Universe scientific Publishing

Editorial and Publishing Policies

1. Open Access Policy

Universe Scientific Publishing Pte. Ltd. (USP) provides immediate Gold Open Access to its contents, as USP believes that making research freely available to the public helps promote research results and in turn benefits the scholarly community as evidenced by the following:

· Open access brings more exposure to research

· Open access increases research impact

· Open access allows more people to participate in science

· Open access eliminates obstacles and facilitates research applications

All published contents are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY) or Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC), allowing authors more options for user licenses.

2. Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to journals of Universe Scientific Publishing undergo a stringent peer review process, which aims to uphold the high quality of papers published in USP journals and ensure truthful and accurate reporting of the research work.

· Upon submission, articles are reviewed by each journal’s Managing Editor, who checks for originality using Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate). Only original works complying with the editorial policy and procedural guidelines are passed to the Editor-in-Chief for initial review.

· The Editor-in-Chief (EIC) carefully evaluates each manuscript to determine if its topic and content are suitable for consideration.

· Qualified manuscripts are then assigned by the EIC to a senior editor according to his or her respective areas of expertise.

· The senior editor invites external reviewers who are suitably qualified to assess the paper.

· Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript’s originality, methodology, contribution to the literature, presentation of results and support for the conclusion, and appropriate referencing of previous relevant studies.

· Post-evaluation by the reviewers, the manuscript is sent to the EIC, who makes one of the following recommendations: Accept, Accept with Minor Revisions, Re-review after Major Revisions, or Reject.

· If the EIC proposes to accept with no changes required by the authors, the manuscript will be handed over to the production team.

· If the EIC proposes to accept with minor revisions, authors have up to 7 days to revise and resubmit the manuscript.

· If the EIC proposes to re-review after major revisions, authors have up to 14 days to edit and resubmit the manuscript.

· If the EIC proposes to reject, the manuscript will be rejected outright and the author will be notified of the decision.

Appeal

Authors of rejected submissions may make an appeal in writing to reviewer@usp-pl.com, in which specific reasons for the appeal and a detailed response to the reviewers’ suggestions are included.

Decisions made on appeals by the EIC are final and no further considerations will be made.

3.Authorship

Any person who made a significant contribution in the preparation of a submission should be listed. All authors share responsibility and accountability for the results of the published research, and those who participated in certain aspects should be listed or acknowledged as contributors to their study. Authors should reveal the identity of the people who help with the writing and the source of funding for such help. Authors appointed as the corresponding author(s) will handle all correspondence about the article and sign the publishing agreement on behalf of all other authors. Corresponding author(s) are responsible for ensuring that all the authors’ contact details are correct and that all authors agree on the order that their names will appear in the article. All authors also need to make sure that their affiliations are correct, as explained in more detail below.

Changes to Authorship

· Before submitting a manuscript, authors should carefully review the author list and the order.

· Changes to the names of authors on the list of authors, such as additions, deletions, etc., can only be made before the manuscript is approved for publication. The corresponding author shall give the editorial office a formal confirmation certificate of consent to the change from all authors (current authors and those to be added or removed), which should include the reasons for the change.

· No changes in authorship are permitted without the consent of the editorial board.

4. Conflicts of Interest

USP believes that in order to make the best decision on a manuscript submission, a journal’s Editor-in-Chief should be aware of any conflicts of interest that may exist for the authors.

A conflict of interest occurs when a professional judgment about a primary interest (such as patient welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by secondary interests (such as financial gain or personal relationships). Conflicts of interest are not inherently unethical, but they should be recognized and publicly disclosed.

Examples of conflicts of interest include committee membership, consultancy, employment, expert demonstration funding (including pending), contract research, lectures or other educational activities, retained speakership, patents (including planned, pending, and issued), provision of equipment or other items, royalties, stock/options/other forms of ownership, other expenses not covered by the terms of the declared conflicts of interest (COIs), and other expenses that (may) arise impact on personal or professional relationships.

If there are no conflicts of interest, the author(s) also need to declare it, for example: “The author(s) declare no conflicts of interest.”

Before an article can be considered and accepted for publication, we must receive a declaration of conflict of interest from all authors.

5. Publishing Ethics

USP follows the Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) Core Practice and Ethical Oversight Policies. USP makes all reasonable efforts to investigate publication misconduct, including fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. If misconduct is suspected, journal editors will act in accordance with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing as stipulated by the COPE, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

All submissions to USP journals are subject to rigorous review. The editors, authors, or readers can forward their concerns to the journal if they find out that the description in a published article may constitute academic fraud, research misconduct, or publication malpractice. The concerns or complaints on the possible allegations submitted to the journal will be dealt with promptly and appropriately according to the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart on complaints. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the Publisher at reviewer@usp-pl.com.

Research Involving Human Subjects

For research works involving human subjects as well as biological material, authors should provide a statement that the experiment was approved by the appropriate institutional ethics committee, along with the ethics committee’s name and approval ID, and certify that the research was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, including the amendment versions or comparable ethical standards. If authors cannot provide the aforementioned information, they must explain any doubt in detail in the manuscript so that readers/reviewers can eliminate moral or ethical doubts.

Generally, if a trial involving a biological material could not be certified to have been approved by an ethics committee, the manuscript may not be considered for the peer review process.

