Focus and Scope

Online Learning and Educational Technology (OLET) is an open access peer-reviewed academic educational technology and online learning journal. The journal targets researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers of online distance learning and educational technology research fields. The journal publishes quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method research papers. Extended reviews of substantive research studies and/or technical reports published elsewhere are also welcome.

Article types

Article

Scientific articles on the original basis and applied research and/or analysis.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review

A summary highlighting recent developments and current/future trends in the field.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Editorial

Solicited concise commentary highlighting prominent topics in the Journal’s issue. These are official opinions of the editors of the Journal or a special issue of the Journal. Editorials will not undergo the peer review process.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Communication

Short articles describing significant findings, cutting-edge methods or experiments, and new technologies.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case Report

It summarizes the execution of a collaborative research program that is directly related to the advancement of Online Learning and Educational Technology.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Brief Commentary

This type of article contains unsolicited commentaries or analysis from the reader(s) targeting specific published articles in the journal.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Perspective

Perspective contains the author's personal opinions on a subject/topic. Perspective articles may cover a more specific, narrow part of the field. However, these are still required to uphold the spirit of academia to be objective as well as aim to initiate or further discuss novel experimental procedures in the field.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Opinion

Articles that present authors’ opinions on recent findings in any research area, along with a constructive discussion.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Letter

Letter contains new ideas, supporting data or data criticizing the article. Letter may be subjected to peer-review (determined on a case-by-case basis by the Journal's editorial team). Authors should specify the intended recipient of the letters i.e. Editor-in-Chief or stating the name(s) of specific author(s).

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Erratum

Erratum is a notification of a significant error made by the editors that affects the scholarly record or the scientific integrity of a published article. An erratum is always accompanied by Publisher Correction of the error. The erratum will not be made directly in the already-published articles. Authors who notice an error in their published articles should contact editorial-olet@enpress-publisher.com.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Corrigendum

Corrigendum is a notice that will be issued when it is necessary to correct an error or omission which can impact the interpretation of the article, but where the scholarly integrity of the article remains intact. For example, mislabeling of a table, missing key information on funding or competing interests of the authors.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts are subjected to a stringent double blind peer review process. This is to uphold the high quality of papers published in this journal and ensure that the reporting of research work is truthful and precise.

1. All submitted manuscript are firstly handled by the managing editor, who will check the manuscript for plagiarism, in which rejection of the manuscript can take place at this stage by the managing editor if plagiarism occurs in the manuscript.
2. After the plagiarism check is completed and results are deemed satisfactory, the managing editor will pass the manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief who will undertake the peer review process, or at times pass the task to one of the Associate Editors.
3. A minimum of 2 reviewers will be selected according to their expertise and suitability to the subject matter of the manuscript. Reviewers will have to give their comments and recommendations (Accept, Revisions Required, Resubmit for Review or Reject) to the Associate Editor for a recommended decision on the paper.
4. Upon recommendations by the the Associate Editor, the Editor-in-Chief can make a final decision on the paper and the managing editor will inform the author on their decision, adding comments to the Authors to make improvements in their research or paper.
   • If the decision is to Accept Submission (no amendments required by author), the manuscript will be sent to the Editing stage.
   • If Editor-in-Chief suggests Revisions Required (minor revisions), authors are given a maximum of 2 weeks to revise and resubmit the article.
   • If Editor-in-Chief suggests Resubmit for Review (major revisions), authors are given a maximum of 4 weeks to revise and resubmit the article for the second round of review.
   • If the decision is to Reject Submission, the author will be notified and the rejected manuscript will be archived and the peer review process ends.
5. An accepted paper will be sent for Copy Editing, Layout Editing and Proofreading before publication. Correspondence between the authors and editors will be required here in order to improve the language and/or look of the manuscript. After the Editing stage is completed, authors are required to check the PDF file of the final version before the article is published. EnPress Publisher registers DOI for the manuscript after publication, in which the article is immediately accessible to the public.
6. Authors may appeal for a rejected submission. Appeal requests must be made in writing to editorial-olet@enpress-publisher.com with detailed reasons for the appeal and point by point responses to the reviewers’ remarks. Decisions on appeals are final and no further consideration will be made.

