Arid Zone Research Publication Ethics Statement
To strengthen the academic integrity of Arid Zone Research, standardize the writing, submission, review, and publication process of the articles, and prevent academic misconduct, this journal follows the recognized publication ethics standards, formulates the publication ethics and ethics standards of Arid Zone Research based on the relevant guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and combined with the actual situation of this journal:
I. Author Ethics
1. The manuscripts should comply with the relevant requirements in the "Guide to Authors" of this journal. The authors should confirm the sources of the data used in their research, properly cite and annotate the research results of other scholars mentioned in the text, ensure that the manuscripts are original works, and do not contain academic misconduct such as plagiarism, data fabrication, etc., do not contain confidential information, and do not involve multiple submissions, duplicate publications, etc.
2. Author Standards: All authors should meet the journal's requirements for authorship, namely, all authors must have substantially participated in the research or related work of the article, and should make substantial contributions in the following aspects: the concept and design of the research, acquisition of research data, analysis and interpretation of research data; writing the article or making critical revisions to the important contents of the article; or confirmation of the final submitted version.
3. Author Name Modification: The first author and corresponding author cannot be changed after submission. Other than the first author and corresponding author, authors cannot be added or deleted at will. Any additions or subtractions to the author's signature should be made before the manuscript is accepted. If the author's signature information needs to be modified, the corresponding author must explain the reason for the modification and send a confirmation letter of all authors' consent to the editorial department. When adding or deleting authors, the confirmation letter should also include the confirmation of the added or deleted authors.
4. Statement of Author Contributions: In order to prevent academic misconduct such as guest authorship, the authors must fill in and upload the "Author Contribution Statement" of this journal when submitting the manuscript to declare their personal contributions to the article.
5. Declaration of Conflict of Interest: When submitting the manuscript, the authors must fill in and upload the "Conflict of Interest Declaration" of this journal to disclose all potential conflicts of interest involving the research. There is a potential conflict of interest when an author's (or author's institution/employer's) financial/personal/subordinate relationship may affect the author's decisions, work or manuscripts. When certain products are mentioned in the manuscript, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest with competing products of these products.
6. Write the funding information related to the research in the manuscript, and do not write any other funding information irrelevant to the research.
II. Editorial Ethics
1. The editor should handle each manuscript fairly and justly. Based on the
publication scope, novelty, and academic nature of the manuscript, the editor
should make decisions on acceptance and rejection. The editor should timely
register, review, and edit manuscripts that have passed the initial review, and
timely publish manuscripts that have passed the final review.
2. Adopt the "double-blind" review system and preserve authentic review records. The editors have the obligation to keep confidential the information of the authors and reviewers, the authors' research results, and the intermediate materials of the manuscript's processing.
3. The editors are responsible for avoiding academic misconduct such as multiple submissions and duplicate publications. The editors should check for plagiarism and review the first-submitted papers and the papers to be published twice.
4. The editors should provide the authors with detailed revision suggestions or reasons for rejection as much as possible; objectively state the review situation of the manuscript, and not make personal evaluations or attacks on the reviewers or authors.
5. In the editing and publication process, the editors should focus on the publication standards and respect the authors' viewpoints and writing styles. For critical revisions such as academic viewpoints, the consent of the authors should be obtained.
III. Reviewer Ethics
1. Reviewers should adhere to the principle of safeguarding academic integrity and respecting academic freedom, and make honest, objective, and fair evaluations of the manuscripts; they should not have any prejudice or discrimination against the author's country, institution, race, religion, political beliefs, gender, etc., and should not disclose the author's research content.
2. When there is a conflict of interest between the reviewer and the author (such as family relationship, teacher-student relationship, alumnus relationship, colleague relationship, competitive relationship), in order to ensure the fairness of the review, the reviewer should consult the editorial department in a timely manner to obtain further advice.
3. When reviewers find that the research conducted by the author is similar to their own, the review comments should not contain unsubstantiated or malicious criticism and unfair content, and should refrain from making unfounded accusations.
4. Reviewers should review the manuscripts in a timely manner as agreed. If they cannot return the reviews on time, they should inform the editorial department in a timely manner and withdraw from the review. They can recommend reviewers; reviewers shall not arbitrarily entrust their students, colleagues, etc. to review on their behalf without the consent of the editorial department.
5. When reviewers encounter manuscripts that they have reviewed before, they are obliged to inform the editorial department and fill in the review comments according to the journal's acceptance standards.
IV. Prohibition of Academic Misconduct
1. Arid Zone Research only accepts original articles that have not been
submitted to other journals or published. Plagiarism, data fabrication,
multiple submissions, duplicate publications, and other academic misconduct are
strictly prohibited!
2. This journal will use the "Academic Misconduct Literature Detection System (AMLC)" provided by CNKI to check the manuscripts for plagiarism during the initial review and before publication.
3. Manuscripts detected with academic misconduct at any stage will be rejected by this journal; if academic misconduct is found in manuscripts after publication, this journal will retract the manuscripts, notify the author's unit and other relevant journals, and pursue the author's responsibility in accordance with relevant regulations and the "Copyright Transfer Agreement" signed by the author; for serious cases (such as intentional multiple submissions), this journal will no longer accept submissions from the author. In addition, authors of submissions found to have engaged in academic misconduct will be included in this journal's "Academic Misconduct Author List", and the editorial department of this journal will focus on reviewing or restricting the publication of the academic achievements of the authors in the list.
V. Appeals, Retractions, and Corrections
1. Appeals: If the author disagrees with the review comments or review results, they can submit a written statement to the editorial department (sent to the journal's email address: azr@ms.xjb.ac.cn), providing detailed explanations and clarifications for each review comment. After receiving the appeal, the editorial department will investigate and process it as soon as possible and feedback the appeal result to the author.
2. Retractions: If academic misconduct is found in manuscripts that have been accepted and adopted, this journal has the right to retract the manuscripts and notify the author's unit and relevant journals; if a published paper is confirmed to have plagiarized the research results of others, falsified data, published repeatedly, or leaked secrets, the editorial department should retract the paper, including issuing a retraction statement, notifying the author and their unit, requesting relevant databases to delete the online version, and terminating the dissemination of the paper to minimize the harmful effects of misleading publications; in addition, if a paper that has been accepted or published is found to contain serious scientific errors that make the results and conclusions of the article unreliable, this journal will retract the paper and issue a retraction statement for the published paper and request the databases to delete the paper.
3. Corrections: If part of the content of the journal is proven to be scientifically incorrect but will not have a significant impact on the results and conclusions of the article (especially due to honest mistakes), the author list is incorrect (i.e., qualified authors are ignored or included who do not meet the criteria of authorship), the editorial department should consider publishing corrections.