Open-access peer-reviewed publication anchoring the intellectual foundations of the CIAO Standard.
Governed under the CIAO Standard Secretariat · Editor-in-Chief appointed by the Oversight Board
Purpose
The CIAO Journal is the peer-reviewed publication of the CIAO Standard. It exists to advance the intellectual foundations of information assurance governance through rigorous, open-access scholarship. The Journal publishes original research, empirical studies, methodological contributions, case studies, and critical commentary that examine and develop the Standard, its mappings, its governance architecture, and the broader field in which it operates.
The Journal is the publication arm of the CIAO governance architecture. It complements the CIAO Conference (annual convening) and the Panel of Advisors (standing consultation) to form the three-arm intellectual framework of the Standard.
Each annual issue is timed to follow the CIAO Conference and includes selected peer-reviewed Conference proceedings alongside independent submissions, creating a single publication record of the Standard’s evolving scholarship each year.
As an open-access publication committed to serving the Global South compliance community alongside international scholarship, the Journal works to reduce barriers to governance research and to amplify voices from jurisdictions historically underrepresented in international standards literature.
Scope
The Journal publishes across the full scope of information assurance governance addressed by the Standard, including: multi-framework mapping methodology; governance architecture at the meta-standard layer; regulatory interoperability across jurisdictions; implementation experience at each tier of the Standard; emerging challenges in AI governance, supply chain assurance, and digital law; critical examination and proposed extensions of the Standard itself; and comparative scholarship across information governance frameworks worldwide.
Submissions are welcomed from practitioners, academics, regulators, postgraduate researchers, and independent scholars in all jurisdictions.
Editorial Sections
Each annual issue of the Journal comprises:
- Research articles — original empirical, methodological, or theoretical contributions
- Case studies — documented implementation experience and critical reflection
- Review articles — systematic or integrative reviews of governance topics
- Position papers — proposals for amendment, extension, or critique of the Standard
- Conference proceedings — selected peer-reviewed papers from the year’s CIAO Conference
- Book and standards reviews — critical engagement with contemporary governance literature
- Editorial — framing commentary from the Editor-in-Chief
Submissions and Peer Review
The Journal operates a double-blind peer review process. Each submission is reviewed by a minimum of two independent reviewers drawn from the CIAO Panel of Advisors in their editorial capacity, and from qualified external reviewers where subject-matter expertise requires.
Authors retain copyright of their work. All accepted articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), maximising re-use, translation, and citation.
Submission calls, review criteria, author guidelines, and timelines will be published here ahead of each annual call.
Publication and Access
The Journal is published annually, in open-access digital format. The annual issue is released following each year’s CIAO Conference. All articles are free to read, free to download, and free to re-use under the terms of the applicable licence.
Formalisation
Registration of the Journal as an indexed, archived, and citable publication is a parallel workstream. The following formalisation activities are planned:
- ISSN application — International Standard Serial Number registration
- DOI registration — persistent digital object identifiers for every accepted article, via an established registrar such as Crossref or DataCite
- Indexed archival — submission to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and to long-term archival services
- Ethics compliance — alignment with a recognised publication ethics framework, including prospective COPE membership
The status of each formalisation activity will be published here as it progresses. The Journal begins operating under its editorial architecture from the inaugural issue; formalisation anchors are added progressively.
Governance
The Journal is led by an Editor-in-Chief appointed by the Oversight Board under Governance Charter Article 5.
Editorial review is performed by the CIAO Panel of Advisors acting in editorial capacity. The Panel’s dual role — standing specialist consultation to the Oversight Board, and peer review for the Journal — ensures that the same community of qualified scholars and practitioners who advise the Standard also safeguards its published scholarship. Panel membership, nomination, and conduct are set out in the Panel Advisor Guidelines.
Editorial decisions — acceptance, revision, rejection, retraction — are made by the Editor-in-Chief with peer-review input from the Panel. Editorial decisions are independent of the Oversight Board and the Secretariat. The Editor-in-Chief reports annually to the Oversight Board on publication activity, reviewer performance, and editorial policy.
Inaugural Issue
The inaugural issue of the CIAO Journal is targeted for 2028, following the inaugural CIAO Conference. The first call for submissions will open following the constitution of the Editor-in-Chief and the Panel’s editorial capacity.
Register Interest
Expressions of interest — as readers, authors, reviewers, section editors, or institutional partners — are welcomed. Contact the CIAO Standard Secretariat via the channels listed on the Governance Charter page.