Ethics and Policies

• Editorial Policies

Authors must ensure originality of their submissions, and there is no improper academic misconduct including plagiarism, manuscript washing, and duplicate submissions. Authors must have read the journal’s policies clearly before submitting manuscripts, and the manuscripts should meet the requirements set out in the journal’s Author Guidelines. Authors, editors, and reviewers must abide by publication ethics, and all personnel involved in the process from submission to publication are not allowed to disclose any information related to personal privacy or personal information, as well as the content of the article.

Sin-Chn Scientific Press strictly abides by the Ethical Oversight Policy of COPE. Any submission with unethical possibility will not be push forward to the next stage. A rigorous editorial process ensures an objective decision. Sin-Chn Scientific Press also deals with suspected ethical problems, consent for medical case reports, and publication ethics issues specific to social science disciplines by following COPE guidelines. Submissions relating to animal research should follow international norms and academic value of its discipline, and provide the granting committee or approval identifiers, e.g., the reference numbers. If necessary, the Editorial Office will check the authenticity with the granting committee. Authors should explain the reasons if there is no ethics approval information. If submissions involve human research, the Informed Content Statement is needed. Please find more here.

• Publishing Ethics

Sin-Chn Scientific Press strictly abides by the rules, regulations and best practices set by:

           Core Practices of COPE

           The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing as stipulated by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME

           Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)

 

Some key publishing ethics tips:

       1) Original statement is important during the submission stage.

       2) Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not permitted.

       3) Ethical oversight in the whole editorial process

       4) Definition and guidance of authorships

       5) Declaration of conflict of interest

       6) Description of copyright and license

       7) Description of advertising policy

       8) Show the informed consent and Privacy Statement if human experiments

       9) Provide ethical approval and registration numbers, and adhere to animal experiment protocols involving animal research.

       10) Obtain permission for the reuse of any previously published content from copyright holders.

       11) Authors should follow the Author Guidelines of the journal before making a submission.

       12) Author should avoid academic misconducts.

       13) Data and reproducibility

       14) Correction, Withdrawal, and Retraction

 

Ethical oversight

Publication ethics involves not only upholding the integrity, reliability, and merit of published research itself, but also an underlying consideration and respect for the subjects of the research. The Editor-in-Chief will oversee the whole editorial process by complying with COPE’s Ethical Oversight guidance and its best practice.

For research involving human subjects, the journal office and authors play a vital role to safeguard the privacy and dignity of human subjects by erasing the identifiable personal details, such as facial information, name, fingerprint, and hospital ID. Authors must submit the written statement of informed consent and approval of ethical committees. If the subjects are vulnerable, the statement of informed consent should be obtained from their guardian. For research involving animal subjects, authors should comply with applicable laws and regulations governing the conduct of research, and necessary procedures on animal welfare should be described in the materials and methods section. Experimental IDs and the approval of Ethical Committees should be provided both in the submission stage and final PDF file.

The journal office must diligently review submitted manuscripts to ensure that they conform with research ethics guidelines. Once the journal office takes into consideration the adequacy of consent and the need for ethical review, the authors must provide the details of ethical IDs, and cooperation is requested between institutions and the journal guided by COPE. Journals with a suspected ethical problem in a submitted manuscript will follow the COPE’s flowchart to address such concerns.

   

• Peer Review Process

Sin-Chn Scientific Press publishes peer-reviewed journals in an open-access model. The journal’s editorial and ethical policies guide the behavior of all parties based on Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

The whole peer review process includes several crucial sections, such as initial check, peer review, and editorial decision.

Initial check

After receiving a new manuscript, a managing editor will check the completeness of the article structure, the standardization of the references, and the suitability of the article to the scope of the journal. Then, the managing editor will send the similarity report to an academic editor. Generally, an academic editor may be the Editor-in-Chief, an editorial board member, or a guest editor. The academic editor will check the academic ethics of the article, including crucial information on the originality, ethical approval, conflict of interest statements, authorship, plagiarism, and scientific validity of the article, as well as the relevance of references. Only manuscripts that have passed the initial check will proceed to the peer review process. Some articles will be rejected at this point, e.g., articles whose topics are outside the scope of the journal, that are against the journal’s editorial policies, that seriously breach ethics, that are excessively self-cited, that lack ethical approval, etc.

