Designs, Codes and Cryptography is an archival peer-reviewed technical journal publishing original research papers in the designated areas. There is a great deal of activity in design theory, coding theory and cryptography, including a substantial amount of research which brings together more than one of the subjects. While many journals exist for each of the individual areas, few encourage the interaction of the disciplines.

The journal was founded to meet the needs of mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists working in these areas, whose interests extend beyond the bounds of any one of the individual disciplines. The journal provides a forum for high quality research in its three areas, with papers touching more than one of the areas especially welcome.
The journal also considers high quality submissions in the closely related areas of finite fields and finite geometries, which provide important tools for both the construction and the actual application of designs, codes and cryptographic systems. In particular, it includes (mostly theoretical) papers on computational aspects of finite fields. It also considers topics in sequence design, which frequently admit equivalent formulations in the journal’s main areas.
Designs, Codes and Cryptography is mathematically oriented, emphasizing the algebraic and geometric aspects of the areas it covers. The journal considers high quality papers of both a theoretical and a practical nature, provided they contain a substantial amount of mathematics.
The journal is published twelve times per year with distribution to mathematicians, engineers, computer scientists and others in education, industry and government. It appeals to those mathematicians with an interest in seeing deep theoretical results in discrete mathematics applied, to those engineers who appreciate the beauty and usefulness of discrete mathematics and to those computer scientists who are interested in data security, complexity issues and reliable data transmission and storage.
The journal maintains strict refereeing procedures and no paper previously published in another journal, transactions or book will be considered. The journal also publishes some survey articles, but only by invitation. Submissions extending previously published conference papers are only considered if they provide a significant contribution beyond the conference paper and the overlap is described clearly at the beginning of the journal submission.