The policy framework
VERSIONICS is governed by a published, versioned and archived policy framework; submissions are handled under the versions in force on their submission date. This page states the operative provisions; the full texts are available from the editorial office. Where a question of publication ethics is not addressed here, the journal follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
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The unit of review is a publication pair: a manuscript and the exact software version it declares — frozen, archived under a version DOI, and identified by release tag, commit hash and SWHID. Claims in the text are checked against the behavior of the archived release; a claim the artifact cannot support is treated as unsupported, however well the text argues it.
Every artifact-type submission undergoes dual-track review, run in parallel and merged into one decision; both tracks must clear before acceptance, and strength in one cannot compensate for failure in the other. The scholarly track (at least two independent reviewers) assesses need, fit to intended users, significance, fairness of comparison and sufficiency of evidence. The artifact track (one independent reviewer coordinated by the Artifact Editor, in a clean environment, using only public documentation) verifies installation, the worked example, tests, documentation, version/licence/manifest consistency, regeneration of reported results, and archive resolvability, and writes a first-person usability account that carries the same weight as the scholarly reports.
Review is single-anonymized: reviewers are anonymous to authors; authors are visible to reviewers — full anonymization is impossible because a public repository, its commit history and its release archive necessarily identify their authors. Reviewer identities are protected indefinitely unless a reviewer signs a report. Reviewer reports are not published; authors receive the full text of all reports, including the usability account.
Decisions are accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject. Any change to the software between submission and acceptance must be released and archived as a new patch or minor version and re-verified. Major revision is normally allowed one round; a submission that cannot clear the artifact track after two verification attempts is rejected, with resubmission possible once the software has matured. Authors may appeal once, in writing, within 60 days; appeals of artifact findings are resolved empirically by a second artifact reviewer re-running the disputed checks — the re-verification outcome is decisive and final.
VERSIONICS is a Gold (diamond) open access journal: all articles are freely and permanently available immediately upon publication, without subscription or paywall. Authors retain copyright; articles are published under CC BY 4.0. Every publication consists of two distinct works under two separate licences:
| The article | The software | |
|---|---|---|
| Copyright holder | The authors, in full | The authors or their institutions, as the repository declares |
| Licence | CC BY 4.0 (fixed by journal policy) | An OSI-approved licence chosen by the authors (SPDX identifier; declared identically in the LICENSE file and the Artifact Manifest) |
| What it governs | Reading, sharing, translating and reusing the text, tables and figures | Using, modifying and redistributing the code, with its attendant obligations |
The article licence never overrides the software licence, and vice versa. Self-archiving carries no embargo of any kind: authors may deposit the submitted version, accepted manuscript or Version of Record anywhere, at any time; preprints are welcome and must be declared. By submitting, authors confirm they hold the rights to publish under these licences and agree that the archived release may be preserved permanently and will not be removed from the public record except through formal correction and retraction procedures.
The journal adheres to COPE guidelines and flowcharts. Fabrication and falsification are prohibited in all their forms, including forms specific to software publishing: fabricated or selectively reported benchmark results; test suites written to pass rather than to test; demonstration outputs the shipped code cannot reproduce; performance figures measured on configurations other than those described; and documentation claiming capabilities the software does not have. Plagiarism covers text and code: incorporating third-party source without licence compliance and attribution is plagiarism even where the licence would have permitted attributed use. All submissions are screened by plagiarism-detection software at submission and again at acceptance; repositories are inspected for unattributed vendored code.
Authorship follows the ICMJE criteria, applied so that design, implementation, testing, documentation, maintenance and validation of the artifact count as substantive contributions; each article carries a CRediT statement covering both the manuscript and the software. AI tools cannot be authors. Generative AI use in the manuscript or the software must be disclosed; authors must be able to evidence that they understand, have tested and will maintain AI-assisted code. Reviewers and editors may not upload manuscripts or non-public artifacts to external AI services.
Safety. Artifacts containing malicious code, undisclosed telemetry, or behaviour that exfiltrates data are rejected and may be reported to the authors' institutions. Security-sensitive tools must discuss misuse potential and mitigations; vulnerabilities discovered in third-party software must have been responsibly disclosed before publication. During review, authors must not move release tags, rewrite history, or alter the archived release.
Allegations of misconduct are handled under COPE: authors are first invited to explain; institutions are contacted where warranted; outcomes range from correction to retraction and, for grave or repeated misconduct, a time-limited refusal of new submissions. Retracted articles remain visible with a retraction notice; their archived artifacts remain retrievable unless legal grounds require withdrawal. Complaints are acknowledged within 7 days, with resolution targeted within 60.
Every article receives a DOI at publication with complete Crossref metadata, including machine-readable version relations (isVersionOf / isNewVersionOf) linking the article to the version it reviews and to prior and subsequent releases. The reviewed software release is deposited, before review concludes, in a persistent research archive that issues DOIs (Zenodo is the reference route, free of charge), containing the complete source, the pinned environment, the worked example with sample data, and the script that regenerates every figure and result.
Each release is identified four mutually checkable ways: the version DOI, the concept DOI, the release tag with its commit hash, and the SWHID assigned by Software Heritage. Archived releases are never overwritten, edited or deleted — corrections are made by depositing a new version under the same concept DOI, and superseded releases remain retrievable exactly as reviewed. Even where an article is retracted, its archived artifact remains retrievable for the scientific record unless legal grounds require withdrawal, in which case a tombstone preserves the identifiers and the reason. The published article (Version of Record) is immutable; its landing page is a living surface showing the latest release, maintenance status and the chain of related publications.
The Editor-in-Chief holds final responsibility for content; Handling Editors manage scholarly review; a dedicated Artifact Editor — the journal's distinctive office — owns the artifact-review protocol and badge criteria, coordinates the artifact track, verifies archive integrity and identifier binding at acceptance, and assigns badges. Verification outcomes are owned by the artifact track: neither a Handling Editor nor the EIC may set aside a failed check; the remedy is revision and re-verification, or empirical appeal. The publisher (INATGI) owns the title, funds operations so that no fees are charged, appoints the EIC through a search process with board representation, and has no vote on content, no access to in-progress reviews, and no authority over any editorial decision. Members of the editorial team may submit; such submissions are handled entirely by another editor behind information barriers, disclosed on the published article. All policies are versioned; substantive changes take effect no sooner than 30 days after publication and never retroactively.