Publication Frequency

The publication frequency of Online Learning and Educational Technology is Semi-annual.

Open Access Policy

Online Learning and Educational Technology (OLET) is a fully open access journal. It makes research freely available to the public and supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

• Higher Visibility, Availability and Citations – free and unlimited accessibility of the publication over the internet without any restrictions increases citation of the article
• Ease of Search – publications are easily searchable in search engines and indexing databases
• Rapid Publication – accepted papers are immediately published online

Editorial Policies

Authors should read the “Author Guidelines” before making a submission, and make sure that the manuscripts were written in accordance to the style and specifications of the Journal’s policy.

All manuscripts submitted to Online Learning and Educational Technology are subject to rigorous peer review. Prior to the peer review process, the manuscripts will be screened for acceptable English language, novelty and relevance to the Focus and Scope of the Journal.

Any manuscripts submitted to Online Learning and Educational Technology will be treated as confidential materials. The manuscripts will not be disclosed to anyone except individuals such as editorial staff, reviewers and editors who participate in the initial screening, review, processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted).

A manuscript would not be considered if it has been published or is currently under consideration for publication in any other journals. In the cover letter, authors must state that neither the manuscript nor any significant part of it is under consideration for publication elsewhere or has appeared elsewhere in a manner that could be construed as a prior or duplication of the same work. The authors are required to notify the editorial team if the findings and data in their submissions have been presented in conferences.

Authorship

Authorship of a scholarly paper should be limited to individuals who have contributed substantially to its intellectual content. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or general supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. All authors should hold the responsibility of fairly evaluating their respective roles and their co-authors’ roles in the project. This is to ensure that authorship is attributed according to a fixed standard in all publications for which they will be listed as authors. You are recommended to refer to the definition of authorship and contributors carefully in ICMJE, and Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT).

In order to be listed as an author for a paper, one should have contributed sufficiently in the project. A co-author is expected to have contributed to some component of the work which led to the paper, or be involved in interpretation of its results. All authors should have a say in the final approval of the version to be published, in addition to reviewing the final manuscript prior to submission.

Individuals who do not meet the above requirements, but have provided a valuable contribution to the work, may be acknowledged for their contribution as appropriate to the publication.

Changes to Authorship

The authors should carefully check the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript. The Editorial Office considers the authorship list is definitive by the time the original submission is received.

Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript is accepted for publication. The corresponding author should provide the reasons for the change in authorship list and the proof of written confirmation from all authors (including the existing authors, author(s) to be added and/or removed) agreeing with such change, to the Editorial Office.

The requests for authorship changes need to be approved by the Editorial Office before any changes can be made.

Publication Frequency

The publication frequency of Online Learning and Educational Technology is Semi-annual.

Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest may exist when professional judgements concerning a primary interest has the possibility of being influenced by a secondary interest (e.g.: financial gains). It is to be noted that even perceptions of conflicts of interest are as important as the actual conflicts of interest.

Any agreements with study sponsors (for profit or non-profit), which interfere with the authors’ access to the study data, ability to analyse or interpret the data and publish manuscripts independently according to their own decision, should be avoided by authors at all costs.

A declaration of interests for all authors should be received before an article can be reviewed and accepted for publication.

For authors:

While submitting, authors must list all competing interests relevant to this work, including but not limited to:

• Funding sources.
• The role of sponsors in the work design, data collection, and results of the analysis.
• Whether the author is serving on the editorial board of this journal submitting to.

For editors and reviewers:

Editors and reviewers must declare any possible conflict of interests in connection with the manuscript, and if necessary, they must avoid the peer review process. When Editorial Board Members publish articles in the served journal, the editorial office will actively emphasize it so that the authors know that they recuse the potential peer review process.

