Computer Systems Science and Engineering
ISSN: 0267-6192 (Print)
Cover Letter
Templates
General Format of Articles
Acknowledgement & Declarations
Chemical Compounds
Mandatory Data Deposition and Suggested Repositories
Suggesting Reviewers
English Editing Service
Authorship and Contribution
Publication Ethics
Editors and Journal Staff as Authors
Conflicts of Interest
Copyright and Licensing
Corrections and Retractions
Appeals and Complaints
Authors’ Guideline
Prior to submitting your manuscript, please ensure that it has been prepared according to the template and the guideline below.
Template in MS Word: Sample.doc.
Article Types
The journal publishes Research Articles, Reviews and Editorials. All papers must be written in English and must follow a clear concise style. The language editors may have to check the language and grammar of your submitted manuscript and make editorial changes if deemed necessary.
Research Articles
A Research article is a detailed technical report of an original study that is likely to impact its field. It is a primary report where authors collect and analyze data and draw conclusions from the results leading to an original study in the literature. Research articles incorporate a comprehensive list of elements i.e., Title, Keywords, Authors and Affiliations, Abstract, a substantive Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion. There is no specific word count limitation; however, manuscripts must be as concise as possible.
Review Articles
A Review article is a paper based on other published research. It is a secondary source. It does not report original research but rather critically evaluate previously published material. Typically, a review article analyzes or synthesizes existing literature on a subject with the aim of expanding on its current understanding or sums up the already existing work to relate it to its present status and suggest new research directions. Structured reviews and meta-analyses should use the same structure as research articles and adhere to the PRISMA guidelines, and authors should also include a completed PRISMA checklist and flow diagram as supporting files.
Editorials
Editorials are short personal perspectives about topics relevant to the journal’s aims and gateways. Editorials are not formally Peer-reviewed and must not include new research and data. They are evaluated by the editorial team in-house, if necessary in consultation with advisory board members.
All manuscripts must be submitted via the online system. Manuscripts submitted for publication must be prepared according to the guideline given below.
This guideline is intended to assist authors in preparing their manuscripts. To prevent avoidable delays in the review and typesetting process, Computer Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) asks and encourages authors to read carefully the guidelines before writing the manuscript.
CSSE publishes review and research articles among others types. All papers must be written in English, with a clear and concise style. The language editors will check the language and grammar of any submitted manuscript, and will make editorial changes when deemed necessary.
1 Cover Letter
A submitted manuscript must be accompanied by a cover letter. The cover letter must clearly state that the manuscript is an original work on its own merit, that it has not been previously published in whole or in part, and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. It should also include statements, clearly indicating that all authors have read the final manuscript, have approved the submission to the journal, and have accepted full responsibilities pertaining to the manuscript’s delivery and contents. If there are any ethical, copyright, and/or disclosure issues that come with the manuscript, they should be revealed in the cover letter. In addition, authors need to declare that there is no conflict of interests, or disclose all the conflicts of interest regarding the submitted manuscript. The authors must state in the above-mentioned cover letter that they are committing to pay an article processing charge (APC).
2 Templates
Authors are required to use strictly the Microsoft Word template.
3 Manuscripts
3.1 Title and Author Information
The title of the paper should be in bold, Times New Romans, 14-point, at the top center of the page. Capitalize the first letter of each notional word of the title (title case format).
Insert two line breaks (two Returns) before the title.
Insert one line break (one Return) between title and authors.
Provide full names of all authors and their affiliations. The author line should be centered.
Authors should be numbered according to their affiliations. There should be no space between the author’s name and the number.
Use a comma “,” to separate each author, use “and” to separate the last two authors.
If there are only two authors in the author line, use “and” to separate them.
Authors should provide their full names in the author line.
Affiliations should include the authors’ Departments, Institutes, Cities and Countries.
Corresponding author should be marked with the superscript *.
Use two line breaks (two Returns) between authors and the Abstract.
3.2 Abstract
Abstract of a research paper is typically 200 to 400 words in length, and 150 to 300 words for a review paper.
Abstract should be one continuous (not structured) paragraph and should not include reference citations.
Abbreviations should be defined in full the first time they appear. They could be then used, quoted in-between parentheses.
Insert one line break (one Return) between the Abstract and the Keywords.
3.3 Keywords
Three keywords are the minimum required. Use a semi-colon “; ” between each keyword.
Only the first letter of the first keyword is capitalized, unless it is a proper name or required.
One line break (one Return) is inserted between the Keywords and the Main text.
4 Structure
A paper for publication should be divided into multiple sections: a Title, Full names of all the authors including their affiliations, a concise Abstract, a list of Keywords, Main text (including figures, equations, and tables), Acknowledgments, Funding Statement, Conflict of Interests, References, and Appendix. The suggested length of a manuscript is 10 pages. Each page in excess of 15 will be charged an extra fee.
