Section 1 Ethics
Section 2 Peer Review and Editing
Section 3 Correction and Retraction
Section 4 Copyright, Open Access and Archive
Section 1 Ethics
1. Plagiarism Detection: All manuscripts shall be tested by "Wanfang Data Paper Similarity Detection" and "Academic Misconduct Literature Check (AMLC) system". If the repetition rate of any test exceeds 30%, the manuscript will be immediately rejected. Manuscripts with a repetition rate less than 30% might be required to make revision.The journal takes three rounds of repetition detection by the Academic Misconduct Literature Check (AMLC) system before publishing.
2. Confidential Review: Confidential review must be carried out by the committee of confidentiality affiliated to the institute. If the institute has no such committee, the certificate can be issued directly by the institute, indicating that the article does not involve secrets, and that the responsibility of the manuscript shall be borne by authors. The certificate should be stamped with the official seal. The committee must give a specific and detailed statement. If an author is a committee member of the confidential review, she/he shall avoid participating the review of his/her own manuscript.
3. Authorship: An author should be a person who participates in topic selection, study design, data analysis and manuscript drafting. The order of authors shall be determined before submission and shall not be changed thereafter. The change of order could be made only if a consent letter from all authors is provided. Other contributors for the manuscript should be listed in acknowledgement. “Gift author” is strictly prohibited. Authors should specify their contribution in the Author Information, Copyright and Ethical Statement Form and submit it along with the manuscript.
4. Conflict of Interests: All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing / personal status / affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization / employer) may affect the authors' decision, work or manuscript. When a product is involved, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest against competitive products. Authors should declare conflicts of interest in the Author Information, Copyright and Ethical Statement Form and submit it along with the manuscript.
Section 2 Peer Review and Editing
1. Review Process: The journal implements double-blind three-round-review and strictly follows the workflow of preliminary review, peer review and final review. The editorial office shall take the preliminary review of manuscripts. If passed, manuscripts will be submitted to peer review experts in corresponding fields. The review comments will be returned to authors for revision. Afterwards, the manuscript will go through the last round of review to ensure the academic quality.
2. Expert Recommendation and Avoidance: Authors can put forward 1-3 peer experts who shall avoid as reviewers. Authors can also recommend several experts to be reviewers. The recommended reviewer should have senior professional titles in relevant discipline but should not from the same institute of authors.
3. Manuscript Processing: A notice of receipt will be sent to authors through e-mail after the manuscript is registered successfully. Afterwards, notices from the journal shall be sent to the first author or the corresponding author. The status of submission can be checked through the submission system or the official WeChat. Before the manuscript is processed by the editorial office, authors can modify the information at any time. Once the manuscript has been processed, the manuscript and information only can be modified when they are returned for revision.
4. Revision: When submitting the revised manuscript, please log into the online submission system with your registered username and password, click the "Upload/download Revised Manuscript" at the " Manuscript Management" menu. Authors shall identify their manuscript with the correct serial number, download the original text, and check whether there is any comments or modifications. The revised manuscript or supplementary contents should be uploaded by the "Modify" icon. Please do not click “Submission” again, or it will be considered as a new manuscript and the existing review results shall be expired.
5. Editing: Authors are responsible for their writing of the article. The journal has right to make textual amendments and deletions to the article. Any amendments involving a change of meaning will be submitted to authors for confirmation.
6. Timing: If there is no reply from the journal within 30 days after submission, authors can make phone call or send E-mail to the editorial for inquiry. The submitted articles should not be re-submitted to other publications before receiving the official rejection notice from this journal. In case of withdrawal, the editorial office should be informed timely before authors resubmitting the manuscript. Authors shall return the revised manuscript within the given time limit. Overdue shall be deemed as withdrawal.
7. Submission by Editors: The editorial staff / editors / editorial board members should not be involved in publishing decisions on papers which they have written themselves or have been written by their family members or colleagues. Any such submission should be strictly subject to the journal’s usual editorial process. Peer review should be handled independently from the relevant author/editor and their research groups.
8. Appeal: The authors may make an appeal if they disagree with the comment of the reviewers. The authors need to write an appeal letter (with the manuscript serial number) and send it to hykfygl@163.com. Detailed reasons for appealing must be stated, including a comprehensive and reasonable answer to the reviewers’ comment. The appeal letter should also be stamped by the author’s institute. The editorial office will consider whether to change the decision case by case.
Section 3 Correction and Retraction
1. General Situation: Articles published online or in print are considered the final and complete version. In principle, the journal does not make corrections or retractions on published articles. However, in case of the situations described below, corrections or retractions may be carried out if truly necessary.
2. Correction: If there appears to be an unintended scientific mistake in the article which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusion, the editorial office will publish corrections in the journal as soon as possible, detailing the changes made to the original article and indicating the source of the article. The journal will release the corrected new version of the article, and specify the changes to the original article and the date of update. In addition, the superseded version will also be archived. Readers can obtain it directly, but only the latest version of the article should be used for citation.
3. Retraction: In the following cases, the editorial office would retract published articles and issue retraction statements:
1) If an article is found to have severe scientific errors making the results and conclusion of the article unreliable;
2) For article suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the editorial office will initiate an investigation and issue a statement to inform readers of the risks associated with the article. Once the investigation is completed, the result will be made public. If the academic misconduct is confirmed, the article will be immediately retracted and a retraction statement will be issued by the editorial office.
Section 4 Copyright, Open Access and Archive
1. Author Responsibility: This journal regards the first author and the corresponding author as the persons who are responsible for the submitted article, and for the handling of relevant matters during the processing of article, including but not limited to revision, inquiry, proofreading, payment of APC and remuneration, etc. It must be ensured that all authors of the submitted articles have read and agreed on the contents of the manuscript, agreed to the authorship and order, and agreed to submit it to the journal of Ocean Development and Management.
2. Copyright Transfer: After submission, all authors must sign the Author Information, Copyright and Ethical Statement Form of Ocean Development and Management. The template can be downloaded at the “Download Center”. The form should be mailed to the editorial office together with the Certificate of Confidential Review and the hard copy of the manuscript. Only after receiving all relevant required documents can the article start the review procedure. Unless stated clearly by submission, the transfer of copyright shall be deemed as agreed by all authors.
3. Open Access：Ocean Development and Management is an open access journal. Once published, all articles will be immediately and permanently available for readers to read and download free of charge. Permitted third party reuse of the articles published by the journal is defined by the following user license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows reusers to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms below are followed: reusers must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. Reusers may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the use. Reusers may not use the material for commercial purposes. If reusers remix, transform, or build upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material. The authors have right to spread or make use of the article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. The full details of the license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
4. Archive: Since 1984 all journal articles have been digitally archived and can be searched and downloaded from the journal website. In order to ensure data security, all information has also been backed up in the editorial office. Before 1984, the hard and soft copy of each issue of the journal had been kept in the editorial office for archiving. In addition, other relevant materials are also kept by the editorial office, such as supplementary information and forms provided by the authors.