Peer review

Sin-Chn Scientific Press adopts a double-anonymous peer-review model. Peer review is used to assess the quality of a new manuscript. The academic editor will assign a manuscript to at least three independent-external reviewers for peer review. If there is evidence of potential plagiarism, the manuscript will not go on the next stage. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the academic quality of the journal and oversees the publication process. At least two high-quality reports should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief, and he/she will make a final decision whether it is accepted or rejected or revised.

Authors have the right to recommend a list of potential reviewers, and an assistant editor will ensure there is no potential conflict of interest. The journal office reserves the right to adopt this list. Given theconflict of interest, guest editors should not access the peer review process on their own manuscripts submitted to a special issue or a section collection. The Editor-in-Chief or another editorial board member will instead his/her responsibility. Similarly, editors from the Editorial Board should avoid reviewing a manuscript if he/she is one of the authors, or he/she comes from the same institute with the authors. Reviewers should understand all the editorial policies, and follow the guidelines in “For reviewers”.

If review reports contain different decisions, the academic editor will seek another comment from an editorial board member before asking for the final decision from the Editor-in-Chief. During the peer review process, the editorial staff eliminates interference in the making of any decisions.

 

Editorial decision:

While fully considering the recommendations of the reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief makes the final editorial decision. If the Editor-in-Chief believes that the manuscript should be rejected, it will be rejected even if two reviewers agree to accept it.

Generally, there are several decisions as followed:

Accept

Papers are accepted in principle on the basis of the reviewers’ comments with or without some minor modifications that are not about the research content.

Minor revisions

Papers will be accepted after minor revisions as specified in the reviewers’ comments. Authors have one week to complete the minor revisions and respond to the comments point by point.

Major revisions

Papers need major revisions as specified in the reviewers’ comments. Generally, authors should complete the major revisions and respond to the comments point by point within four weeks. The revised version will be passed to the same reviewer for further comments.

Decline

Papers will be declined finally, possibly due to serious errors, lack of science, or no contribution to the community.

Manuscripts that are declined but revised could be considered for a new review round after a new submission.

 

Expected article processing time:

Initial check: 3 days

Peer review process: 20 days

Minor revisions: 7 days

Major revisions: 28 days

 

Authors should reply to a report with a detailed point-by-point explanation, or appeal a rejection by e-mail to the Editorial Office within 30 days. The Editor-in-Chief will organize a team of experts to hold an academic debate; the final decision will be validated by the Editor-in-Chief at this stage.

Accepted manuscripts will be passed to the production stage.

• Appeal and Complaint

Clear publishing ethics will lead to a better science community. All the persons related to the publishing process are responsible for the work. Editors will take any possible misconducts seriously. Anyone, such as authors, editors, readers, and reviewers, could complain about any misconduct to the Editorial Office, including academic fraud, research misconduct or publication malpractice.

If authors lodge an appeal against rejection, another independent report will be collected by the handing editor to Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief will consider all the comments and complaint to make a final decision with appropriate explanation. The decision is final, and more complaints will not be accepted.

If authors complain about the time taken in the editorial process, the handling editor will investigate the matter, and coordinate with relevant parties to deal with the obstacles and carefully control the processing time. The complainant will be given appropriate feedback.

If the allegation is about publishing ethics, involving behaviors of reviewers, editors, and editorial staff, the Editor-in-Chief will organize a panel to investigate this allegation. If necessary cooperation is required for this investigation, e.g., ethical approval, and data reliability, in such cases, the Editorial Office will contact the authors’ institutes or other journals from which the author(s) cited the relevant data for requesting assistance, as appropriate. Any possible complaints will be dealt with according to the guidance on complaints and appeals of COPE.