An indentation with 4 spaces (0.20”) should be inserted at the beginning of each paragraph. There should be no line breaks between paragraphs belonging to the same section.
4.1 Text Layout
paper size is US Letter (8.5“ × 11” or 21.59 cm × 27.94 cm).
Margins—top, bottom, left, and right—should be set to 1.0” (2.54 cm).
The paper must be single column, single spaced (except for the headings as outlined below).
Font is Times New Roman.
Use 14 pt font size for the title.
Use 10 pt font size for author line, affiliation, abstract, keywords and references.
Use 11 pt font size for all main content except for special symbols and mathematical equations.
Use 4-character indentation on the first line of each new paragraph.
Use single line spacing, three pounds after segment.
Use 3 pt spacing after each paragraph.
All levels of headings should use 12 pt spacing before the paragraph, 3 pt after the paragraph.
Use British English or American English spellings throughout your manuscript, but not both.
Do not insert page numbers or line numbers.
4.2 Headings
In the Main body of the paper, three different levels of headings (sections, subsections, and sub-subsections) may be used.
Level one headings for sections should be in bold, flushed to the left. Level one heading should be numbered using Arabic numbers, such as 1, 2, ….
Level two headings for subsections should be in bold-italic, flushed to the left. Level two headings should be numbered after the level one heading. For example, the second level two heading under the third level one heading should be numbered as 3.2.
Level three headings should be in italic, flushed to the left. Similarly, the level three headings should be numbered after the level two headings, such as 3.2.1, 3.2.2, etc.
The initial letter of each notional word in all headings is capitalized.
The Abstract section should not be numbered. Subsequent sections should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numbers, starting from 1.
5 Equations and Mathematical Expressions
Equations and mathematical expressions must be inserted into the main text.
Two different types of styles can be used: In-Line style, and Display style.
Use either the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. Math equations should be editable text, and not images.
5.1 In-line style
In-line equations/expressions are embedded in paragraphs of the text. For example, E = mc2.
In-line equations/expressions should not be numbered.
In-line equations/expressions should use the same/similar size font as the main text.
5.2 Display style
Equations in display format are separated from the paragraphs of text.
Equations should be flushed to the left margin of the column.
Equations should be editable.
Display style equations should be numbered consecutively, using Arabic numbers in parentheses.
See Eq. (1) for an example. The number should be flushed all the way to the right margin.
E = mc2 (1)
6 Figures and Tables
Figures and tables should be inserted in the text of the manuscript.
6.1 Figures
Figures should have relevant legends and should not contain the same information already covered in the main text.
Figures (diagrams and pictures) should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numbers.
They should be placed in the text soon after the point where they are referenced.
Figures must be submitted in digital format, with resolution higher than 300 dpi.
6.1.1 Figure Format
Figures should be centered and should have a figure caption placed underneath.
Captions should be centered with the following format “Figure 1. The text caption …”, where the number of the figure follows the key word Figure, and the text caption comes after.
The size of the figure is measured in centimeters and inches. Please adjust your figures to a size within 17 cm (6.70 in) in width and 20 cm (7.87 in) in height.
Figures should be in the original scale, with no stretch or distortion.
6.1.2 Figure Labels and Captions
Figure labels must sharp, legible and sized in proportion to the image.
Label size should be no smaller than 8-point and no larger than the font size of the main text.
Labels must be saved in a standard font (Arial, Helvetica or Symbol font) and should be consistent for all the figures.
All labels should be in black, should not overlap, be faded, broken or distorted.
A space must be inserted before the measurement units.
Only the first letter of each sentence must be capitalized, NOT each word,.
One-line Caption should be centered in the column, with the following format “Figure 1: The text caption …”, that is, the number of the figure follows the keyword Figure, and next to it, the text caption. For one example, see Fig. 1 below.
In referencing a Figure, please use abbreviation “Fig.” followed by the number, e.g., Fig. 1.
A text caption exceeding one line should use the Justify alignment.
Figure 1: Some functions of x
6.2 Tables
Tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numbers.
Tables should be placed in the text soon after where they are referenced.
Tables should be centered and should have a caption placed above them.
Captions should be centered with the format “Table 1. The text …”. For example, see Table 1.
In the text, you should reference a table as such: For example, see Table 1.
Table notes should be aligned with the left table frame.
For table titles, use Times New Roman, with a font size no larger than 11 pt.
Table 1: Table caption
1 | 2 | 3 |
11 | 12 | 13 |
21 | 22 | 23 |
7 Citations
Please cite references in the main text, by number inside brackets, e.g., [1], [2], [3], ….
If the cited reference contains more than 2 consecutive references, the format should be: please see the example, [1–3], [4–6].
