To regulate the publication practices of Iron Steel Vanadium Titanium, promote research integrity, foster a sound academic environment, and enhance professional publishing ethics, the editorial department of the journal requires that all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, editors, and reviewers, share a common understanding of internationally recognized standards of publication ethics and comply with the following responsibilities and related requirements.
1. Responsibilities of Editors
1) Editors shall strictly comply with relevant national laws and regulations, uphold academic publishing ethics and standards, and safeguard research integrity. Editors shall not be driven by commercial interests. All submissions must be handled in a timely, fair, and impartial manner to ensure the high quality and punctual publication of manuscripts.
2) The editorial department fully respects the legitimate rights and interests of authors. Manuscripts involving disputed authorship, failure to properly acknowledge cited sources, or academic misconduct such as plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, or misrepresentation shall be rejected without exception.
3) Fairness: Decisions on manuscript acceptance or rejection are based solely on academic merit and the journal's aims and scope, without discrimination based on the authors' gender, race, religion, nationality, academic status, seniority, or reputation.
4) The editorial department fully respects authors' research achievements and reviewers' comments. The authenticity and integrity of the review record shall be maintained. All information related to manuscript review and revision shall be kept confidential and shall not be disclosed to others, except when necessary to provide relevant information to the corresponding author, reviewers, or members of the editorial board.
5) During the editorial and publication process, editors shall adhere to publishing standards while respecting authors' academic viewpoints, and shall not make unauthorized changes to key academic arguments. Upon publication, the editorial department shall make a one-time payment to authors for remuneration and copyright transfer fees.
6) Editors shall recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which a conflict of interest or shared interests exist. Authors shall be informed of their right to appeal review results.
2. Responsibilities of Authors
1) Publication Standards: Submitted manuscripts must be original works. Articles should be supported by sufficient underlying data, present objective descriptions and analyses, and reach accurate conclusions. Academic misconduct, including false statements, data fabrication or falsification, and plagiarism, is strictly prohibited. Published articles must not involve state-confidential content, multiple submissions, duplicate publication, or intellectual property disputes.
2) Originality: Authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript is an original work. Any use of others' research findings must be properly cited and fully documented in the reference list. Infringement of others' intellectual property rights, including plagiarism, is not permitted.
3) Authorship Criteria: All listed authors must have made substantial contributions to the research or the manuscript, including, but not limited to, the conception and design of the study, acquisition and analysis or interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript, or critical revision of important intellectual content. All authors must approve the final version to be published and sign a copyright agreement.
4) Conflict of Interest Disclosure: To protect the interests of all parties and avoid conflicts of interest, authors are required to disclose relevant information at the time of submission. This includes funding projects and financial support that contributed to or facilitated the research or understanding of the results, with the fund names and grant numbers specified; funding unrelated to the research should not be listed. All institutional affiliations of the authors must be stated in the manuscript. Individuals other than the authors who provided assistance or support should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section. Authors should also clearly identify any relationships that may influence the fair and impartial evaluation of the manuscript, including, where applicable, editorial board members or peer reviewers who should be excluded.
5) Changes in Authorship: Any addition, removal, or reordering of authors must be completed before the manuscript is accepted. If changes to authorship (adding or removing certain authors) are required prior to publication, the corresponding author shall submit a written request to the editorial department, explaining the reasons and providing written confirmation of consent from all authors.
3. Responsibilities of Reviewers
1) Confidentiality: Reviewers shall keep all manuscripts under review and all related review information strictly confidential. They must not use or publish any data, viewpoints, or conclusions contained in the manuscripts they review without authorization.
2) Manuscript Evaluation: Reviewers shall evaluate manuscripts objectively, fairly, and prudently, focusing solely on their academic merit, and shall not make personal judgments or engage in personal attacks. Reviewers should assess the research data presented in the manuscript; if any data are found to be similar or identical to data from the reviewer's own ongoing research or from previously published studies known to the reviewer, this should be reported to the editorial department with supporting evidence. Recommendations on how to handle the manuscript shall not be influenced by the authors' race, gender, religion, beliefs, academic status, seniority, or reputation. Reviewers shall clearly and accurately express their evaluation of the manuscript's academic value and their recommendation regarding acceptance or rejection, avoiding ambiguity.
3) Reviewers shall not delegate the review of a manuscript to others (such as colleagues or students) without the prior consent of the editorial department.
4) If a reviewer is found to have used the peer-review process to seek personal gain or to have plagiarized content from the manuscript under review, the editorial department shall impose penalties such as warnings or suspension from reviewing, depending on the severity of the misconduct.
5) Reviewers shall recuse themselves from reviewing manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest arising from competitive or collaborative relationships with the authors, their institutions, or related enterprises.
4. Corrections and Retractions
1) Corrections: For published articles (including online publications), if errors are identified in the text, figures, tables, funding information, or other related details (excluding major errors in the main viewpoints or conclusions), the editorial department will issue a correction notice and replace the article with a corrected version. Updates will be made simultaneously on the journal's website and relevant databases.
2) Retractions: For published or accepted manuscripts, the editorial department will consider retraction under any of the following circumstances: legal infringement, defamation, or other legal restrictions; confirmed academic misconduct, such as plagiarism, data fabrication, or breaches of confidentiality; or serious scientific errors that render the results or conclusions unreliable. Retraction measures implemented by the editorial department include issuing a retraction notice, notifying the authors and their affiliated institutions, requesting relevant databases to remove the online version to terminate further dissemination of the article.
5. Ethics for the Use of GenAI
The policy on the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology in the submission and review process is as follows:
1) GenAI cannot assume the corresponding responsibility of an author, and the journal does not accept GenAI, its products or teams listed as authors.
2) GenAI cannot be used to write entire papers or important parts of papers, such as methods, results, and interpretation and analysis of results. All content falling within the realm of scientific contribution or intellectual work should be completed by humans. If the main content of a paper is completed by GenAI, the editorial department will regard the case as academic misconduct.
3) GenAI can be used for literature search, topic selection, statistical analysis, language polishing, figures production, format checking, etc., if necessary for the research. Authors are fully responsible for the content produced by GenAI tools, and are thus liable for any breaches of publication ethics or infringement.
4) In order to improve efficiency and reduce workload, GenAI may be used to assist the daily work of the editorial department, but it is prohibited to assist manuscript evaluation or decision-making process. It must be human editors who are responsible for the manuscript review, decision-making, and communication with authors. To avoid risks of infringement, privacy breach, and confidential breach, it is prohibited to upload manuscripts and supplementary materials to publicly available GenAI platforms during the review process.
5) If, upon investigation, the editorial department determines that authors have violated GenAI usage policies in their scientific writing, the manuscript will be rejected or retracted. In severe cases, the journal will blacklist the author. If reviewers violate our GenAI policies during the review process, which results in information leakage or infringement, they will be prohibited from participating in review work and shall bear consequent responsibilities.
Note for Authors: Please read and download the Academic Misconduct Warranty and the Copyright Transfer Agreement from the Submission Guidelines section of this website, and submit the signed documents through the manuscript submission system at the time of submission.
