Cryptography

Cryptography is a peer-reviewed, open access journal published by MDPI in Basel, Switzerland, and devoted to the theory and practice of modern cryptography.《密码学》是由 MDPI 在瑞士巴塞尔出版的同行评审开放获取期刊，聚焦现代密码学的理论与工程实践。

Launched in 2017, the bimonthly title publishes research articles, reviews and short communications, and it now records a Journal Impact Factor of 2.4 and a CiteScore of 6.4.该刊创办于 2017 年，现为双月刊，发表研究论文、综述与短篇通讯，期刊影响因子为 2.4，CiteScore 为 6.4。

Scope

• Symmetric cryptography forms the first pillar, covering the design of block and stream ciphers, their modes of operation and authenticated encryption.对称密码学构成第一个支柱，涵盖分组密码与流密码的设计、工作模式与认证加密。
• Public-key work covers encryption, signatures and key establishment. Security may rest on integer factorisation or discrete logarithms, or on lattice, code-based and isogeny structures.公钥方向覆盖加密、签名与密钥建立三类方案。其安全性可建立在大整数分解或离散对数之上，也可依托格、编码与同源结构。
• Hash functions and message authentication codes are treated both as design problems and as attack targets, with collision, preimage and length-extension techniques given close attention.哈希函数与消息认证码既被当作设计课题，也被当作攻击目标，碰撞攻击、原像攻击与长度扩展攻击都受到密切关注。
• Cryptanalysis receives equal weight, including differential and linear methods, algebraic attacks and side-channel assisted key recovery, and the reduced-round benchmarking of primitives.密码分析享有同等分量，包括差分与线性方法，也包括代数攻击与侧信道辅助的密钥恢复，并涉及密码本原的减轮基准测试。
• Protocol research covers authentication and key exchange, also secure multiparty computation and zero-knowledge proofs, and extends to voting schemes with formal security models.协议研究涵盖认证与密钥交换，也包括安全多方计算和零知识证明，并延伸到带形式化安全模型的电子投票方案。
• Quantum-safe cryptography is a central theme, running from post-quantum key encapsulation and signature standards to quantum key distribution and the migration of deployed infrastructure.量子安全密码学是核心主题之一，从后量子密钥封装与签名标准，到量子密钥分发，再到在用基础设施的迁移。
• Implementation papers address constant-time coding and masking, and they also discuss fault injection and hardware acceleration, weighing the cost of primitives on constrained devices.实现类论文讨论常数时间编码与掩码防护，也讨论故障注入和硬件加速，并评估在资源受限设备上部署密码本原的实际开销。
• A dedicated section on blockchain security collects work on consensus and smart contract auditing, along with cryptographic accumulators and privacy-preserving distributed ledgers.区块链安全栏目收录共识机制与智能合约审计方面的成果，也收录密码学累加器与隐私保护分布式账本的研究。
• Hardware security covers physical unclonable functions and trusted execution environments, and further covers secure elements and the design of tamper-resistant cryptographic cores.硬件安全方向覆盖物理不可克隆函数与可信执行环境，也覆盖安全元件与抗篡改密码核心的设计。
• Applied contributions extend to cloud storage, the Internet of Things and electronic health records, placing digital identity and privacy-enhancing tools in the context of real systems.应用类论文延伸至云存储、物联网与电子健康记录，也把数字身份和隐私增强技术放进真实系统的语境。
• Standardisation and evaluation belong to the remit as well, with papers reporting on the NIST post-quantum process, and on test vectors, security proofs and interoperability trials.标准化与测评同样在收稿范围内，相关论文报告 NIST 后量子遴选进程，也报告测试向量、安全性证明与互操作性实验。
• Survey and tutorial material is solicited through a separate reviews section, which favours critical appraisal of a subfield over incremental novelty.综述与教程类稿件由独立的综述栏目主动征集，该栏目更看重对某一子领域的批判性梳理，对增量式新颖性的兴趣有限。
• Work at the boundary with quantum information or coding theory, and work touching number theory or formal verification, is welcome where the cryptographic consequence is made explicit.与量子信息、编码理论交界的工作，乃至与数论或形式化验证交界的工作，都在欢迎之列，前提是明确说明其密码学后果。
• Key management and public key infrastructures are recurring subjects, and questions of certificate transparency and credential lifecycle appear with them.密钥管理与公钥基础设施是反复出现的主题，证书透明度和凭据生命周期的问题也随之出现。
• Randomness generation, entropy estimation and the analysis of weak generators are treated as cryptographic problems in their own right rather than as engineering detail.随机数生成、熵估计与弱随机源分析被当作独立的密码学问题处理，没有降格为工程细节。