No citation to the page number should be used.
Do not use “Ref.” or “reference” except at the beginning of a sentence: “Reference [3] shows ...” .
Please do not use automatic endnotes in Word, rather, type the reference list at the end of the paper using the “References” style.
8 Acknowledgement & Declarations
Acknowledgement, Funding statement, Conflicts of Interest and References heading should be left justified, bold, not numbered, and with the first letter capitalized. Text below those headings continues as normal. Authors should thank those who contributed to the article but cannot list themselves.
8.1 Declarations
Submitted manuscripts should, where appropriate, contain the following parts right before the list of references
8.2 Acknowledgement: Acknowledgement and reference heading should be left justified, bold, with the first letter capitalized but have no numbers. Text below continues as normal.
8.3 Funding Statement: Authors should describe sources of funding that have supported the work, including specific grant numbers, initials of authors who received the grant, and the URLs to sponsors’ websites. If there is no funding support, please write “The author(s) received no specific funding for this study”.
8.4 Author Contributions: The Author Contributions statement is mandatory. It should represent all the authors and is to be included upon submission. It can be up to several sentences long and should briefly describe the tasks of individual authors. All listed authors should have substantially contributed to the manuscript and have approved the final submitted version, which should include a description of each author’s specific work and contribution.
We suggest the following format for the contribution statement:
The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: X. Author, Y. Author; data collection: Y. Author; analysis and interpretation of results: X. Author, Y. Author. Z. Author; draft manuscript preparation: Y. Author. Z. Author. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
8.5 Availability of Data and Materials: This statement should make clear how readers can access the data used in the study and explain why any unavailable data cannot be released.
8.6 Ethics Approval (Non-Biological or Non-Medical manuscripts do not need to write this part): Guidelines for ethical approval statements may differ based on the journal, a standard ethical approval statement will usually include:
1. Whether or not the study included human or animal subjects. In all cases, the ethical approval status of the work should be stated in the ethical approval statement.
2. The committee which approved the study.
3. The compliance documents. What policies, declarations, acts, etc.
4. Persistent identifier: reference or approval number. Include the registration ID/reference number if applicable.
8.7 Conflicts of Interest: Authors must declare all conflicts of interest. If there is no conflicts of interest, it should also be declared as in ex, please write “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.
8.8 Supplementary Materials: Supplementary Materials should be uploaded separately on submission. The supplementary files will also be available to the referees as part of the peer-review process. Any file format is acceptable; however, we recommend that common, non-proprietary formats are used where possible.
Supplementary materials should be clean, without tracked changes, highlights, comments or line numbers.
Supplementary figures must be clear and readable, and we recommend a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, figure legends must be clear and accurate.
Supplementary materials must be mentioned in the main text. The citation format of Supplementary Figure, Table, Equation, etc., should start with a prefix S (i.e., Fig. S1, Eq. (S2), Table S1, etc.).
9 References
All references should be in font size 10 and listed at the end of the paper.
Reference numbers are flushed all the way to left margin and form a column of their own.
The reference numbers are enclosed in square brackets.
In all references, the given name of the authors or editors are abbreviated with their initials only, and precede their family names.
Journal and book titles should be in italic, the first letter of the notional word should be capitalized.
The full name of the journal cited in references should be used, followed by a comma, then the volume, issue, page numbers, and the published year. Please refer to the examples below.
Note that the format for journals, books and other publications are different.
The first letter of the titles of articles, reports, dissertations and conferences should be capitalized.
References at the end should be arranged in the order in which they appear in the text.
Based on our particular style, the first five authors will be listed as they appear. When more than five authors are listed, keep the first five authors and add “et al.”.
Reference examples (References at the end should be arranged in the order in which they appear in the text):
Basic format for books:
J. K. Author, “Title of chapter in the book,” in Title of His Published Book, Edition. City, Country: Publisher, Chapter No., Section No., Page No., Year.
Example format for books:
[1] S. N. Atluri and S. Shen, “Global weak forms, weighted residuals, finite elements, boundary elements & local weak forms,” in The Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) Method, 1st ed., vol. 1. Henderson, NV, USA: Tech Science Press, pp. 15–64, 2004.
Basic format for books (Online):
J. K. Author, “Title of chapter in the book,” in Title of His Published Book, Edition. City, Country: Publisher, Chapter No., Section No., Page No., Year. [Online]. Available: http://www.web.com
Example format for books (Online):
[2] S. N. Atluri, The Meshless Method (MLPG) for Domain & BIE Discretization. Henderson, NV, USA: Tech Science Press, 2004. [Online]. Available: https://www.techscience.com/books/mlpg_atluri.html
Basic format for theses (M.S.) and dissertations (Ph.D.):
a) J. K. Author, “Title of thesis,” M.S. thesis, Department, University, City, State, Country, year.
b) J. K. Author, “Title of dissertation,” Ph.D. dissertation, Department, University, City, State, Country, year.