Investigations and sanctions

All suspected allegations of misconduct before or after publication will be investigated by the Editorial Office, and authors are expected to answer truthfully. Depending on the circumstances, sanctions for misconduct include, but are not limited to the following forms.

If the work is under consideration, the manuscript may be rejected.

If the work has been published, an erratum or correction will be posted with a link to the article, or even a retraction will be initiated.

Authors are banned from submitting manuscripts to the publisher for 3 years.

Reviewers are no longer engaged in reviewing manuscripts for all journals from this publisher.

Authors have the right to appeal to the Editorial Office within 30 days upon receiving an editorial decision.

 

• Authorships

Sin-Chn Scientific Press strictly abides by the guidelines of Authorship and Contributorship of COPE, and the Defining the role of Authors and Contributors of ICMJE. Authorships mean that authors have the responsibility and accountability for the published work. All authors need to give the approval of the sequence of authors before publishing. Authors should read and understand the APCs policy and editorial polices (especially the peer review process) before submitting a manuscript. Authors hold the copyright of their work under the open access policy and CC BY 4.0 License. Authors have the right to recommend an avoidable list of reviewers provided they do not have any conflict of interest in this endeavor.

 

Authorship should meet the following key points at the same time:

      1) have made substantial contributions to the design or conception of this work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;

       2) have made intellectual contribution to writing the work or revising it;

       3) have given the final approval of the version to be published;

       4) Agree to take responsibility for all aspects of the work including replying to the review comments, and explaining questions.

 

Authors should meet the four criteria above to be authors, and they are encouraged to provide a ORCID ID or academic ID. For someone does not meet all the criteria but has provided support or contribution, it is available to express thanks in the section of Acknowledgments.

If there are more than one author who makes contributions to the work, please choose one author to be the corresponding author. The publisher accepts a maximum of two corresponding authors. A corresponding author communicates with the Editorial Office on behalf of all the authors during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and production process, e.g., informing all authors of the review comments, responding to the questions raised by the Editorial Office or reviewers, providing details of ethics committee approval and other necessary information, and proofreading the galleys. The corresponding author is also responsible for dealing with post-publication issues in a timely manner.

Contributionship

The publisher requests the specific contributions of each author in a research article, which will be displayed in the final PDF file. There are no mandatory requirements in other types of articles. Please refer to Author Guidelines of the target journal for more details.

Use of AI-assisted tools

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools should not be listed as authors. If any AI or AI-assisted tools have been used in the preparation of a manuscript, authors should declare the details in a cover letter, in the Materials and Methods section, and in the Acknowledgments section. For more AI policy details, please refer to the AI policy.

Editors or journal’ staff as authors

For editors or journal’s staff as authors, they will not be assigned the review tasks of their own submission, and the tasks will be handled by others to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

Changes to authorships

The Editorial Office defaults to the identity of all the authors when receiving a new submission. Any addition, deletion, or change to the author list needs the approval of all the authors before being accepted. The corresponding author should provide the reasons for the change to authorship, and the proof of written confirmation of authorship changes from all the authors (including the authors to be deleted). Disputes on authorships will be dealt with by following COPE’s guidelines on the Authorship and Contributorship (pre-publication and post-publication).

 

   

• Conflict of Interest

Authors should declare any potential conflicts of interests (COIs) during the submission process. Conflicts of interest could influence peer review, editorial decisions and publication management. Failure to declare the conflict of interest may result in rejection of the submission. If there is no conflict of interest, authors should state it clearly with a sentence such as “Authors declare no conflict of interest”.

Conflicts of interest may include, but are not limited to:

        Financial conflict of interest

        Copyright or patent application

        Work grants

        From the same institution

        Relationships, such as co-authors, competitors, friends, and employees

        Members or editorial staff in the journal or the publisher

 

According to COPE’s guidelines on Conflict of Interest, here are some definitions of the processes for handling conflicts of interest of authors, reviewers, and editors.

For authors: authors should declare potential conflict of interest in related to the work during the submission stage, such as the list of academic competition or financial benefits, and an avoidable list of reviewers or editors. The declared conflict of interest will be kept in confidence during the review process, but will be shown in the Conflict of Interest section of the final PDF file.

