PRISM: The Journal of Complex Operations is the Irregular Warfare Center’s (IWC) flagship journal of national and international security affairs. PRISM’s mission is “to provide unique insight for current and future national security leaders on emerging challenges beyond strictly the military domain, including, but not limited to, transnational and/or multi-domain threats; gray zone, hybrid, or irregular conflict; emerging technologies (e.g., AI, cyber); and geoeconomic competition.”
PRISM is committed to excellence, scholarly rigor, and practitioner-and policy-relevant “big ideas” in the national and international security realms. We are an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal that aims for our publication to be a ready reference on the desks of practitioners, academics, and policy makers, and to be cited as foundational research and analysis in national and international security documents.
PRISM is published semi-annually (spring and fall) and welcomes unsolicited submissions from policymakers, practitioners, and scholars, particularly those that present fresh thought, enduring insight, or best practices related to the current and emerging national and international security environment. We seek to publish provocative, insightful, and well-reasoned submissions. We welcome contributions not only from established authorities in the field but also emerging voices, including early career practitioners, policymakers, and scholars.
PRISM accepts three types of submissions:
Research articles
○ Should be 5,000-7,000 words in length, including endnotes, bibliography, tables. (Note: longer submissions may be considered on a case-by-case basis).
○ Research articles should make an original contribution to our understanding of policy issues and debates in national and/or international security.
○ They should be theoretically informed and methodologically rigorous and provide significant and original analytically-driven insights into real-world problems in a way that is accessible to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.
○ We welcome submissions that make novel theoretical arguments, present original and significant empirical findings, and engage with pertinent policy issues.
○ We expect all articles to have relevance to our practitioner, policymaker, and academic audiences. For this reason, submissions that advance purely empirical findings or rely heavily on statistical models and quantitative methods are unlikely to be considered for publication.
Standard book reviews
○ Should be 700-900 words in length.
○ The PRISM book reviews section covers the latest scholarship across national security, international security, and related fields, from the theoretical to the policy-focused, and from the regional to the global.
○ A book review should inform the reader of the book’s content, quality, and place in the overall context of its field, and make any necessary policy or scholarly recommendations.
○ Critique is healthy, provided that it is well-supported.
Extended book reviews
○ Should be 2,000-4,000 words in length, including endnotes, bibliography, tables.
○ While similar to standard book reviews in several ways, extended book reviews go further as they typically entail a review of two or more related books and/or a more in-depth analysis of a single book than a standard book review.
Submissions should follow these guidelines (note: these guidelines are intended to help set expectations and ensure a smooth submission and review process for both prospective authors and the editorial team but are not meant to be overly prescriptive.):
1. Send your submission as a Word document with a cover letter that contains a 150-word abstract (for research articles and extended book reviews) and a short biography of 150 words or less (per author) to PRISM@irregularwarfarecenter.org, with subject line “Submission: [Article/Review Title Here].”
2. Ensure your submission does not contain your name or any information that would enable a reviewer to identify who you are.
3. Please ensure that the submission – whether it be a research article, standard book review, or extended book review – follows the length guidelines noted above.
4. All submissions must adhere to Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) formatting guidelines. Authors should consult CMOS online. Common formats are available here: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html. Proper formatting is imperative. PRISM reserves the right to reject submissions that do not adhere to these requirements.
5. Those employing quantitative methods must use readable and well-labeled graphs and charts (as opposed to in-text formulae and regression tables).
6. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from the copyright holder to use any third-party material, including graphics, tables, or images. Please include any graphs, tables, or pictures as a separate, high-quality file. Files embedded within a Word document are not optimal for publishing. Additionally, if an image, graphic, table, or picture is required for a section of the document, please notate in the document where it should be embedded and the name/title. name of the image, graphic, table, or picture.
7. Let us know at the time that you submit your article whether it will need to go through an internal review process before you are cleared for publication.
8. All submissions must be original and should not be under consideration elsewhere. PRISM does not accept submissions that have been published in whole or in part in other journals, regardless of whether the author retains the copyright.
9. Please ensure that you disclose any conflicts of interest, funding sources, and institutional review board approvals at time of submission, redacted appropriately to ensure anonymity during peer review.
Authors are also welcome to email PRISM@irregularwarfarecenter.org to ask if an article might be the right fit for PRISM.
The publication threshold for submissions is largely determined by topical relevance, scholarly standards of argumentation, quality of writing, and readability. In their submissions, authors are strongly encouraged to recommend clear solutions or to arm the reader with actionable knowledge.
Our process from initial receipt of submissions to review to publication can last several months. However, we aim to inform authors of our decision to accept or reject their submission within 30 days.
The first stage for a newly submitted paper is that the editorial staff considers whether to send it for peer-review. Once the decision has been made to peer review a submission, the choice of referees is made by the editor who has been assigned the submission. Most submissions are sent to two or three referees, but some are sent to more or, occasionally, just to one.
Referees are chosen for the following reasons:
Moreover, if a submission is accepted but we are unable to publish a submission for some reason, PRISM will revert publication rights to the author so that they may explore other publication options.