Example format for theses (M.S.) and dissertations (Ph.D.):
[3] H. Darius, “Savant syndrome-theories and empirical findings,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Turku, Finland, 2010.
Basic format for conference proceedings (published):
J. K. Author, “Title of paper,” in Name of Conference, City, State (if given), Country, Page no., Year.
Example format for conference proceedings (published):
[4] E. Naufal and J. R. Tom, “Wavelength-switched passively coupled single-mode optical network,” in Proc. ICAIS, New York, NY, USA, pp. 621–632, 2019.
Basic format for journals:
J. K. Author, “Name of paper,” Journal title, Volume No., Issue No., Page No., Year.
Examples format for journals:
[5] H. S. Rhee, "Chosen-ciphertext attack secure public-key encryption with keyword search," Computers, Materials & Continua, vol. 73, no.1, pp. 69–85, 2022.
[6] H. Sun and R. Grishman, "Employing lexicalized dependency paths for active learning of relation extraction," Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing, vol. 34, no.3, pp. 1415–1423, 2022.
[7] A. Alsirhani, M. Ezz and A. M. Mostafa, "Advanced authentication mechanisms for identity and access management in cloud computing," Computer Systems Science and Engineering, vol. 43, no.3, pp. 967–984, 2022.
[8] M. Ragab, H. A. Abdushkour, A. F. Nahhas and W. H. Aljedaibi, "Deer hunting optimization with deep learning model for lung cancer classification," Computers, Materials & Continua, vol. 73, no.1, pp. 533–546, 2022.
[9] X. R. Zhang, W. F. Zhang, W. Sun, X. M. Sun and S. K. Jha, "A robust 3-D medical watermarking based on wavelet transform for data protection," Computer Systems Science & Engineering, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 1043–1056, 2022.
[10] Y. Y. Ghadi, I. Akhter, S. A. Alsuhibany, T. A. Shloul, A. Jalal et al., "Multiple events detection using context-intelligence features," Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing, vol. 34, no.3, pp. 1455–1471, 2022.
Basic format for computer programs and electronic documents (when available online):
Legislative body. Number of Congress, Session. (year, month day). Number of bill or resolution, Title. [Type of medium]. Available: site/path/file
NOTE: ISO recommends that capitalization follows the accepted practice for the language or script in which the information is given.
Examples:
[11] U.S. House. 102nd Congress, 1st Session. (1991, Jan. 11). H. Con. Res. 1, Sense of the Congress on Approval of Military Action. [Online]. Available: LEXIS Library: GENFED File: BILLS
10 Appendix
Authors that need to include an appendix section should place it after the References section. Multiple appendices should all have headings in the style used above. They will be ordered A, B, and C etc.
11 Units and Symbols
There should be a space between the unit and Arabic number: 5 mm NOT 5mm.
There should be a space before and after the operator: 3 cm × 5 cm NOT 3 cm × 5 cm.
Please use Arabic number and relevant unit in the manuscript: 5 kg NOT five kilograms or 5 kilograms or five kg.
Do not use hyphen/dash or any connector symbol between the value and its unit: 5 kg NOT 5–kg.
Please clarify all units during a calculation or a mathematical relationship: 3 cm × 5 cm NOT 3 × 5 cm, 123 g ± 2 g or (123 ± 2) g NOT 123 ± 2 g, 70%–85% NOT 70–85%.
Greek letters must be inserted using the correct Greek symbol (using Times, Helvetica or Symbol font), NOT written in full, i.e., alpha: α; beta: β, ß, (available in Times and Helvetica); and gamma: γ, etc.
12 Supplemental materials
Supplemental materials are materials that relate to a specific article, which authors supply for publication alongside their article. They should generally be additional parts to the article that are not likely to be included in the issue of print version, such as appendices, tables, and audio and video material that are impossible to produce within the article. However, the supplementary files will also be available to the referees as part of the peer-review process and are citable in the main text of the article with “suppl.” notation. There may also be other formats/mediums, such as certain podcasts and videos, where they are not directly attributable to a specific piece of research.
Supplemental materials to a published article in TSP may be published and downloaded online under a Creative Commons License. If the content of any supplemental materials is not original to the author, the author should check and be responsible for clearing (and paying, where necessary) all permissions prior to the publication or posting of any third-party content within the article supplemental material.
13 Chemical Compounds
Chemical and Chemical Nomenclature and Abbreviations
Authors should provide the exact structure of the chemical compound, and if there are appeared as new chemical compounds, authors should submit the small-molecule crystallographic data to the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and deposit relevant information to PubChem. The final version of the manuscript should contain the accession codes. When possible, authors should use systematic nomenclature to identify chemical compounds, and biomolecules using IUPAC is preferred. Standard chemical and chemical abbreviations should be used. Chemical structures should be included as high-resolution files according to Cell Press Figure Guidelines.