For reviewers: reviewers should avoid the peer review process if there is any relationship with any author, such as being friends, competitors, and co-authors, or coming from the same institute. If reviewers feel impossible to make objective comments, they should reject the peer-review invitation. Reviewers are encouraged to recommend other experts as reviewers, and the journal office reserves the right to adopt it.

For editors: if editors are one of the co-authors, or come from the same institute with one of the authors, or there are potential conflicts, they should avoid participating in the peer review process. Editor who process the article must not interfere with reviewers making decisions.

Failure to declare COIs may raise ethical appeal, which affects academic judgement and the objectivity and impartiality of scientific research. Any complaints or appeal against the peer review process and results will raise a new process investigation. Once editors, reviewers, or staff are implicated in a review issue, it will be dealt with according to the COPE flowchart, and a process participation ban will be placed on them.

 

   

• Copyright and License

Copyright on all articles published in the publisher is retained by the author(s), while the author(s) grant the publisher as the original publisher to publish the article.

Articles are published in an open-access model under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which means they can be shared, adapted and distributed provided that the original source is credited. Article Processing Charges (APCs) will be paid by the authors or their sponsors. The usage of the material is not limited to commercial purposes. If authors prefer other licenses, please contact the journal office at editorial_office@sin-chn.net.

The publisher suggests authors to archive or use the final PDF version on the journal website. Author must comply with the data and reproducibility policy for reusing published or unpublished material. It is authors’ obligations obtain the copyright holders’ authorization for reusing materials copyrighted by other authors or journals.

   

• Advertising Policy

Advertisements should follow the local rules and regulations. Any opinion in the advertisement does not imply endorsement of the journal and the publisher. Misuse of the publisher’s or journal’s logo without the publisher’s permission is prohibited. The publisher’s office has the right to make a decision on whether or not to accept advertisements.

       1) Advertisements posted in this journal should be based on the decision of the publisher.

       2) Advertisements should not be related in any way to the editorial decision making, and should be kept separate from the published content.

       3) Advertisements must not contain any deceptive, misleading, or unscientific content.

       4) The journal accepts advertisements related to the journal scope, and any advertisement will suffer a review process.

       5) Advertisements are displayed at random, and they are not linked to content or reader behavior.

       6) The journal and the publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury, loss or damage caused by advertising.

       7) Treatment-specific or drug-specific campaigns associated with specific articles or any page on which the content relates to the product being advertised are not permitted.

       8) The publisher reserves the right to remove any kind of advertisements. Once the Editor-in-Chief, publisher, or cooperator requests to remove an advertisement, it will be withdrawn at any time.

Sponsors can apply to withdraw their advertisements. Please send any inquiries or complaints about advertising to editorial_office@sin-chn.net.

   

• Misconduct Policy

Sin-Chn Scientific Press adopts a zero-tolerance policy on misconduct, and strictly abides by the Core Practices of COPE. Authorship by ghost or non-contributors is strictly prohibited by the publisher. Meta-data on the research work must be preserved for possible editorial needs, such as investigating and verifying data. Authors must declare potential conflicts of interest, and the publisher will keep personal information strictly confidential and will vigorously investigate allegations of misconduct.

The publisher will follow COPE guidelines to deal with allegations of misconduct before or after publication. Where necessary, the journal office will work with the authors’ institutes to investigate an allegation. Authors’ institutes are obliged to cooperate to ensure the scientific reliability of the research.

The publisher welcomes original articles, and prohibits all academic misconduct, such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, multiple submissions, and academic fraud.

Plagiarism

A new submission should not be submitted or published anywhere yet. If any part has been published before, authors should inform the editors in the cover letter. Each submission will be checked for the originality via Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate). The journal will set similarity thresholds, and articles are not recommended to exceed them, except for material methods and references where appropriate. Authors are discouraged from excessive quoting or use of published content. If plagiarism is detected or verified in the peer review process, the manuscript will be rejected. If it is detected or verified after publication, a retraction will be issued.