Common reasons for editors and reviewers to be replaced include but are not limited to:

• The editor or reviewer works at the same organization as one of the authors.
• The editor or reviewer is one of the authors of this work.
• The editor or reviewer is on the avoidance list from the author(s).
• The editor or reviewer has a financial relationship or personal relationship with an author.

Misconduct Policy

Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts submitted to EnPress Publisher should:

1) not have been published before

2) not concurrently be submitted elsewhere

If a part of a manuscript has been published or will be published elsewhere, authors must inform the editors in a cover letter. If a duplicate submission is detected during peer review, the manuscript may be rejected. If it is detected after publication, the manuscript may be retracted.

Plagiarism

Authors are advised to observe high standards in the aspect of publication ethics. Plagiarism is a strictly unacceptable practice in journals published by EnPress Publisher, including duplicate publication of the author’s work without proper citation.

Every manuscript submitted for publication is checked for plagiarism via Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) after submission and before being sent to the editor for editorial review. Any detection of overlapping and similar texts in the manuscripts submitted will be investigated promptly and may lead to the manuscript being rejected.

Fabrication and Falsification

Fabrication involves making up data and results without any research work in fact. Falsification involves manipulating the data or analysis to match the desired results. Fabrication and falsification are both misconducts, and they can result in an unscientific record that does not reflect scientific truth. Fabrication and falsification are serious academic fraudulent behaviors, and they may have a negative impact on the authors’ affiliate, funding sponsor, and employers. EnPress Publisher will not hesitate to reject manuscripts with suspicion of academic fraud.

Language

The language used in manuscripts submitted to Online Learning and Educational Technology is English. Authors whose first language is not English may want to have their manuscripts professionally edited before the final submission to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by its prospective readers.

Publishing Ethics

EnPress Publisher requests all members involved in the journal publishing process to adhere to the Core Practices on publication ethics as stipulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

EnPress Publisher strictly adheres to the COPE’s Ethical guidelines and monitors the entire publication process in accordance with the guidelines and best practices, which include Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). The publisher treats all personal information of authors as private and promises to not disclose the information to third parties except as required by law or for necessary purposes of the publishing process. EnPress Publisher promises to oversee the procedures and behavior of authors, editors, and reviewers and to ensure that all participants are without any conflicts of interest for a publication process that is fair and objective. 

The publisher’s journal editors take all possible misconducts seriously. The editors, authors, or readers can forward their concerns to the publisher if a research work may involve academic fraud, research misconduct, or publication malpractice. Concerns or complaints submitted to the publisher on possible allegations will be dealt with promptly and appropriately according to the procedure set out in the COPE on complaints. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the publisher at editorial@enpress-publisher.com.

EnPress Publisher adopts a zero-tolerance policy concerning any academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. Violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of the same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time, and breached intellectual property rights. In cases of suspected misconduct and ethical violation, a panel will be formed to investigate the allegation. If the allegation is supported by evidence, the submitted manuscript in question will be declined for consideration in the journal and all authors will be informed of the decision. A retraction initiated by authors or by the journal is required to take place if the paper has already been published, and the retraction will be made public. Authors of the work in question will receive the panel’s decision via email and all appeals regarding the decision will have to be made to the publisher via email to editorial@enpress-publisher.com within 30 days of the decision date.

Preprint Policy

Authors are permitted to post their non-peer-reviewed original research manuscripts to community preprint servers such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PeerJ Preprint before or in parallel with the formal submission to Online Learning and Educational Technology. During submission, authors are obliged to declare in the cover letter if the corresponding preprint version of their submission has been deposited on a preprint server, and provide any associated accession numbers or DOIs.

Nonetheless, authors are not allowed to post any versions of articles that have been revised as a result of peer review, accepted for publication or published in the journal on a preprint server. The manuscript whose corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g. in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

This policy applies to original research papers only. This journal  reserves the right not to consider for publication or publish material that has been formally published in digital media that shall not be construed as preprint servers.

We encourage formal citation of preprints in the reference list, where appropriate.