Combinatorial Compound Libraries
The authors should include standard characterization data for a diverse panel of library components when describing the preparation of combinatorial libraries in the manuscript.
Chemical Structures for Organic and Organometallic Compounds
Chemical structures for organic and organometallic compounds should be established through spectroscopic analysis. The authors should provide standard peak listings for both 1H NMR and proton-decoupled 13C NMR for all new compounds. Other NMR data, when appropriate, such as 31P NMR, 19F NMR, etc. should be reported. For the identification of functional groups, both UV and IR spectral data should be reported when appropriate. For crystalline materials, melting-point ranges should be included. For the analysis of chiral compounds, specific rotations should be reported. For known compounds, authors should provide detailed references.
Spectral Data
Detailed spectral data for new compounds should be provided in the Materials and methods section. The authors should explain how specific, unambiguous NMR assignments were made in the Materials and methods section.
Crystallographic Data for Small Molecules
For crystallographic data for small molecules, authors should provide a standard crystallographic information file (CIF) and a structural figure with probability ellipsoids. The authors should check the CIF using the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) checkCIF. For the structure, the structure factors must be included either in the main CIF or in a separate CIF. Crystallographic data for small molecules should be submitted to the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC), and the accession number must be referenced in the manuscript.
Biomolecular Materials
Manuscripts reporting new biomolecular structures should contain a table summarizing structural and refinement statistics. If suitable, high-field NMR or X-ray crystallography may also be used. For new biopolymeric materials (e.g., oligosaccharides, peptides, nucleic acids, etc.), if it is not possible for structural analysis by NMR spectroscopic methods. Authors must provide evidence of the identity based on sequence (when appropriate) and mass spectral characterization.
Biological Constructs
Authors should provide sequencing or functional data that validates the identity of their biological constructs (plasmids, fusion proteins, site-directed mutants) upon request.
Polymers
For new materials, as well as 1H NMR and 13C NMR, the mass spectral analysis should be used to support the identification of molecular weight. Ideally, high-resolution mass spectral (HRMS) data are preferred.
Nanomaterials
The authors must provide a detailed characterization of both individual objects and bulk composition.
14 Mandatory Data Deposition and Suggested Repositories
Before submission of the manuscript, the deposition of new sequence information to the community-endorsed, public repository is necessary. Accession numbers and other relevant, unique identifiers provided by the database should be included in the submitted manuscript.
DNA and RNA Sequences: Genbank, European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), DDBJ, Protein DataBank, UniProt
DNA Sequencing Data: GEO, ArrayExpress, NCBI Trace and Short-Read Archive, ENA's Sequence Read Archive
New microarray (Data must be MIAME compliant, as described at the MGED website specifying microarray standards): Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), ArrayExpress. Genetic polymorphisms: dbSNP, dbVAR
Linked genotype and phenotype data: dbGAP, European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA)
Protein sequences: UniProt (submission tool SPIN). Flow cytometry: FlowRepository
Chemical Compound Screening and Assay Data: PubChem
15 Suggesting Reviewers
Authors are welcome and encouraged to suggest reviewers when they submit their manuscripts by using the submission system. Authors should make sure they are totally independent and without conflicts of interest in any way. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer.
16 English Editor Service
Clear and concise language enables both the journal editors and reviewers to concentrate on the scientific content of your manuscript. In order to facilitate a proper peer review process and ensure that submissions are judged exclusively on academic merit, Tech Science Press strongly encourages authors to prepare the language of their manuscripts with the utmost care.
If you are an author whose native language is not English—or you have any concerns regarding the language quality of your manuscript—we recommend having your manuscript professionally edited by a qualified English-speaking researcher in your field prior to submission.
The following is TSP's collaborating language-editing company which offering discounted services to TSP's authors. To be noticed that the use of any language-editing services does not guarantee acceptance to any TSP Journal.
Charlesworth: https://cwauthors.com.cn?rcode=TSP51
Please use the provided link or the following Coupon Code to receive the special 10% off when you check out with Charlesworth: TSP51
TopEdit: https://techscience.topeditsci.com/
Please use the provided link to receive the special 20% off when you check out with TopEdit.
17.1 Authorship
Tech Science Press follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines regarding authorship and contributions. Listed authors should be those individuals who have met all four criteria of having made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, having been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, having final approval authority, and having agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work, their own and others, guaranteeing full accuracy and integrity, and appropriately investigating, resolving and documenting raised questions.
Final approval of all authors is required for the submitted version, as well as for any substantially modified version to which they have contributed.