Duplicate submissions

Authors should respect science and academic ethics, and it is considered unethical to submit a manuscript to different journals at the same time. The publisher only welcomes original manuscripts that have not been published in other journals or in another language. Authors are encouraged to state the originality in a cover letter.

Any types of reuse of others’ words and charts should be approved by the copyright holder. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain this permission before submitting a manuscript, which should be stated in a cover letter.

Fabrication and falsification

The publisher respects science and facts, and strictly prohibits all possible data falsification and data fabrication, which involves extremely serious issues of academic ethics and affects authors’ academic reputation internationally, and we remind scholars to be careful with their scientific work.

Authors are encouraged to provide or deposit data in a data repository with a recognized ID link. Editors may verify the experimental meta-data for scientific reliability. Authors will be notified as soon as a suspected data problem is detected. Authors are required to respond to the query until the editor is satisfied. Incorrect, unscientific, or fabricated data will adversely affect the conclusions of the manuscript. In such cases, the journal office will conduct an investigation in cooperation with the author’s institution. Once fabrication or falsification is verified, the journal office will reject the manuscript and notify the author to withdraw the stored data.

Manipulation

The Editor-in-Chief oversees the entire editorial process and avoids potential manipulation by declaring conflicts of interest. In addition to this, manipulation involves excessive self-citation, and peer review manipulation by editorial office staff. The publisher follows COPE’s guidelines on handling peer review manipulation suspected after publication and during peer review process.

Peer review manipulation mainly involves the possibility of editorial manipulation, which refers to ethical issues. Once peer review manipulation is verified, the editorial staff will be seriously treated, or even fired.

Excessive citation of reviewers’ works means that reviewers suggest authors cite reviewers’ own works without appropriate grounds. The journal office will critically review all references for relevance and eliminate all unjustified citations.

Excessive self-citation of authors’ works means that authors cite their own published works. The journal office set self-citation thresholds for authors, which authors must strictly adhere to for eliminating the suspicion of manipulation to increase citations.

Complaint and appeal

For complaints and appeals against misconduct, the publisher will treat it following the guidelines on handling Allegations of Misconduct provided by COPE. More details, please refer to the complaint and appeal in Publishing Ethics.

 

   

• Language

All articles published by the publisher are written in English. In many cases, the publisher accepts both American or British English forms of spelling, but it should be uniform throughout the text.

Articles submitted by non-native English speakers will be edited by professional editors before publication to ensure that readers can understand the content.

International languages help to expand international readership and increase citations of works. The publisher does not publish manuscripts in non-English languages at this time. Non-English manuscripts need to be translated into English before submission.

 

   

• Correction, Withdrawal, and Retraction

After an article is published, we welcome comments and discussions from different parties. Authors, readers, and editors are all encouraged to communicate with the Editorial Office as soon as they identify a problem so that it can be dealt with as quickly as possible. The publisher has mechanisms for correcting, withdrawing or retracting articles after publication.

Correction

The term “correction” refers to the correction of errors in articles that have been published in the Journal. A correction usually will not affect academic results and reading. Ideally, all errors in the article will be corrected during the editing and proofreading steps before the article is published. Both editors and the author will thoroughly check the article for possible errors. If any readers find errors in the published article, please feel free to contact the publisher at editorial_office@sin-chn.net to report them, and editors will correct the error immediately. A correction notice will be published in the current issue with a link to the article website.

Withdrawal

Manuscripts that have been accepted but not yet officially published may be withdrawn after submitting a reasonable and proper withdrawal request. In such cases, the author will be required to bear and pay part of the loss of the publisher, about USD 200. All manuscripts that have passed the withdrawal request will no longer be searched and archived in the publishing system, and all editorial work will cease. Upon completion of the withdrawal process, authors will receive a formal withdrawal notice from the journal office.

