Journal of Systems Science and Information (JSSI) advocates and adheres to the highest standards for accurate and ethical publication of science.

1. Authorship and Conflict of Interest

Authorship

To be included as an "author", a researcher must meet the criteria for authorship laid out in the definition of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which states that authorship should be based on whether an individual:

(1) Provided substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.

(2) Participated in drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.

(4) Provided agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

JSSI does not permit ghost, guest, or honorary authorship. “Ghost authorship” refers to any context where an individual has made author-level contributions to the paper but is not included in the author list. “Guest or honorary authorship” refers to any context when someone who has not met all criteria of authorship is listed as an author. Individuals who have participated in generation of the research paper but who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section of a paper alongside a brief indication of the nature of their contribution.

JSSI has a primary responsibility to its readers and to the public to provide in its pages clear and unbiased scientific results and analyses. We think that our readers should be informed of additional relationships of our authors that could pose a conflict of interest. Thus, for readers to evaluate the data and opinions presented in JSSI, they must be informed of financial and other interests of our authors that may be at odds with unbiased presentation of data or analysis.

Therefore, JSSI believes that manuscripts should be accompanied by clear disclosures from all authors of their affiliations, funding sources, or financial holdings that might raise questions about possible sources of bias.

Prior to publication each author listed on the manuscript must complete a copy of the Authorship and Conflict of Interest Form (located in the Information for Authors). This form asks authors to specify the nature and level of their contribution to the article, their understanding regarding the obligation to share data and materials, and any affiliations, funding sources or financial holdings that might raise questions about possible sources of bias.

2. Plagiarism and Duplicate Publication

Plagiarism

Authors should appropriately cite all quotations and not heavily lean upon large swaths of content from other publications, including your own publications. If there is significant overlap with existing sources (not including the submission’s preprint posting), the editorial office will evaluate the overlap and contact the authors for clarification or editing if needed. Significant, verbatim overlap with published sources indicating clear plagiarism will result in immediate rejection.

Use of third-party materials (image permissions)

Papers may occasionally include images or figures created by a third-party (i.e., a non-author). Express permission must be received from the copyright holder prior to publication. The copyright holder, who could be a publisher, corporation, or individual, must complete the Image Permission form. Permission is only needed if the copyright holder is not an author on the paper. The form can be found in the Information for Authors.

3. Preprints and Prior Publication

JSSI will not consider any paper or component of a paper that has been published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere in any language. Distribution on the internet and conference proceedings may be considered prior publication and may compromise the originality of the paper, although we will accept submissions of papers first made available on not-for-profit preprint servers, such as ArXiv and bioRxiv. Please contact the editorial office with questions regarding this policy or allowable postings. In addition, copies of papers submitted to other journals by any of the authors that relate to a research article submitted to JSSI must be included with the submission.

4. Ethical Experimental Design

Use of Animals

For all animal experimentation described in the manuscript, JSSI requires that authors state in the Methods section their adherence to the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals or the equivalent. Species, strain, sex, and age of laboratory animals should be provided in the main text or Supplementary Materials.

For genetically modified animals and to avoid confounding effects of inbred strain background, littermate controls should generally be used, although exceptions may be allowed. Justification for other control animals should be included. Authors should fully describe the source of their animals and number of times backcrosses were performed.

Studies with Human Subjects

Informed consent must be obtained for studies on humans after the nature and possible consequences of the studies are explained. A statement that informed consent was obtained must also appear in the manuscript. All research on humans must have approval from the institutional IRB (Institutional Review Board) or an equivalent body. The editors reserve the right to request IRB documents associated with a particular paper. Gender and age of all subjects should be provided in the main text or Supplementary Materials.

5. Post-Publication Corrections and Comments

JSSI is committed to addressing and correcting errors in published papers through the following.

(1) Erratum: Errata are issued when errors are discovered that do not affect the core conclusions of a paper but are still needed to correct the record of publication.

(2) Editorial Expression of Concern: This is published when an institutional investigation of large-scale error or misconduct is under way regarding a published paper.

(3) Retractions: A paper may be retracted if misconduct or errors that significantly change the conclusion of the study are discovered.

Errata, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions are completed at the discretion of the editors. They are published online and linked to the related published article.

Authors or readers that discover an error in a published paper should contact the JSSI's editorial office.

Publication Academic Ethics and Malpractice Statement

1. Editorial Responsibility 

Confidentiality agreement: Submission involving confidential matters, the author takes on the liability. Requirement on avoiding certain peer reviewers can be brought forward in online submission, and editors at the time of submittal will consider as appropriate. Editors and editorial staff have  obligations to keep the information of peer reviewer and the manuscript of author strictly confidential.

