Glossary
Definitions of terms used across the Institute's curation system, the journal Persistence, and the research frameworks that originated at ICSAC. Alphabetical.
Citation Verification
Pre-panel step that independently resolves every citation in a submission against scholarly databases (arXiv, Crossref, Semantic Scholar). References that cannot be located are flagged as potentially fabricated. References that resolve are checked for misattribution against the claim they are attached to. Citation verification runs before the AI panel evaluates the manuscript.
Curation team
The human-in-loop role in ICSAC's curation system. The curation team reads the full panel record alongside every submitted manuscript and either confirms or overrides the panel's recommendation. The curation team's call is the verdict — nothing publishes until it lands.
Curation-team dispatch
The contract that every AI panel recommendation — clean, borderline, or against acceptance — is routed to the curation team for review. There is no auto-publish path. The curation team is the human-in-loop gate between the AI panel and any downstream action (author email, publication record, deposit).
Curation Team Verdict
The curation decision made by the curation team after reviewing the AI panel's recommendation alongside the manuscript. The verdict is what triggers downstream actions — author notification, publication of the curation record, and any deposit step. Distinct from the panel recommendation, which is advisory only.
DET — Dynamic Existence Threshold
Originating research framework from Thornhill (2026). Measures coordinated multi-channel state across substrates via three components: R (recursive information processing), S (system integration), and D (dissipation). DET is a coherence detector — it wins on state classification (EEG sleep state AUC ≥ 0.91) and loses on operational forecasting against specialist incumbents. The Institute's journal Persistence is named for the same underlying concept of pattern persistence under perturbation.
DOI route
Submission method for work already deposited on Zenodo or arXiv. The author pastes the Zenodo DOI or arXiv ID; the curation system fetches the deposited version directly, and the deposited version is what the panel reviews. No re-formatting, no re-export. On acceptance the paper is published in Persistence with its own DOI under the Institute's prefix, linked to the preprint, which keeps its DOI.
Curation record
The per-paper public artifact published at icsacinstitute.org/publications/<slug>. Contains the full panel reviews and the Review Quality Control audit. The curation record is permanent and free to read, independent of any paywall.
Curation system
ICSAC's open-source review apparatus. AI panel, RQC audit, citation verification, and curation-team dispatch. The complete codebase — including the prompts, scoring code, and curation decision logic — is published openly at github.com/ICSAC/editorial-system (mirrored at huggingface.co/spaces/ICSAC-Institute/editorial-system) under an open license. Auditable, forkable, runnable on any corpus.
Five-reviewer panel
Five independent AI reviewer slots evaluate each submission against the published six-dimension rubric. The panel runs twice (two independent passes). Reviewers do not share scores during evaluation. The aggregate across passes produces the panel recommendation.
ICSAC
Institute for Complexity Science and Advanced Computing. Independent research institute, Indiana LLC, founded 2026. Operates a free, fully public open-review curation system across the material sciences (natural, formal, computational, quantitative) and publishes the journal Persistence, online first, with an annual print edition. Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Mode-collapse detector
Operational framing for the D (dissipation) component of DET. D is computed as the Jensen-Shannon divergence in bits between a system's channel-power distribution and a uniform reference. A rising D quantifies departure from maximum entropy — the signal of a system's organizational structure beginning to collapse to fewer effective modes. On EEG, D rise tracks the aperiodic 1/f slope steepening that distinguishes sleep states.
ORCID-gated submission
Every submission requires the submitting author to authenticate via ORCID OAuth at intake. Identity is verified at the moment of submission and stamped into the submission record. Mandatory; no exceptions. Prevents ghost authorship and fabricated author identities.
Panel Recommendation
The AI panel's score-driven output: recommend, revise and resubmit, or decline. The panel advises; it does not decide. Every recommendation, regardless of confidence, is routed to the curation team for review.
Persistence (the journal)
ICSAC's open-review transdisciplinary journal and journal of record. Every accepted paper is published in it online first, as an article of the open volume; a trade paperback and ebook of each volume follows as the annual print edition. The first print edition, Vol 1, No 1, ships May 2027. Scope: material sciences. Authors retain copyright; the print/ebook is the journal's product; the curation record stays free online.
Persistence (the concept)
A system's capacity to maintain organizational coherence under perturbation. Originates in Thornhill's DET research; the Institute's journal Persistence is named for this underlying concept. The persistence floor is the threshold below which a system loses its coordinated structure — its dissolution, in DET terms.
Review Quality Control (RQC)
A second-pass audit of the AI panel's own review against ICSAC's published rubric. Checks the panel for rubric adherence, internal consistency, specificity, tone, and its use of the verification evidence before the recommendation is finalized. RQC findings are part of the public curation record published with every accepted paper.
Six-dimension rubric
The public, fixed scoring rubric every submission is evaluated against: Domain Fit, Methodological Transparency, Internal Consistency, Citation Integrity, Novelty Signal, and Generative-Artifact Assessment. Each dimension is scored independently on a 1–5 scale by each reviewer in the panel.
Scope (material sciences)
ICSAC accepts submissions across the natural, formal, computational, and quantitative-social sciences. Methodology-first work in any rigorous discipline within that scope is eligible. Humanities and qualitative-only submissions fall outside scope and are out of scope for Persistence.
Upload route
Submission method for unpublished work, or a preprint on a server other than Zenodo or arXiv (the author gives its DOI, which the Persistence DOI links to). The author uploads a PDF with extractable text (≥ 2,000 characters via pdftotext, ≤ 100 MB). On accept and with the author's deposit consent, ICSAC registers a DOI under its own prefix on the author's behalf and archives the paper in the ICSAC Zenodo community.