 

Retraction

A retraction means a published article to be retracted. Usually, a retraction is initialed by editors. Editors should consider retracting an article if there is clear evidence that imply unreliable results, misconduct, ethics violation, etc. However, retractions should not be applied, if:

There is no evidence to doubt the validity of the results even the authorship is disputed.

There are errors not affecting the findings of the research.

There has no final decision to initial a retraction.

Authors fail to declare the conflict of interest, but that did not affect the peer review decision.

Sin-Chn Scientific Press follows the retraction guidelines of COPE. Once a retraction is initiated, a retraction notice will be posted, which will include the initial party, the reason, and the retracted article information. Most importantly, a bi-link between the retracted article and the retraction notice must be associated to minimize harmful effects. If there are major issues, both the author and their institutes will be informed.

Editors of the journal office will post Editor’s Note to express concerns with published materials.

   

• Indexing & Archiving

All articles published by Sin-Chn Scientific Press are archived by Portico which provides long-term digital preservation.

Authors are encouraged to use and preserve the final version of PDFs on the journal website. If an article has been posted on a preprint server, a link to the journal website or the publication reference should be added to the preprint record.

Authors could choose an official or suitable online platform to archive articles through Directory of Open Access Repositories.

 

   

• Preprints

Authors can post original, non-peer-reviewed manuscripts on a preprint server for quick and wide dissemination. It is a fast way to make the work and findings known and gain a reputation. There are challenges and concerns to address the verification and integrity of sound science in research published as preprints.

 

Manuscripts on a community preprint server without peer review will be considered pre-published, provided the following conditions are met:

1) Upon submission, authors must acknowledge receipt of a pre-deposited preprint from the server and provide any associated access numbers or DOIs;

2) Authors should not deposit versions of a revised manuscript under the peer review process to a preprint server as it is under the consideration of the journal;

3) After publication, authors are responsible for updating the preprint with the DOI and a link to the final published version of the paper, and inform the editor.

 

As a reference, formal citation of preprints in the reference list is encouraged, if authors credit it appropriately.

 

   

• Disclaimer

The author(s) of each article published by Sin-Chn Scientific Press assumes full responsibility for its content. Publication of an article does not represent any statement or opinion of the editor or the publisher.

Editors, reviewers, and authors, who are involved in the process of each manuscript from submission to online publication, are aware of their responsibilities, and have a clear understanding of the publisher’s journal policies, and ensure that they will not have any violations.

The publisher disclaims any injury to anyone resulting from products, methods, ideas contained in the articles or advertisements.

   

• Data and Reproducibility

The publisher encourages authors to share and report meta-data, code, and materials for the transparency, replicability, and trust in scientific findings.

Data sharing

Authors are encouraged to submit meta-data with their manuscripts or to preserve the datasets on a certifiable disciplinary data repository, which ensures that editors and reviewers can access to the datasets. The links to publicly accessible datasets should be available, which are generated during the study. If the datasets are available publicly, authors should declare the data availability statement in the manuscript, which is quite valuable for further reproducibility. Exceptions exist if the datasets involve confidential data, when authors must explain it to the editor in a cover letter.

To prepare a data available statement:

      1) If the datasets are preserved in a data repository, persistent identifiers (e.g., DOIs) should be provided for access. Authors are recommended to follow the FAIR Data Principles, which suggest authors to choose a data repository with persistent identifiers, and to make research data “findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable”.

      2) Authors should provide any original data and secondary reuse data, which support the analysis and results of the article.

      3) Authors should explain the reason for not sharing the data if datasets involve privacy or confidential data referring to the discipline guidelines.

 

The journal editors and reviewers are responsible for the data reliability, and a data quality-reviewed process will be conducted; the journal will address concerns to unpublished datasets according to the guidelines of Unpublished data flowchart of COPE. If there are data errors, incomplete datasets, or data manipulation, journal editors will contact the corresponding author for responses to the concerns. Necessarily, the journal office may cooperate with authors’ institute to investigate the whole study. Supporting documentation is needed. If the authors’ responses do not give a satisfactory update to the dataset, or the issues are too severe, the authors should withdraw the data deposition from the repository, and the journal will reject the manuscript.