Erratum, Withdrawal & Retraction Policy

Erratum

All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to authors at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by authors and corrected by the publisher before the final publication. For any errors in published articles discovered by readers, authors, editors, et al., please contact the journal editor.

It should be noted that errors made by editors are called erratum, and errors made by authors are called corrigendum. However, erratum and corrigendum have no influence on the research logic and the correctness of the results.

EnPress Publisher will only issue an erratum or corrigendum for a published article after receiving approval and instructions from the editor.

Withdrawal

If authors change their mind and decide not to pursue publication of their paper with the journal, they must write a letter addressed to the journal editors, explaining the reason(s) of the submission withdrawal. Consent of all co-authors must be obtained for author-initiated submission withdrawal. The decision to withdraw a submission will eventually rest with the journal editors, including the Editor-in-Chief.

It is relatively more difficult to withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer review or is undergoing peer review compared with withdrawing a new submission because the editors and reviewers have expended much time and energy in the editorial process and manuscript evaluation, respectively. To withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer review, authors should clearly argue their case on scientific reasons; only valid and sound reasons will be accepted. Authors will also be required to pay a penalty fee (USD200). Authors are advised to keep in mind that an article should only be withdrawn if the authors detect significant errors or flaws, as it is not an acceptable practice to withdraw an article after it has been sent for peer review. Once the approval for submission withdrawal is granted, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors. The withdrawal process is considered to be complete once authors receive the confirmation of withdrawal from the journal’s editorial office.

Submission withdrawal is also possible for accepted papers that have not been formally published, including newly accepted papers and articles in press.

The withdrawal of an accepted paper and article in press is usually editor-initiated. The reasons for withdrawing an accepted paper and article in press are similar to those of retracting a published article (see “Retraction”), and at this stage the article will not be arranged for article production or finalization. A panel will be organized to investigate misconduct allegations. If the allegations are proven true with supporting evidence, the accepted paper or article in press will be marked for withdrawal, and any appeals regarding the panel’s decision will have to be made to the publisher within 14 days of the decision date. In the absence of an appeal from the authors within the 14 days, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors.

Retraction

Readers can contact the editorial office to report allegations of possible academic misconduct, i.e., ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. Misconducts and violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of the same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time, and breached intellectual property rights. Once the suspected misconduct and ethical violation is brought to the attention of the publisher, the journal editors will organize an investigation and authors are required to cooperate in the investigation. A panel will be organized to investigate the allegations. If the allegations are proven true with supporting evidence, the published article will be marked for retraction both in HTML and PDF, and a notification email regarding the panel’s decision will be sent to all authors of the work. Any appeals regarding the panel’s decision will have to be made to the publisher within 14 days of the decision date. In the absence of an appeal from the authors within the 14 days, a confirmation email of article retraction will be sent to the authors.

Authors should note that the paid Article Processing Charges will not be refunded if their article is retracted or withdrawn on the grounds of academic misconduct and ethical violation in research and publication.

Disclaimer

• For authors: Once submitting a manuscript, It means that you have be aware of all publishing policies & ethics,  and will strictly abide by them.
• For reviewers: Once accepting the request to become a reviewer, it means that you must be aware of the peer review policies, and proactively disclose of all potential conflicts of interest, and guarantee that an article will be judged fairly and objectively. 
• For publisher: This journal  is not liable to the statements, perspectives, and opinions contained in the published articles. The appearance of advertisements in the journal shall not be construed as a warranty, endorsement, or approval of the products or services advertised and/or the safety thereof. This journal and the Publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.

Copyright and License

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

All articles published by Online Learning and Educational Technology are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during submission stage, a paper will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) by default (starting from Vol. 1, No. 1). The authors who would like to publish their work under a non-commercial license, i.e.  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), they should express explicit request during submission stage. Please include statement below in the Comments for the Editor column on the submission page:

The contributors or authors for this submission entitled “[MANUSCRIPT TITLE]”, i.e. [NAMES of ALL AUTHORS], have given their consents to alter the Creative Commons license to *CC BY-NC 4.0* under which this submission will be published in Online Learning and Educational Technology.

