronically, via ScholarOne. For assistance, please contact the Editorial Office at nws@cambridge.org.

Authors should prepare to upload: 

• a Title Page (containing the title; authors and affiliations; competing interest, funding and data availability statements)
• an anonymised article file as the Main Document 

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously, and that it is not currently being considered by another journal. Authors must also confirm that each author has seen and approved the contents of the submitted manuscript.

Templates

The following Network Science templates exist for author convenience (not required):

• LaTeX template
• Use Overleaf (a LaTeX-based collaborative authoring tool; read about benefits of this tool)

(Note that when you submit to the ScholarOne system the Main Document file must be uploaded in PDF format; if you've prepared the article in LaTeX, upload a PDF version with the 'Main Document' designation and the LaTeX files with the 'LaTeX source files' designation). 

Title Page

You are required to provide a Title Page that includes:

• Title
• Keywords
• Authors' names in order of authorship, and affiliation details (department, institution, city, country)
• Acknowledgments (if applicable)
• Competing Interest Statement
• Funding Statement
• Data Availability Statement

Acknowledgements

Authors can acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organizers, family members, etc that have helped with the research and/or writing process. It is important that that any type of funding information or financial support listed in the ‘Funding Statement’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can easily be tagged and captured separately.

Funding Statement

Within this section please provide details of the sources of funding or financial support for all authors, including grant numbers, for example: “This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)”. 

Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with “and” before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors’ initials, for example: “This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (AB, grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (CD, grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (EF, grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (AB, grant number GGGG), (EF, grant number HHHH).”

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.”

Competing Interest Statement

Authors must include a Competing Interest declaration on their title page when they submit, which will be published should their article be accepted. These include any situation that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on an author’s presentation of their work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the Competing Interest declarations should list all contributing authors, e.g. “Competing Interests: Author A is employed at company B. Author C owns shares in company D, is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H in the past.”

If an author wishes to state they have no Competing Interest, their declaration should say “Competing Interests: None”.

Data Availability Statement

To promote more transparent and reproducible research, we ask authors submitting to Network Science to provide a Data Availability Statement in the title page to help authors understand whether and how they can access the data, code and other resources that support the research findings. For more details, including example statements, see the research transparency policy.

Main Document (anomymised)

The authors' names should not appear anywhere in the blinded manuscript. If the authors' own work is cited in the paper, it should be cited normally, but it may be removed as part of the blinding process. Regardless of file format, the Blinded Manuscript should be put together in the following order: 1. Title of Work (does not need to be a separate page) 2. Abstracts and keywords (see above for more information) 3. Main text 4. References 5. Tables and figures, along with captions. The Blinded Manuscript will be sent to reviewers; only the editors will see the original manuscript.

(Note that when you submit toScholarOne system the Main Document file must be in PDF format; if you've prepared the article in LaTeX, upload a PDF version with the 'Main Document' designation and the LaTeX files with the 'LaTeX source files' designation). 

Article specifications

Network Science is intended for a broad, interdisciplinary audience. Please avoid jargon and give adequate explanation for concepts and methods that may be unfamiliar to academic readers from different fields. However, please assume that our readers are familiar with introductory ideas in network science. It is not necessary in submissions to define terms such as centrality, density or degree distribution.

Length

As an interdisciplinary journal, Network Science encourages articles from different fields that often have different publishing standards. In general, the length of an article should be between 20 and 40 pages, including footnotes and references, but the editors are open to exceptions if needed. We are also open to shorter research notes that emphasize visualizations, to be published at the end of each issue. We are not currently accepting book or software reviews.

Format

Submissions should be written in one of two formats: LaTeX or Microsoft Word.

Microsoft Word Submissions

Documents should be double-spaced throughout. Do not include any header or footer information in the document. Do not incorporate figures, tables, or text boxes into the main text of the article, but refer to them by their number in the text and place them at the end of the manuscript. Indicate where preferred placement is for figures and tables in the text. Separate figure files will be requested after acceptance (see Figures below).

LaTeX Submissions

Manuscripts produced using TeX or LaTeX are welcome at the journal. Authors using LaTeX should use the NWS LaTeX class file or the Overleaf template.

Figures

It is not necessary to provide separate figure files on initial submission. However, after acceptance, we will ask for separate files. Resolution: halftone images must be saved at 300 dpi at approximately the final size. Line drawings should be saved at 1000 dpi, or 1200 dpi if very fine line weights have been used. Combination figures must be saved at a minimum of 600 dpi. Cambridge recommends that only TIFF, EPS, or PDF formats are used for electronic artwork. For more detailed guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format please see the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide.