History

• MDPI opened the journal in 2017, giving cryptography a dedicated venue inside a portfolio that had grown out of chemistry and materials titles of the mid-1990s.MDPI 于 2017 年创办该刊，在源自 20 世纪 90 年代中期化学与材料类刊物的刊群中，为密码学开辟了专门园地。
• Volume 1 appeared in 2017, four issues a year were the rule through volume 9, and volume 10 in 2026 is the first to carry six.第 1 卷于 2017 年问世，四期一年的季刊格式延续到第 9 卷，2026 年的第 10 卷首次扩为六期。
• From the outset the journal was gold open access, funded by article processing charges, with no subscription edition and no delay on self-archived versions.该刊自创刊起即为金色开放获取，依靠文章处理费运营，既无订阅版，也不对作者自存版本设延迟开放期。
• Its remit was drawn around cryptographic primitives and protocols, and it did not set out to cover information security at large, which separated it from applied-security journals of the period.其收稿范围围绕密码本原与协议划定，并未覆盖泛信息安全的全部议题，这与当时的应用安全类期刊形成区分。
• Clarivate took the title into the Emerging Sources Citation Index from Volume 2, issue 1, while Scopus indexed it from the first volume, and the journal has appeared in the Directory of Open Access Journals since its launch year.Clarivate 自第 2 卷第 1 期起将刊物收入新兴来源引文索引，Scopus 则从第 1 卷起收录，刊物自创刊年起即列入开放获取期刊目录。

• ESCI titles began receiving a Journal Impact Factor with the 2023 release, and this one opened at 1.6 for 2022 before rising to 1.8 a year later.ESCI 期刊自 2023 年发布起获得期刊影响因子，该刊 2022 年数据年度的首个影响因子为 1.6，次年升至 1.8。
• The metric has risen in each subsequent year, from 2.1 in 2024 to 2.4 in 2025, a curve the publisher has highlighted in its annual announcements.此后该指标逐年上升，从 2024 年的 2.1 升到 2025 年的 2.4，出版方在年度通报中专门提到了这条曲线。
• Scopus coverage brought a first CiteScore of 3.1 in 2021, and the current value of 6.4 places the title in the first quartile of the applied mathematics category.Scopus 收录带来 CiteScore，2021 年首次发布时为 3.1，现为 6.4，在应用数学类目位列第一四分位。
• In the 2025 Journal Citation Reports the title sits in two ESCI categories, at 59 of 146 in theory and methods, and at 162 of 266 in information systems.在 2025 年期刊引证报告中，该刊位于两个 ESCI 类目，理论与方法类位列 59/146，信息系统类则在 162/266。
• Annual output grew from a few dozen papers in the early volumes to roughly seventy articles, with a cited half-life of 3.4 years recorded in the same report.年发文量从早期各卷的数十篇增长到约七十篇，同一份报告记录的引用半衰期为 3.4 年。
• Special Issues became the main vehicle for topical collections, each with guest editors and its own submission window, running beside the regular numbers of the volume.特刊成为专题合集的主要载体，每辑由客座编辑主持并设定独立投稿窗口，与各卷的常规期号并行推进。
• Section editors were appointed as the field's centre of gravity moved toward deployed systems, hardware security from 2018, blockchain security from 2021, and a cryptography reviews section from 2024.随着领域重心转向已部署系统，学科栏目陆续设立，硬件安全自 2018 年、区块链安全自 2021 年、密码学综述自 2024 年起各设栏目编辑。
• The launch editor was Kwangjo Kim, who led the title from 2017 until 2021, when Josef Pieprzyk took over the chair.创刊主编为（Kwangjo Kim），自 2017 年执掌至 2021 年，随后由（Josef Pieprzyk）接任。
• Editorial practice follows MDPI's continuous-publication model, so accepted papers appear online within days and are assigned to an issue afterwards.编辑流程沿用 MDPI 的连续出版模式，录用论文在数日内上线，之后编入某一期。
• The journal levies no subscription charges, and its gold open access share was recorded at 99.5 percent in the 2025 report.该刊不收取订阅费用，2025 年报告记录的金色开放获取比例为 99.5%。

