1. Peer review policy: The Journal adopts three-rounds single blind review system. After submission, the editorial office will conduct a preliminary review of the manuscript. Manuscripts that do not conform to the publishing scope of this journal or have major defects will be rejected. Manuscripts which have passed the preliminary review will be sent to two or more peer reviewers. Authors must make revision to the manuscript and write a revision statement in respond to each comment of reviewers. The editorial committee will conduct the final round of review and decide whether to accept the manuscript. The editorial office handles manuscripts strictly in accordance with the professional ethical standards.
2. Timing: The review result generally will be returned to the authors within 6 months after submission. If authors do not receive the notice of revision more than 6 months, they can re-submit the manuscript to another journal after confirming with the editorial office by phone or email. If the manuscript needs revising, authors must return the revised manuscript, original manuscript and revision statement to the editorial office of the Journal within the specified time period after receiving notifications. If authors do not return the manuscript before the deadline, it will be registered as a new submission.
3. Special issue policy: Manuscripts submitted for special issues undergo the same review process as regular submissions, and the final decision on acceptance is made by the editorial committee in the final round of review. The editor-in-chief is responsible for the entire content of the Journal, including special issues.
4. Submission from editorial committee members: Contributions from editorial committee members of this journal must adhere to all review procedures of the Journal. Editorial office members are prohibited from submitting to the Journal. All review work on manuscripts will be conducted independently of the relevant editorial committee members and their research groups. Additionally, editorial committee members are prohibited from participating in the review process of manuscripts authored by individuals with whom they have competitive, collaborative, or other related conflicts of interest.
5.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 yyqxxb@cma.gov.cn or yyqxxb@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.
6. Correction and retraction: Articles published online or in print are considered the final 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.
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. The journal will also release the corrected new version of the article.
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.
