OPEN SCIENCEOPEN SCIENCE
All articles are published under the CC 4.0 license:
- The journal's website clearly states the use of the CC 4.0 license.
- CC license labels or icons are displayed on the article metadata and full-text pages.
- Acceptance emails or notifications explicitly inform authors that their papers will be published under the CC BY license, the sole license type used.
Clearly stated on the journal homepage, in the journal description/introduction, or in author guidelines; no copyright transfer agreements are signed with authors.
- Authors and the journal share digital content copyright, allowing authors to distribute, share, translate, and reproduce their work. If the journal profits from digital content, 50% of the revenue is shared with authors.
- The journal holds copyright for both its print edition and the structured, semantically enhanced digital content available on its website.
- The partner publisher holds rights for compilation, distribution, and translation under non-derivative terms.
1. Publication Ethics: underscores the importance of authors adhering to ethical standards when submitting articles. These standards include transparent authorship, originality, data access and retention, avoiding duplicate or concurrent submissions, proper citation of others' work, prompt notification to the editor or publisher in case of significant errors in published work, and maintaining accurate reporting standards.
2. Peer Review Process: mandates that editors ensure the peer review process is fair, unbiased, and timely. Typically, research articles are reviewed by at least two independent external reviewers.
3. Double-Blind Review: In the double-blind review process, the identities of both the authors and reviewers remain confidential. Authors must ensure that their manuscripts do not contain any information that could directly or indirectly reveal their identity.
4. Open Review: Open review encompasses various models that enhance transparency in the peer review process, such as revealing reviewer identities on the article page or publishing review reports alongside the article.
5. Reviewer Guidelines: provides comprehensive guidelines for reviewers, including instructions on logging in, accessing manuscripts, assessing the significance of the work, evaluating originality, and offering specific and constructive feedback.
6. Reviewer Checklist: offers a reviewer checklist to guide reviewers on what to do and avoid during the review, such as summarizing the article, giving initial impressions, assessing if the paper meets the journal's specific guidelines, and providing concrete recommendations.
7. Supporting Reviewers: encourages editors to support reviewers by assigning relevant and high-quality manuscripts, maintaining up-to-date reviewer profiles, and recognizing reviewers for their contributions.
8. Publication Ethics: publication ethics policy covers the responsibilities of editors, the peer review process, fair competition, journal metrics, confidentiality, and maintaining vigilance over the integrity of the published record.
Authors can refer to this information to determine the specific APC for their manuscripts.
- Standard Individual Membership: $400/year for publishing one article (self-authored or for others); $500 per article for the second and subsequent articles. Conference fees reduced for journal-organized academic events.
- Youth Membership: $200 per article.
- Institutional Membership: $2,000/year for institutions. Unlimited submissions based on peer review outcomes.
- National Agreement: $4,000/year for unlimited submissions based on peer review. Includes options for publishing special issues.
- Non-member Individuals: $600 per article.
All these rates are subject to potential waivers or discounts (in consultation with UNESCO).
Authors can choose to make research data publicly accessible as supplementary material to facilitate reproducibility:
- Open data policy is stated in submission guidelines and acceptance notices.
- Authors can submit process data for publication alongside the manuscript or store it in third-party data repositories.
- The journal provides open access download links for process data on the article’s download or viewing page, hosted either in its own repository or a third-party platform.
This policy is optional for authors and institutions.
Open Science is dedicated to supporting authors in sharing their research through preprint platforms.
To facilitate researchers in disseminating their research findings, promoting rapid scholarly communication, and ensuring early preservation while contributing to the global advancement of open science, Open Science encourages the authors to submit manuscripts (preprints) to reputable preprint platforms before formal submission. Published preprints are not considered duplicate publications. And, the journal provides Continuous support for the distribution of preprints to designated platforms in different countries. This enables authors to submit, quickly disseminate, and initially publish their manuscripts online, fostering an accessible, free, and searchable academic communication service for readers and the research community.
The preprint policy of Open Science is as follows:
1. Authors are encouraged to submit their manuscript (preprint) to a recognized preprint platform prior to official submission to the journal. This allows for immediate public access to their research, safeguarding the right to first publication, enhancing citation potential, and broadening the dissemination of their work.
2. Upon acceptance by Open Science, the journal will post the preprint on a preprint platform. Authors who do not wish for their manuscript to be posted should contact the editorial office.
3. Manuscripts published as preprints on such platforms will not be regarded as duplicate publications.
It’s a policy supporting article self-archiving.
Three options for knowledge repositories are provided:
1. Authors may store preprints and peer-reviewed versions in non-commercial third-party repositories.
2. Authors may deposit preprints and peer-reviewed versions in institutional repositories, with a data interface for the official publication version provided by the journal.
3. The journal supports integration with national or institutional repositories, such as UNESCO’s Open Science Platform and the African Open Science Platform, with real-time switch interfaces for authors’ published papers.
Long-term preservation policies is a default policy: Supports the transfer of articles to national/institutional long-term preservation systems designated by authors, such as China’s NDPP (National Digital Preservation Program).
These guidelines outline the research integrity principles upheld by this journal.
The content is excerpted from the Guidelines for Preventing Integrity Risks in Academic Journal Submissions, published in 2024 by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China and the Service center for Societies of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST).
