In order to improve the publication quality and strengthen the professionalism ethics in processes of paper writing, peer review, editing and publishing, Journal of Dalian Ocean University develops its own publication ethics with reference to the Ethics Standards released by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to fulfill publication requirements of the journal.

1. Publication ethics for authors

（1） The article is your original work and it is not currently under submission to, nor is under consideration by or has been accepted by any other journal or publication, nor has been previously assigned or licensed by you to any third party.

（2）Multiple submissions are strictly forbidden. The author(s) should declare the facts at the step of submission if a manuscript has been published in some form (including the form published by another language) or a paper being similar in research content has been published or translated.

（3）Plagiarism, forgery, tampering, improper signature, multiple submission of one paper, repeated publication, violation of research ethics, ghostwriting, breach of confidentiality agreement and other academic misconduct are strictly prohibited. Academic misconduct is defined in accordance with CY/T174-2019.

（4）All contents of a manuscript should be approved by each co-author before submission. It is not allowed to added or deleted author(s) at will, the first author and corresponding author are not allowed to be changed after submission.The signed authors are essentially co-authors who have made important contributions to the writing of the paper. In principle, the authors should be ranked according to their contributions to the paper. After acceptance, a copyright transfer agreement signed by all authors should be submitted. The order of signatures must be the same as that of authors.

（5）The authors of the paper should voluntarily transfer to the editorial office all the rights they have to reproduce and disseminate the whole of the paper and the attached figures, tables, abstracts or other parts that can be extracted from the paper  (including but not limited to right of performance, right of adaptation, right of compilation, right of translation, right of reproduction, right of information network transmission, right of distribution and other rights) around the world.

（6）For the transfer rights mentioned in the preceding clause, the authors of the paper should no longer permit others to use them in any form, but the authors themself may quote (or translate) part of the content of the paper in his subsequent works or compile it in their non-journal anthology.

（7）If any errors are found in the paper, all authors have the right to point out them and provide the corrections. If intolerable errors are found in this paper, the authors have to apply for retraction.

（8）The authors should provide an accurate list of references and place them in order of citation in the article.

（9）The author’s unit should be related to the research content of the paper, otherwise, the author should explain his specific contribution, or the author’s unit should issue a certificate to prove that the author engaged in this research is authentic.

（10）Authors should ensure the institutes or persons that provided founding or assistance for the work were listed in the manuscript. Any funding information that is not related to the study is not allowed to list in the manuscript.

（11）The author(s) should cite the research of others objectively and impartially. All cited references in a manuscript should have explicit marks of citation source.

（12）The author(s) should respect the review or revision comments by peer reviewers or editors. The author(s) can appeal to the editorial office if there is any objection.

（13）In order to ensure the welfare of experimental animals, ethical review of animal experiments need to be carried out. The author should report the source, breed, sex, age and feeding situation of the animals in the paper, and explain whether the research conforms to the regulations of the unit and the state on the management and use of experimental animals.

（14） You have been authorized by all co-authors to sign copyright transfer agreement as agent on their behalf, and to agree on their behalf the order of names in the publication of the article if the article was prepared jointly with other authors. All author(s) agree that the editorial office of the Journal of Dalian Ocean University pay off the author’s remuneration in RMB according to the payment standard of the editorial office.

2. Publication ethics for peer reviewers

（1）Reviewers should provide accurate and true personal and professional information to the editorial department, and avoid providing false information.

（2）The reviewer can not transfer the paper to others (colleagues, students, etc.) for review without the permission of the editorial department.

（3）The reviewers are not allowed to discuss the content of the paper with the author in private without the permission of the editorial department.

（4）Peer reviewers make an overall evaluation on the innovation, scientificity, and practicability of a manuscript, and provide special comments or detailed suggestions for problem modification. An overall evaluation is a major base for editorial decision, and the special comments are beneficial to the improvement in paper quality.

（5）Peer reviewers should review manuscript and fill review sheet in time, then submit a peer review to the editorial office on time. If a peer review could not be completed in the given period, a reviewer should explain or return a manuscript to the editorial office in time.

（6）The reviewer can only make a reasonable evaluation of the academic quality of the manuscript. There should be no discrimination or prejudice against the author's organization, region, qualification, race, religion, political belief, gender, etc., and no discrimination, insulting or offensive words should be used.

（7）Peer reviewers should abide by the review principle of the confidentiality to assigned review work, including the cases that do not transfer to or discuss with the other person(s) some content of or a full text, not use or publish partial data, views, or conclusions existed in a reviewed manuscript. Any form of use mentioned the above should be in a precondition that have obtained author’s agreement.