If a manuscript reuses published datasets whose scientific rigor is in doubt, the corresponding editor and implicated journal will be contacted. The journal office will address the concerns according to the guidelines of Published data flowchart of COPE. A correction may be posted, and the latest dataset version with its updated DOI is linked to.

 

Data citing

Proper references of data sources are mandatory. It includes the publication and new (meta)data shared alongside it. References of data citation should include the minimum identifier information, such as authors, dataset name, publication year, repository/publisher, and DOI. It guides readers to easily access the dataset.

 

Data repository

For the science continuity, authors are encouraged to preserve datasets permanently on a dataset repository. For students or researchers in universities, they could submit the (meta)data to their institutes’ repositories provided by the sponsor or the university. Scholars in special disciplines prefer to choose a discipline-specific data repository. Here are some examples.

          ICPSR

          GenBank

          OpenNeuro

 

If there is no mandatory repository in your discipline, scholars could submit datasets to a generalized dataset repository. Below are some examples of generalized repositories.

          Open Science Framework

          Dryad Digital Repository

          Figshare

          Harvard Dataverse

          Zenodo

          Science Data Bank

 

   

• AI or AI-assisted Tools

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are used in a variety of industries, and of course there is inevitably misuse. Sin-Chn Scientific Press only allows AI tools to be used sparingly in some parts of article writing, such as charting, reference insertion, formatting, and language modification. In these circumstances, details about the AI tools should be listed in a cover letter during the submission stage. Details that how to use the AI tools and the reason for using them should be included in the Materials and Methods section, while the product details in the Acknowledgments section, such as the name, version, and manufacturer. AI tools are not allowed to replace human intelligence, such as trial analyses, conclusions, discussions, and prospects. AI tools should not be listed as authors (referring to the authorship policy).

If AI tools are used in the manuscript, authors should declare it above the Reference, which should declare the name of AI tool or AI-assist, the reason for using it, the part of using in. For example, “During the preparation of the article, [name of AI tool or AI-assist] is used for the purposes, including xx. Authors have edited and reviewed all the content, and take responsibility of the publication.” If AI-assist work contributes in some parts, authors should acknowledge it in the Acknowledge section.

   

• Research Involving Humans and Animals

Humans

If the studies involved human subjects or tissue, a statement declaring that the research was conducted according to the ethical standards of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the principles in the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors should declare the approval of ethical committee on this work, with details of the approval, such as the ethical committee’s name and reference ID. If a study was granted exemption from ethics approval, the reason for the exemption also needs to be explained along with the name of the ethical committee. The Editorial Office will verify the information when necessary.

If the study publishes findings involving human subjects or tissue, a written informed consent statement is mandatory during the submission stage. The subject must be aware of all the potential influence after the work is published online. At all times, subjects have an inviolable right to privacy. Authors must make best efforts to hide identifiable information of the subject to eliminate unnecessary distress of the patient, such as the face, name, fingerprints, patient ID, hospital name, and eyes. Only when identifiable information is essential to the results and analyses of this study should the information be released upon the written consent and approval from the subjects for publication.

If subjects are vulnerable population, the written informed consent statement should be obtained from their guardians. Any submission involving human trials that lacks the required informed consent statement may be rejected.

Animals

Animal research needs to comply with relevant international, national, and/or institutional guidelines, and studies reporting animal research should be conducted in accordance with rigorous ethical standards regarding to animal welfare. Authors should describe the considerations and measures taken in experiments in terms of animal welfare in Materials and Methods.

Authors could follow the following guidelines involving experiments on animals to achieve high ethical standards:

          Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures

          ARRIVE Guidelines

          Three Rs

          The Scientific Basis for Regulation of Animal Care and Use

          EU Regulations on Animal Research

          The ARRIVE Essential 10: Compliance Questionnaire

Authors should provide the experimental approval from the institute’s ethics committee, and it is encouraged to be declared in the Materials and Methods section. If an exemption from ethics approval was granted, authors should provide the ethics committee’s name and describe the reasons. Failure to declare the ethical approval may result in the submission being rejected.

