Call for Articles

Overview

In a number of countries, votes are counted and transported electronically, but there are numerous practical and policy implications of introducing electronic machines into the voting process. Both voting technology and its regulations are very much in flux, with open concerns including accuracy, reliability, robustness, security, transparency, auditability, equality, privacy, usability, accessibility, cost, and regulation.

USENIX is proud to announce the creation of a new Journal of Election Technology and Systems (JETS), which will operate in conjunction with the ongoing USENIX Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE). If you want your paper to appear at EVT/WOTE, you submit it to JETS. JETS brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines, ranging from computer science and human-computer interaction experts; through political scientists, statisticians, legal and policy experts, election administrators; to voting equipment vendors. JETS seeks to publish original research on important problems in all aspects of electronic voting.

JETS is an example of a new trend in academic computer science—a hybrid of a conference and a journal. All papers will have a two-round review process (longer than a conference, shorter than a journal). After the first round, authors will get anonymous feedback from the editors. Their manuscripts may be accepted without changes, accepted with minor required changes, rejected with major changes recommended, or simply rejected. Accepted papers will have a brief window to make any necessary changes and then will be subject to an additional round of reviews. By having regular submission deadlines with rapid reviewing, JETS promises to offer authors a rapid and predictable process. By having online open-access dissemination, JETS promises timely, free access to readers worldwide.

JETS authors pay nothing to submit manuscripts and JETS readers pay nothing to read accepted papers. Authors of accepted JETS papers will be invited to present their work at the USENIX EVT/WOTE workshop. EVT/WOTE '14 will be a two-day event, Monday, August 18, and Tuesday, August 19, 2014, co-located with the 23rd USENIX Security Symposium in San Diego, CA. In addition to JETS paper presentations, the workshop may include panel discussions and other events of interest to our attendees. Attendance at the workshop will be open to the public, although talks and refereed paper presentations will be by invitation only. There will be an award for the best paper.

JETS Manuscript Topics

Papers should contain original research in any area related to electronic voting technologies, verifiable elections, and related concerns. Example topics include but are not limited to:

• In-person voting systems
• Remote/Internet voting systems
• Voter registration and authentication systems
• Procedures for ballot and election auditing
• Cryptographic (or non-cryptographic) verifiable election schemes

Example topics include but are not limited to original research on:

• Attacks on existing systems
• Designs of new systems 
• Experiences deploying voting systems or conducting elections 
• Experiences detecting and recovering from election problems 
• Formal or informal security or requirements analysis 
• Examination of usability and accessibility issues 
• Research on relevant regulations, standards, or laws 

Submissions will be judged on originality, relevance, correctness, and clarity.

Submission Instructions

All deadlines are hard—no extensions will be given. All submissions will be electronic. Submissions should be finished, complete papers (not work in progress) and must be in PDF format. For submission dates and links to the Web Submission form, please see the issue-specific JETS Call for Articles Web pages.

Paper submissions should be at most 16 typeset pages, excluding bibliography and well-marked appendices. Submissions should be in one-column format, using 10-point Times Roman type on 12-point leading, in a text block with 1.5-inch margins on U.S.-style 8.5"x11" paper. There is no limit on the length of appendices, but reviewers are not required to read them. Once accepted, papers must fit in 20 pages—including bibliography and any appendices—in the same format. Authors' names and affiliations should not be included, per the anonymization policy that follows.

Final camera-ready papers should be formatted according to the specifications above. If you are using Microsoft Word or LaTeX, please make use of these templates and stylefiles.

Note that you should feel no obligation to use every available page. Shorter papers are encouraged. Because JETS accepts manuscripts from academics across many different disciplines, we wish to be flexible about formatting requirements. Generally speaking, we want papers to follow the font size and margins listed above, but beyond that you're welcome to adopt the APA style or whatever other standard your academic area prefers.

Paper submissions must be anonymized: author names and author affiliations must be removed; acknowledgments and other clear markers of affiliation (e.g., "we used data from XXX University") should be removed or rewritten; self-citations should be rewritten to be neutral (e.g., "In previous work, Smith showed...").

Simultaneous submission of the same work to multiple venues, submission of previously published work, or plagiarism constitutes dishonesty or fraud. USENIX, like other scientific and technical conferences and journals, prohibits these practices and may take action against authors who have committed them. See the USENIX Conference Submissions Policy for details.

Authors uncertain whether their submission meets USENIX's guidelines should contact the editors-in-chief, jets_editors@usenix.org, or the USENIX office, submissionspolicy@usenix.org.

Papers accompanied by nondisclosure agreement forms will not be considered. Accepted submissions will be treated as confidential prior to publication on the USENIX JETS Web site; rejected submissions will be permanently treated as confidential.

Authors will be notified on the dates described above. Each accepted submission may be assigned a member of the editorial board to act as its shepherd through the preparation of the final paper. The assigned member will act as a conduit for feedback from the full editorial board to the authors.

All JETS papers will be disseminated online, free of charge, to all readers. If you need to embargo your final publication for some reason, please notify production@usenix.org. Questions about submissions may be sent to the journal editors-in-chief at jets_editors@usenix.org.