Advertising Policy

All advertisements are subject to approval to the Publisher. Advertisements must comply with the relevant regulations in the country where the advertisements appear. Advertisements must not influence the content of the journal and the making of editorial decisions. For more inquiries, please send email to editorial@enpress-publisher.com.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

EnPress publishes all its journals in Gold Open Access format. The scientific community and the general public have free of all restrictions on accessing (e.g., subscription) and free of many restrictions on using its contents as soon as it is published online. EnPress does not require readers to purchase any form of subscription to view online versions of the journals. In order to defray our editorial and production costs, authors of the accepted articles are required to pay the article processing charges (APCs). The charges will come from authors' institutes or research funding bodies.

Waiver Policy

For high-quality articles graded by our editorial board members and authors from low-income countries with difficulty to pay, OLET will access in a case-by-case basis and may approve certain discount to ensure the publication of high-quality articles. OLET reserves the rights to approve or decline any such request. Please contact: editorial-olet@enpress-publisher.com.

Research Involving human

If human subjects were used in the experiments, authors should identify the committee or organization (e.g. author’s Institutional Ethics Review Board) approving the experiments during the submitting process, which should also detail ethics approval information such as the name of the granting committee or organization and the approval identifiers, i.e. reference numbers. This journal requires that authors provide a proof of research ethics or ethics statement along with the submission. In the case that ethics approval identifiers are not available, written approval from the granting committee or organization must be provided as confidential supplemental file.

The manuscript should confirm that the experiments were carried out in adherence to the ethical principles set out in the WMA Declaration of Helsinki and that informed consent was obtained from all human subjects.

For investigations undertaken on human subjects, the manner in which the informed consent was obtained from the study participants (i.e., oral or written) should be stated clearly as well.

The authors should inform the study participants of the purpose(s) of publication, the possible risks and benefits as a result of the experiment, and the patient's right to withhold or withdraw consent. Consent should be obtained from the parent(s) or legal guardian(s) if the study participant is a minor.

Authors are obliged to declare and clearly specify any restrictions on the availability or the use of human data in the manuscript.

Research Involving Animal

The procedures of research involving animals including insect and husbandry must be carried out in accordance with national and institutional regulations. For further guidance of animal experiment, authors could refer to the Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures, Three Rs, Core Principles for the Care and Use of Animals in Research, EU regulations on animal research. If ethical approval has not be required by national laws, authors should provide an exemption from the ethics committee, if one is available.

EnPress endorses the ARRIVE guidelines for reporting experiments using live animals. Authors and reviewers could take The ARRIVE Essential 10: Compliance Questionnaire as a checklist. Editors reserve the right to reject submissions based on the ethics’ guidelines or ethical or animal welfare concerns.

Patient Anonymity and Privacy

Human subjects have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information or patient identifiers, including patient names, initials, date of birth, contacts, medical record numbers, hospital numbers, and geographical location, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Efforts must be made by the authors to at least mask or conceal any identifying information of the patients that appear in writing or within photograph.

Authors are obliged to explain to the patient if revealing the patient’s identity cannot be fully avoided, e.g. an image of an identifiable body part like the face has to be published in the report. The relevant identifying information to be published, e.g. the image, must be shown to the patient, and consent for publication taken for the use of that information in the publication. If the patient dies, then consent should be obtained from next of kin or legal representative. Submissions that include identifying patient information without appropriate patient consent will not be considered for publication.

Refer to ICMJE Privacy and Confidentiality guidelines for more information about patient anonymity and privacy.

Preprint Policy

Authors are permitted to post their non-peer-reviewed original research manuscripts to community preprint servers such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PeerJ Preprint before or in parallel with the formal submission to Online Learning and Educational Technology. During submission, authors are obliged to declare in the cover letter if the corresponding preprint version of their submission has been deposited on a preprint server, and provide any associated accession numbers or DOIs.

