1. Review Policy
Ship Engineering employs a double-blind peer review system with an acceptance rate of approximately 33%. The review process is as follows:
- Initial Review: The responsible editor conducts an initial review to check for plagiarism, prior publication, alignment of the article's content with the journal's scope, formatting compliance, and the article's innovativeness.
- Peer Review: Manuscripts that pass the initial review will be sent to at least 2 external experts for evaluation of the overall content quality, academic level, advancement, and scientific validity of the article.
- Secondary Review: The editorial director conducts a secondary review, further assessing the overall content quality, academic level, advancement, and scientific validity.
- Final Review: The editor-in-chief conducts the final review, making the acceptance decision based on the article's integrity, value, and academic significance.
- Manuscripts that pass the final review will undergo first proofreading by an editor, second proofreading by the responsible editor, and final proofreading by the deputy director of the editorial office.
- Supplement Issues and Special Issues: The review process for supplement issues and special issues follows the same procedure as the regular issues, including identical review and editorial processes, with the editor-in-chief making the final acceptance decision. The editor-in-chief is responsible for all content, including supplement issues and special issues. For supplement issues and special issues, authoritative experts in the field may be invited to serve as guest editors, overseeing theme proposal, manuscript solicitation, peer review organization, and addressing any publication issues under the editor-in-chief's supervision to ensure fairness in the review process.
2. Editorial Board Members/Editor Submissions
Submissions from the journal's editorial board members/editors must follow the same review process as other manuscripts. All review work for these submissions will be conducted independently of the involved editorial board member/editor and their research group. Additionally, editorial board members/editors must not participate in the review of manuscripts from authors with whom they have competitive, cooperative, or other conflicting interests.
3. Academic Misconduct Detection and Handling
To minimize academic misconduct, the editorial office uses the "Academic Misconduct Literature Check System (AMLC)" provided by China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) to check every submission for plagiarism. The maximum repetition rate should not exceed 20%. If any academic misconduct is detected, the manuscript will be rejected.
4. Appeals and Feedback
Authors who disagree with the review comments or results can submit a written appeal to the editorial office via email. Authors must provide detailed explanations and responses to each review comment. The editorial office will review the appeal promptly and provide feedback to the author.
If any authors or readers have comments or feedback on the journal's articles, review process, or publication ethics policy, they can send their comments to the journal's email. The editorial office will address these promptly and provide appropriate feedback. The journal welcomes supervision and feedback from readers and authors to create a positive academic atmosphere.
5. Corrections and Retractions
The journal generally does not correct or retract published articles unless necessary in the following cases:
- Corrections: If an article is found to contain unintentional scientific errors that do not significantly affect the results and conclusions, the editorial office will publish a correction notice as soon as possible, detailing the changes made to the original article and citing the source. The journal will release a corrected version of the article, specifying the changes made and the update date. The pre-correction version will also be archived and accessible to readers, but the latest version should be cited.
- Retractions: The journal will retract articles in the following cases: ① When an article contains serious scientific errors that render the results and conclusions unreliable. ② For articles involving plagiarism, data fabrication, or other academic misconduct, the editorial office will initiate an investigation and issue a statement informing readers of the potential issues. The investigation results will be disclosed. If academic misconduct is confirmed, the editorial office will retract the article and publish a retraction statement.