Involvement in the securing of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of a research group does not in itself justify listing as an author. Individuals who perform any such activity, which falls outside the scope of authorship, should be acknowledged and may be individually or group-listed as contributors.
When the work has to be conducted by a large multi-author group, it is advised that the list of authors be decided before the work starts and confirmed before the manuscript submission. All members of that group listed as authors should have met all the above four criteria for authorship with final approval of the manuscript, and should be able to take public responsibility for the work with full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of all group authors. As such, they will be required as individuals to complete conflict-of-interest disclosure forms.
Submissions by any individual other than one of the listed authors will strictly not be considered. All authors will take responsibility for the content of the manuscript they submitted, and ensure they are familiar with the other authors individual contribution. It is strongly recommended to list and describe each author’s, as the journal’s editor might contact authors by email to verify authorship
17.2 Contributorship
TSP suggests to list all contributors, authors and non-authors, in the acknowledgement section at the end of the paper, with details on their respective activity. Contributors include individuals in the planning, conducting, editing and/or reporting the work, and all the patients or members of the public who have kindly assisted as research volunteers. This is a good place of acknowledging their support, list their names and recognize their individual roles. TSP strongly encourages authors to fully acknowledge contributions of patients and the public towards their research, if and where appropriate.
17.3 Alteration to Authorship
Authorship changes, as in adding and/or deleting any author of the list, requires the consent and signature of all authors, as in the case of edition changes,
Requests made for an authorship change must include an explanation for the change, include the signature of all authors, and be submitted by the corresponding author. Authorship issues found after publication may result in a correction. If and when the authors are unable to resolve among themselves an authorship-related dispute, TSP may raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its/their guidelines. Please note that if you have changed affiliation during the course of the research, your new affiliation could be acknowledged in a note. TSP does not normally take requests for changes to affiliations after the acceptance of manuscripts.
17.4 Authorship Contribution Statement
All listed authors should have substantially contributed to the manuscript and have approved the final submitted version, which should include a description of each author’s specific work and contributorship.
We suggest the following format for the contribution statement:
The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: X. Author, Y. Author; data collection: Y. Author; analysis and interpretation of results: X. Author, Y. Author. Z. Author; draft manuscript preparation: Y. Author. Z. Author. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
17.5 Authorship and the Use of AI or AI-Assisted Technologies
TSP follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) position statement when it comes to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technology in manuscript preparation. Tools such as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) do not meet authorship criteria and thus cannot be listed as authors on manuscripts.
In situations where AI or AI-assisted tools have been used in the preparation of a manuscript, this must be appropriately declared with sufficient details at submission via the cover letter. Furthermore, authors are required to be transparent about the use of these tools and disclose details of how the AI tool was used within the “Materials and Methods” section, in addition to providing the AI tool’ s product details within the “Acknowledgments” section.
Authors are fully responsible for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their manuscript and must ensure that this content complies with all of TSP’s Publication Ethics Policies.
18 Editors and Journal Staff as Authors
In the circumstances where Editors or editorial staff of the journal submit their own studies to the journal, they shall not be involved in the reviewing process, and the review process must be made transparently and rigorously. Submissions authored by editors or editorial staff of the journal will be handled by another editor who has least COIs with the authors to minimize the bias.
Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest (COIs, also referred to as “competing interests”) may indicate the potential to influence the validity or objectivity of research. Editors, authors, and reviewers may be involved into COIs, and CSSE considers it essential to identify and seek to mitigate them so as to ensure the integrity of its role in the dissemination and preservation of knowledge. Failure to declare competing interests may result in decline of a manuscript.
Authors must declare all potential conflicts of interest; if they have none to declare, they should state plainly, “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.
In order to limit COIs, all roles involved in the peer-review process must identify and declare any personal circumstances or associations that may be perceived as having such influence and acknowledge all funding sources for the work. However, COI statements relating to public funding sources, such as government agencies and charitable or academic institutions, need not be supplied.
To be specific, CSSE defines a COI as any relationship that may have an impact on the authors, reviewers, or editors of a manuscript during the peer review process, on the making of editorial decisions, or generally on any stage in the path toward publication.
Thus, COIs may include (but not limited to):
Financial COIs
Stock or share ownership
Patent applications
Research grants
Consultancies
Royalties
Non-financial COIs
Affiliation with the same institution;
Personal relationships, e.g., between thesis advisers and their students, friends, family members, etc.;
Academic relationships, e.g., among co-authors, collaborators, or competitors;
Government employees;
Members of CSSE editorial board of a TSP journal.
COIs are not considered permanent; such relationships that have ended more than two years prior to the submission of a manuscript need not be identified as sources of potential conflict.