Preliminary review of the manuscript: After the author registered in journal’s online submission system and upload the manuscript in accordance with the process, editors will send the author acknowledgement letter for receiving submission within two weeks. If the author has not received any notification from editors in 6 months, the manuscript can be handled by the author itself. And the author need to inform the editorial office. Please avoid duplicate manuscript submission.

Manuscript peer review: The manuscript will be reviewed by at least two parallel experts. On the premise the manuscript has no interest contradiction and conflict with editors, the decision will be made by at least two valid reviews, and the final result must to ensure objectivity and impartiality.

Article copyright: Author’s signed copyright agreement must be completed before manuscript publication.  Editors and editorial staff have the right to amend manuscripts and possesses the copyright of published manuscript.

Proofreading before printing: Page proofs will be sent to the corresponding author. The proofs must be corrected and returned within one week of receipt otherwise publication may be delayed. Alteration to proofs other than correction of typesetting errors may be charged to the authors.

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English you should consider: Asking a colleague who is a native English speaker to review your manuscript for clarity.

Academic ethics regulation: All members of the editorial board and the editorial staff are required to supervise the academic ethics of the journal, to ensure the manuscript is non-commercial and non-profit, the argument is true and reliable, the evidence is highly scientific and etc., to maintain the high-standard and strict-requirement academic ethics regulation.

Archiving: Editorial office is responsible for maintaining online access from journal website. Even the journal is no longer published, archives of all published articles would be provided.

2. Reviewer Responsibility

Objective standard of review: Comments and criticism shall not against author itself. Review’s evidence must be sufficient and argument must be clear. The review should be objective and impartial.

Manuscript confidentiality: Without authorization from the editor-in-chief, manuscript information shall not be disclosed or discussed with others to ensure the confidentiality of review result.

The efficiency of review: Reviewers shall maintain the high efficiency of review and submit reports in given time. If the reviewer considers itself not competent to review the manuscript or cannot provide the report in time, shall notify handling editor immediately.

Reference confirmation: Peer reviewers shall note the references that the manuscript should be cited and failed to, to ensure the correctness and originality of the argument. Any large number of similarity or overlap with other publications is found in the manuscript, reviewers shall promptly communicate with editors.

Avoid conflict or relationship with the manuscript: There shall be no conflicts or relationships between reviewers and manuscript’s research area; authors and his organization and funds projects, etc. Any competition or cooperation relationship, any kind of connections between author and his organization are found during reviewing, the editorial department shall be informed and the review process will be terminated. If above situations are hidden and are exposed by others, the review will be given a warning, or a lifetime ban from reviewing or public disclosure and other sanctions according to the circumstances.

3. Author Responsibility

Submission agreement: Author contributing to the Journal will be considered of voluntary compliance of all regulation of the manuscript. Author can appeal to editorial department for the disagreement in review results, but cannot obtain any personal information of peer reviewers in any approaches.

Academic standardization: Articles must be innovative; argument shall be clear, scientific and logical; word using accurately and concisely, reliable data; illustration with high clarity and readability; content is informative; to comply with national legal units of measurement, numbers, punctuation and other criteria.

Originality: Only articles never published before will be accepted. Following situations are strictly forbidden: duplicate manuscript submission; repeat submission (including submit in different category); plagiarism. Manuscript with any above situations will be reject, the author will be blacklisted and will inform his organization. Other relevant professional journals will be informed also. Any confidential matters involved in the manuscript will be author’s liability.

Reviewer recommendation: The corresponding author is invited to recommend no more than five reviewers for reference. Suggested reviewers cannot be in the same organization with any author of submission and the title of reviewer has to be associate professor or above. Suggested reviewers cannot be familiar with each other, and cannot have cooperative relationship.

Revising or withdrawing manuscript: Before publishing, author has the right to modify the final draft. Mistakes found by author during any periods should be informed to editor. After editor’s review, manuscript needs to be revised should be revised and sent back to editor in no longer than 2 months. If there is difficulty in returning the manuscript on time, the situation can be explained to editor. Without proper explanation, the manuscript will be withdrawn without returning in 6 months.

Copyright transfer agreement: Article’s copyright belongs to the author and the author takes full responsibility for his own writings. In order to guarantee authorship and intellectual property, all authors should sign on the "Copyright Transfer Agreement" according to article’s publishing order. Editor and editorial staff have the right to amend the text of submitted articles and possesses the copyright of published manuscript. After publishing, the author agreed to automatically transfer copyrights to the journal, including electronic publishing, multimedia publishing, web publishing and other rights in the form of publishing.

References: The author should list all the references and financial supports of the manuscript to avoid confliction.

Above commitments and measures are effective from the date of release. Newsroom editorial staff, all members of the editorial board, authors, reviewers, publishers and the public has the right to supervise the implementation of above commitments and measures.