（8）A peer reviewer should not accept an invitation nor review a manuscript that has the conflict of interest with authors, or author’s institution.

（9）If the reviewer finds that the research direction of this paper is the same or similar to his own, he shall not take advantage of the reviewer to distort, belittle or suppress the author's paper for personal gain.

（10）Reviewers can only suggest the addition of references related to the research content of the paper, and should not suggest the citing of their own or related articles for the purpose of increasing the number of citations or exposure.

（11）Reviewer who suspect plagiarism, tampering, forgery, repeated publication and other academic misconduct in the process of review should inform the editorial department in time and provide relevant information.

（12）After submitting the review comments, the review experts should contact the editor in time if they obtain information that can influence the initial opinion. After the publication of the paper, the reviewers should inform the editorial department timely if they discover any problems or potential conflicts of interest which was not found in the process of review.

3. Publication ethics for editors

（1）Editors are responsible for the whole process, including manuscript registration, peer review contact, and publication on time. Editors have the obligation to save and keep confidential the relevant records and documents related to manuscripts.

（2）Editors should respect author’s research work and peer reviewer’s comments. In addition, an editor should not disclose any relevant information of the manuscript to other persons except providing some required information to the reviewers and the members of  the editorial board.

（3）Editors should abide by the principle of fairness in manuscript selection, accept or reject a manuscript on the basis of the originality, importance, and clarity as well as the consistency with journal objective and scope. Any commercial purpose or exchange of interests beyond academic ethics have to be forbidden.

（4）In order to ensure the fairness and justice of the review process, editors should not interfere in the review process of the reviewers for the sake of profit.

（5）When selecting reviewers, editors should check the authenticity of their information and consider whether there is a conflict of interest with the authors. Some authors request to avoid some experts, and editors should respect such cases

（6）Editors should respect the author's viewpoint and style, and seek the author's consent for any modification involving academic viewpoint.

（7）Editors have the responsibility to remind authors of copyright problems that may arise when they change attribution, attribution, and authorship order.

（8）Editors have the responsibility to investigate any academic misconduct, avoiding multiple submissions and repeated publication. Editors could handle the related appeals timely and efficiently when any form of misconduct occurs in a submitted manuscript or published paper. Editors would release correction, clarification, retraction, or apologizes in time. In addition, editors have the supervising accountability to authors and peer reviewers with academic misconducts.

（9）In view of encouraging diverse academic contentions, editors are obligation to allow possible counterargument raised by the authors against peer reviewer’s comments, and coordinate the response.

（10）In the process of publishing, editors should abide by the relevant publishing standards and attach great importance to editorial quality.

（11）Editors should ensure the objectivity and impartiality of the the process of editing and publishing, and avoid handling a manuscript that have the potential conflict of interest with authors or author’s institution.

4. Article correction and retraction

（1）Correction

The journal corrects some contents of officially published papers (paper version, electronic version and online version) and publishes statements, including the following two situations.

●There are some errors in parts of the paper, especially those which are not subjective and intentional.

●The author’s byline is incorrect and needs to be corrected

（2）Retraction

Retraction is a routine error correction procedure for a journal to cancel the right of publication of a paper that has been officially published (paper version, electronic version, Internet version). If there is clear evidence that any of the following cases exist in the paper, academic misconduct in the published paper, the paper not authorized or published repeatedly, the journal will implement the retraction procedure for the paper, and will issue retraction notices for the following situations.

●The paper is written or submitted by a third party, and the content of the paper is modified.

●There are data forgery and tampering in the paper, which makes the results reported in the paper not credible.

●There are academic plagiarism and plagiarism problems in the thesis. Including text plagiarism, chart plagiarism, or point of view plagiarism, paragraph plagiarism, plagiarism and so on.

●The paper was published repeatedly and submitted many times.

●The author provides false review expert information, or forges expert recommendation opinions.

●In the process of experimental design, implementation and analysis, the results reported in the paper are not credible due to the author's non-subjective and intentional errors.

●There are violations of relevant laws and regulations in the paper

5. Peer-review process

（1）After manuscript submission, the executive editor makes an initial evaluation of the paper to check whether the manuscript meets the requirements of the journal (reject or worthy of consideration).

（2）Two or more experts are invited to peer review the manuscript passed the initial evaluation.

（3）The peer review experts are responsible for the scientific evaluation of the manuscripts and recommendation suggestions for further processing of the manuscript (reject or revise).

（4）The editorial office makes a comprehensive evaluation of the paper based on peer review recommendations and decide whether to reject it or to re-evaluation.

（5）The manuscript approved by the deputy editor is sent to the editor-in-chief and a final decision will be made after the final review of the editor-in-chief.