 

   

• Special Issue Policy

Special issue projects are undertaken by the publisher on a timely basis, depending on the specifics of each journal. Special issue projects are designed to solicit manuscripts on a particular topic, with the aim of providing scholars in that subject area with the latest industry advances, and a collection of research findings.

Proposal

There are two ways to collect a proposal for a special issue.

The Editorial Office will extend invitations to guest editors, and only those experts with international academic standing and background in the subject area will be invited to become the guest editor leader. A guest editor leader has the responsibility to submit a summary with keywords, and a list of potential authors if possible. Guest editors are obliged to solicit submissions for this special issue.

Proposals initiated by guest editors are also welcome, who may be readers, authors, editors, and experts in the area. An editor who takes charge of the special issue program will review the proposal. Guest editors are responsible for the relevance of the special issue with the scope of the journal. Once accepted, the proposal will be posted online, and all the guest editors and in-house editors work together to call for papers in the world.

A proposal should cover the following information:

        1) A list of guest editors, including the title, name, email, affiliation, country, interest, and personal website.

        2) Accepted types of submissions.

        3) Topics and scopes of this special issue.

        4) Submission deadline.

 

Benefits of a special issue

There are many benefits for guest editors and authors in a special issue.

For guest editors:

         1) They will expand their reputation in the academic community.

         2) They have the fastest access to research advances in the field.

         3) Submissions are processed with priority and receive an APC discount.

For authors:

         1) Articles will be quickly discoverable and readable by the community.

         2) Topics of interest get more citations.

         3) The visibility and impact of the authors will be broadened.

 

Peer review process

Manuscripts submitted to a special issue will suffer the same peer review process and meet the same criteria with a regular submission. Authors, editors, and reviewers must comply with the journal’s editorial and ethical policies. The Editor-in-Chief takes charge of the whole editorial process. Guest editors could serve as an academic editor depending on the relevance of interest. A guest editor should not participate in any peer review process, where he/she acts as the authorship or potential conflict of interest exists. The Editor-in-Chief will make the final editorial decision.

A manuscript accepted by a special issue will be produced and published in an open-access model after payment of the APC. Readers and authors can access it freely.

   

• Section Collection Policy

A section collection focuses on collecting research findings from across disciplines on the same topic. Interdisciplinary exchanges are conducive to stimulating new ideas and promoting the progress of topic research. Guest editors usually come from a variety of disciplines and interests. They can carry out initial innovative cooperation and projects.

Policy and workflow

When running a section collection, the editorial and ethical policies of the journal must be followed. Submissions to a section collection will be processed under the same peer review process with a regular submission. Guest editors are welcome to serve as academic editors or reviewers depending on their interests and conflict of interests.

 

Any proposals or inquiries are welcome to reach out to the journal office.

   

• Article Processing Charges (APCs)

Journals published by Sin-Chn Scientific Press Pte. Ltd. adopt a golden open-access model, which means free access and reuse of all materials in an article provided they are properly credited. Referring to the open access and copyright and license policies, authors of accepted articles should pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to cover the costs incurred in the publication process, including but not limited to the peer-review process, copyediting, type setting, and editorial staff’s salary. APCs will usually be borne by the author’s institution or the funding.

Waiver Policy

Sin-Chn Scientific Press encourages and supports authors from low-income countries to disseminate their research achievements by offering APC waivers or discounts. Such applications can be sent to editorial_office@sin-chn.net. The publisher grants certain APC discounts to reviewers and editors, and discounts will be given on a case-by-case basis by the journal office.

When applying for waivers or discounts, authors should provide basic information, including: name and affiliation of all authors, article ID and title, journal title, and reason for applying a waiver or discount. Waivers or discounts may be granted on a case-by-case basis.

 

The publisher does not encourage the withdrawal of a manuscript, exceptions exist. If a withdrawal is initiated, US$ 200 will be paid addressing the cost of the peer-reviewed process. More details, please refer to the withdrawal policy.