Editors

• Josef Pieprzyk holds the editor-in-chief position, dividing his time between CSIRO in Australia and the Institute of Computer Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences.主编（Josef Pieprzyk）同时任职于澳大利亚的 CSIRO 与波兰科学院计算机科学研究所。
• His own research spans algorithms, complexity and cryptographic design, and reaches into information security and network security, a range reflected in the journal's coverage.他本人的研究横跨算法、复杂性与密码设计，也覆盖信息安全与网络安全，这一跨度反映在刊物的收稿范围里。
• Joseph K. Liu of Monash University in Australia leads the blockchain security section, working on applied cryptography for distributed ledgers.澳大利亚莫纳什大学的（Joseph K. Liu）主持区块链安全栏目，研究方向为面向分布式账本的应用密码学。
• Jim Plusquellic of the University of New Mexico in the United States heads the hardware security section, with a programme built around physical assurance of integrated circuits.美国新墨西哥大学的（Jim Plusquellic）负责硬件安全栏目，其研究围绕集成电路的物理可信性展开。
• Licheng Wang of Beijing Institute of Technology in China edits the cryptography reviews section, which handles survey and tutorial submissions.中国北京理工大学的（Licheng Wang）主编密码学综述栏目，负责处理综述与教程类投稿。
• The wider board is drawn from universities and industrial laboratories in Europe and North America, and from counterparts in Asia and Australia, with academic cryptographers forming the working majority.更广泛的编委会成员来自欧洲和北美的高校与工业实验室，也来自亚洲和澳大利亚的同类机构，其中以学院派密码学者占多数。
• Review is single-blind, so referees know who wrote the paper while their own names stay hidden, and authors may choose to have the reports published alongside the article.评审采用单盲方式，审稿人知晓作者身份，审稿人姓名则不公开，作者也可选择让评审意见随论文一并公开。
• Manuscripts pass a desk assessment by the editor or a section editor before external refereeing, and those outside the remit are returned quickly.稿件先由主编或栏目编辑做初审判定，再送外部评审，超出收稿范围者会被迅速退回。
• Two referee reports are the usual minimum for a research article, and the handling editor adjudicates when recommendations diverge.研究论文通常至少需要两份审稿意见，意见分歧时由责任编辑作出裁定。
• Processing times are short by the standards of the field, with a median first decision of about 20 days and three days from acceptance to publication.按本领域的尺度衡量，其处理周期偏短，首次决定的中位时间约 20 天，从录用到上线约 3 天。
• Submissions go through the publisher's online system, and no pre-submission enquiry is needed before a full manuscript is sent.投稿经出版方的在线系统提交，寄出完整稿件之前无需预先询问。
• Guest editors of Special Issues recruit and handle their own submissions under section oversight, a structure that accounts for a large share of the papers published each year.特刊客座编辑在栏目编辑监督下组稿并处理稿件，这一结构承担了每年发表论文中相当大的份额。
• Authors retain copyright under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, and the publisher is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.作者以知识共享署名许可保留版权，出版方也是出版伦理委员会成员。