Authors
TSP requires a declaration from all authors of a manuscript regarding any potential COIs that could be relevant to the integrity or reliability of the scientific and professional judgment presented therein, as well as that of otherwise unassociated studies in the same journal. If there is, in fact, no conflict of interest, the authors should state plainly, “The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study.”
Reviewers
Reviewers should declare any COIs when they are assigned a manuscript and disclose this information to the editor, who will then assess whether they should proceed with the review process.
Editors
The evaluation procedure (i.e., peer review and decisions regarding publication) must be free of biased editorial decisions. If an editor, guest editor, or associate editor believes that a personal, professional, or financial connection to an author may compromise the procedure, he or she must inform the journal’s editorial office of the fact.
19 Copyright and Licensing
TSP publishes all articles under an open-access license, which means that they remain accessible to all without charge and without technical or legal barriers and that they can be re-used with proper acknowledgment and citation. Financial support for open access publication is provided by the authors’ institutions or by research funding agencies, which pay a relatively low article processing charge (APC) once manuscripts that have been accepted. More specifically, TSP journals publish articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License. TSP is committed to open access publishing as a means to foster the exchange of research among scientists, especially across disciplines.
The copyright and other proprietary rights related to work published by a TSP journal are retained by the authors. If they reproduce any text, figures, tables, or illustrations from this work in their own future research, the authors must cite the original published version. They are further asked to inform the journal’s editorial office of any exceptional circumstances in this regard at the time of submission, for which exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the publisher.
Articles published in TSP journals are likely to contain material republished with permission under a more restrictive license. When this situation arises, it should be indicated; it is the responsibility of the authors to seek permission for reuse from the copyright holder.
20 Corrections & Retractions
TSP journals will issue corrections, and/or retraction statements, when deemed proper.
Corrections
CSSE aims to publish every article online in its final form. Upon receiving the proofs of their accepted manuscripts, authors will have an opportunity to check for errors and oversights. Occasionally, a mistake is pointed out in a published article, necessitating the issuance of a correction statement. A correction is a statement rectifying an error or an omission, Authors or readers may submit such a statement either through the journal’s online manuscript submission system (https://www.techscience.com/csse), or by sending an email, along with the submission ID, to the CSSE’s editorial office (csse@techscience.com). A correction notice, published and linked to the corresponding article, is freely accessible to all readers.
When making corrections to the original articles, the original article both in PDF and XML versions are corrected and bi-directionally linked to and from the published amendment notice that details the original error. Any changes made to the original articles affect data in figures, tables or text, the amendment notice will reproduce the original data. If it is not possible to correct the original article in both PDF and XML versions, the article will remain unchanged but will contain links that direct to and from the published correction notice.
Author’s Correction: An Author’s Correction may be published to correct an important error(s) made by the author that affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the authors or the journal. The Managing Editor of that manuscript will be responsible for handling the correction process.
Publisher’s Correction: A Publisher’s Correction may be published to correct an important error(s) made by the journal that affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the authors or of the journal.
Retractions
A retraction is a notice that a previously published paper should no longer be regarded as part of the published literature. The primary purpose of a retraction is to ensure the integrity and completeness of scholarly records by withdrawing any manuscript which is found to contain infringements of professional ethical codes, major errors, or where its main conclusion is seriously undermined as a result of new evidence coming to light.
Violations of professional ethical codes include multiple submissions without proper citations or permission, redundant publications, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, etc. Major errors cover any or all miscalculations or experimental errors, intentionally or due to honest mistakes.
The retraction will be referred to the Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors, and the Managing Editor who have handled the paper. Retracted articles will not be removed from the printed copies of the journal (e.g., from libraries) nor from the electronic archives. Their retracted status will be indicated as clearly as possible. Bibliographic information about the article will be retained to ensure the permanence and integrity of the published scientific record. When an article is retracted, in most of the cases, the original manuscript is corrected and is bi-directionally linked (to and from) the published retraction notice which details the original error. For the purpose of transparency, when corrections made to the original article affect any data, figures, tables or texts, the retraction notice will display the original data alongside the corrected version. When a correction is not possible, all existing versions of the article will remain unchanged but will contain the bi-directional links, to and from, the published retraction notice.
The notice of retraction is permanently linked to its corresponding retracted article and is freely available and accessible by all readers.
Articles may be retracted by their Author(s), by the Journal Editors, or by the Publisher, i.e., Tech Science Press. In all instances, the retraction should indicate the reason for the action as well as the entity behind the decision. A retraction made without the unanimous agreement of the authors is feasible and indicated as such.
Article Withdrawal
Article Withdrawal is only used for articles in press, which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, an articles may contain infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, and fraudulent use of data or the like. Articles that include errors or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors (such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like), may be “Withdrawn” by the article author or the journal editor.
