# Cybersecurity Advances Copyright Assignment and CC BY 4.0 Publication Consent **Agreement ID:** CA-CRA-1.0 **Effective policy date:** 2026-09-14 **Publisher and assignee:** AlphaTech Systems LLC, operating through AlphaTech Scholarly Press **Journal:** Cybersecurity Advances **Public licence upon publication:** Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ## 1. When this agreement is presented This agreement is presented electronically only after editorial acceptance and before a manuscript enters production or is scheduled for publication. Submission alone does not transfer copyright. Rejected or withdrawn manuscripts remain unaffected. Each copyright owner must consent individually. A corresponding author may consent for another owner only when the corresponding author has documented authority to execute the assignment for that owner. Where an employer, institution, government or other party owns the work, that rights holder or its authorized representative must complete the consent. ## 2. Author and rights-holder declarations By electronically signing, the signer confirms that: 1. the manuscript is original, except for material identified and properly cited; 2. the manuscript is not under consideration by another journal and has not been published as a journal article, except for a disclosed preprint, thesis, report or other permitted prior version; 3. all authors have approved the accepted version, authorship order and contributor statements; 4. the signer owns the copyright being assigned or has documented authority from the owner to execute this agreement; 5. the work does not knowingly infringe copyright, privacy, confidentiality or other third-party rights, and permissions for excluded third-party material have been supplied; 6. funding, employer, institutional, government and funder rights or restrictions have been disclosed; and 7. the signer has reviewed this agreement and the CC BY 4.0 licence before consenting. ## 3. Assignment Subject to final editorial acceptance and the publisher's receipt of all required consents, the signer hereby assigns to **AlphaTech Systems LLC** all copyright that the signer owns and may lawfully transfer in the accepted manuscript and its version of record, throughout the world for the full term of copyright and any renewals or extensions, including the right to publish, reproduce, distribute, communicate, adapt, translate, archive, license and enforce those rights. The assignment does not include rights the signer does not own, non-transferable moral rights, or third-party material expressly identified as excluded from the assignment. ## 4. Open-access licence Upon publication, AlphaTech Systems LLC authorizes distribution of the version of record under **CC BY 4.0**. That public licence permits sharing and adaptation, including commercial use, when its conditions are met. Once granted, the CC BY 4.0 licence is irrevocable for compliant users. Copyright ownership therefore enables the press to administer and enforce the copyright and to receive benefits associated with rights not already granted royalty-free under CC BY 4.0. It does not create a right to charge for uses already permitted by CC BY 4.0. ## 5. Author use and attribution Authors may use and share the published article under CC BY 4.0 on the same terms as every other user. Authorship credit, citation integrity and applicable moral rights are not transferred. The press will identify the authors and the article's publication history in the version of record. ## 6. Duplicate and secondary publication Before publication, simultaneous submission or duplicate journal publication is prohibited unless the editor gives documented approval under a recognized secondary-publication exception. After publication, CC BY 4.0 permits attributed republication and adaptation. Such reuse must identify the original article, link to the licence, indicate changes and must not falsely present the reused work as a new original peer-reviewed article. Suspected redundant or deceptive publication may be handled under the journal's integrity, correction and retraction procedures. ## 7. Non-transferable or restricted works If assignment is prohibited or limited by law, government status, employment terms, institutional ownership or funder requirements, the signer must disclose that restriction before production. The publisher may approve a written alternative licence compatible with immediate open access and CC BY 4.0, or may decline publication. No staff member may silently override this exception process. ## 8. Electronic signature and evidence The electronic consent record must contain: - OJS submission ID and accepted-manuscript title; - signer name, verified account/email and signer role; - represented rights holder, if different from the signer; - authority basis (`self`, `all-coauthors-with-documented-authority`, `employer`, `institution`, `government`, or `other-documented-owner`); - agreement ID `CA-CRA-1.0` and SHA-256 hash of the exact agreement presented; - affirmative acceptance of every declaration above; - typed legal name as electronic signature; - UTC timestamp; - OJS authenticated-user and workflow/audit identifiers; - source IP address and user-agent hash where lawfully collected under the privacy notice; and - editor verification status and verifier identity. A consent is invalid if required fields are missing, the agreement hash does not match the controlled version, the signer lacks authority, or an exception remains unresolved. ## 9. Publication gate An accepted manuscript must not enter final production, issue scheduling or public publication until the editorial office verifies that every copyright interest is covered by: - a valid CA-CRA-1.0 electronic assignment; or - a documented publisher-approved exception and alternative licence. The verified consent record is retained with the confidential OJS editorial record. Public article metadata displays the legal copyright holder and CC BY 4.0 licence, not private signature evidence. ## 10. Electronic consent statement The signer must affirm: > I have read and agree to the Cybersecurity Advances Copyright Assignment and CC BY 4.0 Publication Consent, agreement CA-CRA-1.0. I confirm that I own the rights identified above or am authorized to act for the stated rights holder. I electronically sign the assignment to AlphaTech Systems LLC and authorize publication under CC BY 4.0, subject to the terms of this agreement. The signer then enters the signer's full legal name and submits the consent through the authenticated OJS workflow.