Nonetheless, authors are not allowed to post any versions of articles that have been revised as a result of peer review, accepted for publication or published in the journal on a preprint server. The manuscript whose corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g. in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

This policy applies to original research papers only. This journal  reserves the right not to consider for publishing material that has been formally published in digital media that shall not be construed as preprint servers.

We encourage formal citation of preprints in the reference list, where appropriate.

Indexing & Archiving

Online Learning and Educational Technology is indexed, cataloged and/or included by several world-class abstracting/indexing databases:

ROAD

CNKI Scholar

EuroPub

ResearchBib

Root Indexing

DRJI

Portico

Ethical Oversight

EnPress Publisher strictly abides by the COPE's Ethical guidelines. All the editorial process is run with the monitor of Editor-in-Chief, Guest Editors of Special Issue, and Associate Editors. Any manuscript that may involve unethical possibility including but not limited to fraud, plagiarism, and multi-contribution, will not be push forward to the next stage of editorial process. The strict editorial process ensures the fairest and most objective review decision. If necessary, the Editorial Office will contact the granting committee for the authenticity. 

Data and Reproducibility

EnPress Publisher complies with the Data and reproducibility of COPE, encourages the use of discipline’s standard practice and guidelines. For clinical trials, they should register in corresponding approval institute or repository. EnPress encourages authors to reposit the raw dataset in community repository if the dataset is not available as the supplementary material. Authors having reported a data repository, are encouraged to add a statement of data availability in their manuscript, which may involve the availability of the research data and potential limitations, such as human privacy or biosecurity. All the data is crucial for the replicability, transparency, and credibility of scientific findings.

Data sharing

Authors are encouraged to follow the FAIR Data Principles, which guides that all the (meta)data should be assigned a unique persistent identifier. Journal office has the right to ensure and review the credibility of the dataset, and the possibility of collaborative investigations with institutions exists to ensure the scientific credibility of this scientific research practice. EnPress Publisher strict adheres to the unpublished and published data guidelines of COPE, and the corresponding author must response each inquiry. If there is major issue on dataset, a manuscript may be rejected.

Data citation

Dataset should be cited in the manuscript/article to give creators’ credit. The original source should be listed in the reference section, such as the author(s), publishing year, repository/archive name, dataset’s DOI.

Data repository

Authors are encouraged to share your dataset in the discipline repository, and authors could find an appropriate subject dataset repository with a registered DOI from FAIRsharing.org and re3data.org.

Authors also could deposit the datasets in a general dataset repository, such as those provided by a university, sponsor of institution. Below are some examples of generalized dataset repositories:

• Open Science Framework
• Dryad Digital Repository
• Figshare
• Harvard Dataverse
• Zenodo
• Science Data Bank

AIGC Policy

This publisher imposes restrictions on the use of AI content-generation tools, and we follow COPE's case guidance for AI tools to comprehensively address article cases involving AIGC.

Authors are permitted to use AIGC for obtaining initial research background material, recommendations for chart types, inserting literature, generating automatic sorting and formatting, and creating other non-human creative content. However, it is not permitted to draw diagrams instead of the author. Authors must thoroughly review all textual content to ensure it is accurate, scientific, and reliable. Authors are solely responsible for the content of their articles.

Reviewers involved in the review process can use AIGC tools for checking and research comparison, but they must take responsibility for the review opinions provided. They are not allowed to directly use the content evaluation analysis generated by AIGC. This policy is in place to encourage reviewers to play an active role in the progress of scientific research.

Authors and editors may use AIGC for embellishment, but they must ensure the coherence of language and the accuracy of statement expression. However, the excessive use of AIGC tools for language embellishment in writing the entire text is discouraged.

According to the journal policy, authorship must be attributed to individuals who have made significant contributions to the design, implementation, analysis, and writing of the article, rather than to the AIGC tool or any ghost identity. Any content using an AIGC tool should be openly and transparently acknowledged in the Materials and Methods, Acknowledgements. This should include the reason for using the AIGC tool, the name and version number of the tool, and the generated textual content.

It is also mandatory that the AIGC tool used is stable and publicly accessible.

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