Author Submission Integrity Principles:
- Integrity and Self-discipline: Authors of academic papers must ensure the authenticity and principled nature of their submissions, adhere to academic integrity standards, and avoid academic misconduct. Misconduct includes, but is not limited to: plagiarism, appropriation of others' research results, fabrication or manipulation of research data, purchasing, ghostwriting, or third-party submission of papers, fabricating peer reviews or expert opinions, and improper authorship.
- Prudence and Rigor: Authors must follow academic ethics and publishing norms during the submission process and remain cautious about behaviors that pose potential integrity risks. They should not use third-party services that violate these norms and must ensure that the submission process remains secure and within their control.
- Responsibility for Work: Authors are responsible for the academic quality, accuracy, legality of data, and any potential impact of their papers. Political, legal, academic, and ethical responsibilities arising from errors or misconduct are to be borne by the listed authors and their affiliated institutions.
Journal Integrity Principles:
- The journal's title reflects its academic focus and discipline.
- The journal has an ISSN.
- The journal’s “Call for Papers” emphasizes research areas and article quality.
- The journal enforces a strict peer review process that follows academic ethics and publishing norms.
- The journal either charges no or minimal review fees, and the APC for accepted articles is standardized, with publicly available fee structures and processes.
- The journal uses international identifiers such as DOI (Digital Object Identifier).
- If advertisements are present on the journal’s official website, they are generally related to its field or publishing scope and do not dominate the web page or appear in prominent positions.
- Articles on the journal's website have bibliographic information or effective full-text links and can be found in databases that index the journal.
- The journal’s official website includes an editorial board section.
- The official website lists the journal’s office address, contact number, and related email addresses for the hosting or publishing organization.
The journal’s website provides detailed information on academic ethics, publication procedures, standards, and fees within sections such as “Guide to Authors.”
- The journal employs a professional submission and review system that can track and respond to the entire peer review process.
- The journal does not provide or support “non-compliant third-party services”: it does not offer ghostwriting or third-party submission services, unrealistic publication guarantees, support for authors altering or fabricating research data, full management of the submission and publication process, or concealment of the peer review process.
- The journal ensures authors are aware of their rights and commits to maintaining an ethical research environment. It does not coerce authors into citing specific papers, avoids biased and unfair peer review comments, and provides explanations for copyright usage beyond the CC license during the submission process.
This guideline establishes the basic framework of principles for the use of AI technology in academic publishing as applied by this journal.
The content is excerpted from the Guideline on the Boundaries of AIGC Usage in Academic Publishing 2.0, published in 2024 by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Cambridge University Press.
Principles for the Use of AIGC in Academic Publishing
- Transparency and Accountability are the fundamental principles for AIGC usage in academic publishing.
- Privacy and Security are the essential legal principles for AIGC usage.
- Avoiding Bias and Upholding Fairness are critical when using AIGC.
- Sustainability is a core principle of AIGC usage.
For detailed information, please refer to the link provided.
Reproducibility in research is a crucial principle in scientific research. Adhering to this principle helps establish the robustness of scientific knowledge, enhances public trust in scientific research, and promotes scientific progress.
The principle of reproducibility includes the following aspects:
1. Transparency: Research methods, data, and analysis processes should be detailed enough for other researchers to understand and replicate the experiments.
2. Precision: Research should clearly describe experimental conditions and procedures, including the materials, equipment, and software used.
3. Accessibility: Research data and materials should be made available to other researchers, which may include sharing public datasets, biological samples, or research code.
4. Consistency: Experiments conducted at different times, in different locations, or by different researchers should yield similar results.
5. Record Integrity: Every step of the experiment should be thoroughly documented, including both successful and failed experiments.
6. Statistical Significance: Research findings should be validated through appropriate statistical analyses to ensure the results are not due to chance.
7. Peer Review: Research should undergo a peer review process to ensure the validity of methods and conclusions.
8. Error and Bias Identification: Research should acknowledge and report potential errors and biases, as well as the measures taken to control or minimize them.
9. Ethical Standards: Research should adhere to ethical standards, especially when involving human or animal subjects.
10. Continuous Improvement: Researchers should continually seek to improve research methods and practices to enhance reproducibility.
11. Openness: Open science practices, such as preregistering research protocols, publishing negative results, and sharing research materials, are encouraged.
12. Collaboration: Cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration is encouraged to foster knowledge sharing and enhance research reproducibility.
Achieving reproducibility in scientific research faces numerous challenges. For example, in complex disciplines such as biomedicine, variables like experimental subjects, environments, and indicators are highly complex, making it difficult to precisely control initial conditions. Additionally, behaviors such as academic authority worship, passive misconduct, and deliberate falsification significantly affect experimental reproducibility.
Reproducibility requirements in scientific research may include the following:
1. Precise Control of Initial Conditions: Precise control of initial conditions is essential for ensuring reproducibility in scientific experiments.
2. Standardization of Experimental Materials, Methods, and Environments: Using the same materials, methods, and environments helps minimize external factors influencing the experimental results.
3. Verifiability of Results: Experimental results must be capable of being repeatedly verified under different conditions and by different researchers, which is a key criterion for assessing the truth and reliability of scientific knowledge.
Provides industry-standard interfaces (e.g., OAI, FTP) or APIs, allowing access to a limited number of full texts and metadata.
- The journal’s introductory pages detail the interface specifications and sample collections.
- The journal's introduction pages outline the interface protocols, addresses, and sample data collection methods.