Abstracts

Abstracts should be no more than 200 words and should include the main aims of the paper, the methods and specific data source if applicable, and the conclusions. Please include up to 10 keywords that should accompany the article. Examples: centrality, brain science, p*, epidemiology.

Citation Style

In general, the journal follows the American Psychological Association (APA) style, which is true for citations. The definitive guide for this style is the Sixth Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. APA also maintains a very helpful website (http://www.apastyle.org) and blog (http://blog.apastyle.org/) for more information. Manuscripts will not be accepted for publication unless they are in this format. LaTeX manuscripts can use the nws.bst file in conjunction with your bibtex database.

In-text citations

For papers with one author, list the author's last name, followed by a comma, a space and the year, throughout the paper. Example:

(Moreno, 1953)

For papers with one or two authors, include an ampersand between the author names throughout the paper. Example:

(Hutchins & Benham-Hutchins, 2010; Borgatti & Everett, 2005)

For papers with three or more authors, et al. is used after the first author throughout the paper. Example:

(Doe et al., 2012)

List of references

Each work cited should be listed at the end of the article. Below is an example:

References

Borgatti, S. P., & Everett, M. G. (2005). Extending centrality. In P. J. Carrington, J. Scott & S. Wasserman (Eds.), Models and methods in social network analysis (pp. 57-76). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Coleman, J., Katz, E., & Menzel, H. (1957). The diffusion of an innovation among physicians. Sociometry, 20(4), 253-270. Frantz, T. L., & Carley, K. (2005). A formal characterization of cellular networks (CASOS - Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems, Trans.) CASOS Technical Report (pp. 14): Carnegie Mellon University.

Hutchins, C., & Benham-Hutchins, M. (2010). Hiding in plain sight: Criminal network analysis. Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory, 16(1), 89-111.

Moreno, J. L. (1953). Who shall survive? Foundations of sociometry, group psychotherapy and socio- drama (2nd ed.). Oxford, England: Beacon House.

Overleaf

Overleaf is a free online tool for writing and submitting scholarly manuscripts. An Overleaf template is available for this journal, which allows authors to easily comply with the journal’s guidelines. There is also a direct link to submit your manuscript from within the Overleaf authoring environment. Once you have completed writing an article in Overleaf, you can use the "Submit to Journal" button and select the appropriate link to be directed to this journal's manuscript submission system.

Benefits of using Overleaf include:

• An intuitive interface, in which authors can write in LaTeX or rich text and see a preview of their article typeset in the journal’s style
• Features enabling collaboration with co-authors (the ability to share, highlight and comment on versions of articles)
• Sophisticated version control
• Clean PDF conversion and submission into the journal’s online manuscripts system (supporting materials can also be added during this process)

Overleaf is based on LaTeX but includes a rich text mode. An author writing in Overleaf would need to have some knowledge of LaTeX, but could collaborate through the tool with an author who is not a LaTeX expert. Overleaf’s tutorial pages include a two minute video and an introduction to LaTeX course, and Overleaf also provides support for authors using the tool.

Publishing ethics

Authors should check the NWS publishing ethics policies while preparing their materials.

Note that authors should provide a Competing Interest statement, Funding Statement and a Data Availability Statement in their title page, as detailed above. See the NWS research transparency page for detailed policy on sharing data, code and other replication materials.

Seeking permissions for copyrighted material

Authors are responsible for obtaining necessary permissions to quote or reproduce material, including figures, from already published works and/or any copyrighted material. If a figure is from another source, this should be credited appropriately in the figure legend along with any terms of any re-use.

For further advice, see this page on seeking permission to use copyrighted material.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.

In particular, any use of an AI tool:

• to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s).
• to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
• to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript.
• must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission.

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.

Acknowledgements

Authors can use this section to acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organisers, family members, etc. that have helped with the research and/or writing process. It is important that that any type of funding information or financial support is listed under ‘Financial Support’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can be recorded separately (see here).

We are aware that authors sometimes receive assistance from technical writers, language editors, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication. Such assistance must be noted in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section, along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper and that the paper adheres to the journal’s authorship policy. Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors, AI tools and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper. Examples of how to acknowledge assistance in drafting manuscripts:

• “The author(s) thank [name and qualifications] of [company, city, country] for providing [medical/technical/language] writing support/editorial support [specify and/or expand as appropriate], which was funded by [sponsor, city, country]."
• “The author(s) made use of [AI system/tool] to assist with the drafting of this article. [AI version details] was accessed/obtained from [source details] and used with/without modification [specify and/or expand as appropriate] on [date(s)].