Removal of Published Content
Under special circumstances, TSP reserves the right to remove an article, book or other content from TSP’s website and submission system. Such action may be taken when:
There are evidence indicating that the published content is defamatory, infringes on intellectual property rights, privacy rights, other legal rights, or is plainly unlawful;
A court or government order requires removal of such content;
The content, if acted upon, would pose an immediate and serious risks to health. Removal may be temporary or permanent. A statement will be published explaining the decision behind the removal.
Addressing Post-publication Issues
TSP is fully committed to maintaining the integrity and completeness of the scientific record and recognizes its importance to researchers and the academic community at large. As such, TSP will thoroughly investigate concerns that are directly raised with us by authors and/or readers. Authors are strongly encouraged to address any raised issues. In the course of our investigation, we may request original raw data, and consult with experts and other scholars in the field. Depending on the seriousness of the issues, the following outcomes may ensue:
A manuscript still under consideration may be rejected and returned to the author.
A published online article, depending on the nature and severity of the issues, may result in a correction notice or a retraction notice.
Issues deemed to be serious may prompt TSP to inform the authors’ institution and related affiliations.
Our actions are driven by our dedicated aim for transparent notification to our readers and unabated commitment to the integrity of the published record, and not by any motivation to sanction individuals or attribute responsibility to specific named individuals. We may refer readers to the institutional investigations’ reports if they are publicly available. While we are committed to addressing post-publications issues and correcting the record swiftly, investigations typically take some time to reach resolutions given the complexity of the discussions, the diligence in our process and the need to obtain original data and consult with experts. We will issue and regularly update relevant Editor’s Notes and/or Editor’s Expression of Concern as interim notifications to alert our readership of any of concerns with published material.
21 Appeals and Complaints
CSSE is open for further discussion after either a publication or a rejection of a manuscript.
Appeal against a Rejection
Authors may appeal a rejection, or request further discussions or post-publication revisions, by contacting the Journal’s Editorial department. When making such an appeal or request, Authors must provide a detailed justification for their request, with a description of the situation, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ and/or editor’s comments. The Journal’s Managing Editor will then forward the manuscript and the related information (including the identities of the referees) to the Editor in charge (either one of the Editors-in-Chief or, an Editorial Board Member without any conflict of interest (COI), who will render a final and irreversible decision. Appeals will only be considered from the originally submitting Authors. All information will be kept confidential.
As a general rule, an appeal to a Rejection Decision will only be considered if:
the authors can clearly and convincingly demonstrate that the final decision was based on an error made by a Referee or by the Editors during review
if important additional data can be provided
if a convincing case of bias in the process can be clearly demonstrated
Authors who wish to appeal an Editorial decision should submit a formal letter of Appeal to the Journal by contacting the journal editorial office (csse@techscience.com). Please include the manuscript number in the email subject line and on the appeal letter.
If an appeal is successful, the Authors will be sent instructions on how to proceed. If an appeal merits further consideration, the Editor may decide to submit the Authors' response and the revised paper for further peer review.
Complaints
Complaint about Scientific Content
Authors may contact the relevant Journal to file a complaint.
The Editor-in-Chief or the Handling Editor will consider the Authors’ argument and the Reviewers’ reports, and will decide whether:
The decision to reject should stand
Another independent opinion is required
The appeal should be considered
The complainant will be informed of the decision with an explanation when appropriate. Decisions on appeals are final and new submissions take priority over appeals.
Complaint about Processes
Authors may contact the Journal directly to raise a complaint concerning the process.
The Editor-in-Chief together with the Handling Editor will investigate the matter. The complainant will be given appropriate feedback. Feedback is provided to relevant stakeholders to improve processes and procedures.
Complaint about Publication Ethics
Authors may send an email to editorial@techscience.com concerning ethical issues or complaints.
The Editor-in-Chief or the Handling Editor will diligently follow the guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics in assessing the situation, and may resort to asking the Publisher via their in-house contact for advice on difficult or complicated cases. The Editor-in-Chief or the Handling Editor will decide on a course of action and will provide relevant feedbacks to the complainant. If the complainant remains dissatisfied with the handling of the complaint, he/she may then submit the complaint to the Committee on Publication Ethics.
22 Investigations and Sanctions
If Tech Science Press becomes aware of breaches of the publication ethics policies, the following sanctions may be applied across the Tech Science Press journals:
Rejection of the manuscript and any other manuscripts submitted by the author(s).
Not allowing submission for 1–3 years.
Prohibition from acting as an editor or reviewer.
Suspected breaches of our publication ethics policies, either before and after publication, as well as concerns about research ethics, should be reported to the ethics group of TSP and undergo a thorough investigation. During the investigation process, the underlying data, images, consult editors, and etc. may be requested to be provided by the authors for the help in an investigation.
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