Statement of Informed Consent

Human subjects in any studies have the right to the protection of their privacy. Personal identifiers, such as face, fingerprint, name, and birth date, must be hidden as much as possible. If the study does require that some private information is unavoidable to be exposed, authors must obtain a written Informed Consent Statement and inform the subjects of the potential consequences of the publication. If the subject is a vulnerable person, authors must obtain a written Informed Consent Statement from the subject’s guardian or relatives-in-law.

Please refer to ICMJE Privacy and Confidentiality guidelines for more information about patient anonymity and privacy.

Research Involving Animal Subjects

Studies involving animals must comply with appropriate industry regulations and guidelines. Like research involving humans, studies involving animals should provide any details from the institutional ethics committee’s approval, including but not limited to the name of the ethics committee and the approval ID. Authors must explain or provide the statement of the exemption approval if the study was exempted from the ethics license. If lacking the details, authors should explain any possible doubts to reviewers and editors.

Recommended codes on research involving animals include but are not limited to:

· The Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures

· Animal Ethics’ Three Rs

· The Scientific Basis for Regulation of Animal Care and Use

· EU regulations on animal research

· ARRIVE guidelines

· The ARRIVE Essential 10: Compliance Questionnaire

6. Advertising Policy

USP will consider advertising opportunities as a means to provide value to our readers. Advertisements must comply with local policies without inducement or deception. All advertisements are subject to approval by the Publisher. For more inquiries, please send an email to reviewer@usp-pl.com.

7. Misconduct Policy

We treat all potential academic misconduct seriously. If our editor suspects that the content of a submission may constitute academic misconduct in research, publication, or professional conduct, we may discuss it with the USP Ethics Committee, while withholding key identifying information.

Plagiarism

USP does not approve any form of plagiarism used in submitted manuscripts, and plagiarized articles are not allowed in any publication by USP. Before submitting a manuscript, authors should ensure that they have written an original work. As a part of our commitment to protect the integrity of scholarly publications, we take the necessary steps in all aspects of publishing ethics. All manuscripts submitted to USP journals will be checked for plagiarism via Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) by our Managing Editor before being passed to the Editor-in-Chief. Overlapping and similar texts in the manuscripts submitted will be investigated promptly and may be considered as plagiarism. Any manuscripts found to be plagiarized will be rejected.

Fabrication and falsification

Any acts of fabricating or falsifying, including fabricating data, deceptively reporting research results, concealing conflicting data, deliberately concealing or distorting data, if found to exist at any stage during the evaluation of a manuscript, even though it may have been officially published, will result in direct rejection or retraction by the Publisher.

Duplicate submission

USP does not accept a duplicate submission. Papers must be original and have not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

8. Correction, Retraction, and Withdrawal, and Withdrawal

Correction

Some mistakes or omissions are inevitable and do not affect the findings and the scientific integrity of the paper. If authors detect any errors in the published article, please contact the journal editor as soon as possible. Under this consideration, the corresponding author will be responsible for sharing the details of the errors with the journal. A corrigendum will be linked to the article corrected under the approval and guidance of the editor.

On rare occasions, the Publisher may correct some minor errors made during the production of an article. If these cases occur, the journal will post an Erratum to correct the errors, and the Erratum will be linked to the article corrected.

Retraction

A published article may be retracted if its integrity is seriously compromised by errors in the conduct, analysis, and/or reporting of the research. If the research violates publication or research ethics, it may also result in the article being retracted. The original version of a retracted article will be marked as retracted. A retraction typically includes a declaration of the reason and initiating party. The PDF content of the article is still available to readers. All links related to the publication online will be pointed to the Retraction. Once a retraction decision is made, all the authors and their institutes will be notified.

Withdrawal

Authors may request a withdrawal of an article. But withdrawal of an article, especially one that has been processed to be under peer review or in progress before being published, is strongly discouraged and only used when there are academic misconducts, ethical violations in the research and publication, or an earlier/incorrect version of the article alleged during the publication process. In this case, a panel will organize an investigation in which the authors are required to cooperate. If the allegations are proven to be true, the internal record of this article will be marked for withdrawal, and the journal will retain a copy of the withdrawn work in the submission archive.

If the authors themselves decide to withdraw their paper (before the publication), they must write to the editors of the journal at reviewer@usp-pl.com, stating the reason(s) for withdrawal soundly and clearly. Once the withdrawal is approved, the submission will be removed from the production system but archived in the submission system. A notification email will be sent to all authors. The Publisher will track the authors’ requests and limit a maximum of three withdrawal requests across the journals in USP.

A USD200 fee is charged for the withdrawal of a paper, and it should be noted that the paid Article Processing Charge will not be refunded if a paper is withdrawn for academic misconduct and ethical violation.

9. Copyright and License

All articles published by USP are under the Open Access model, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY) or Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC). Under these licenses, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, and authors grant USP a license to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the article. Researchers could share and cite the work with the correct original source.

10. Privacy Policy

Personal information

USP values authors’ privacy. The personal information that USP collects and the ways in which USP uses the information are described in this privacy policy section. USP has the right to collect and utilize personal data required for the processing and publishing of submitted articles. Names, affiliations, and contact information, such as a mailing address, email address, phone number, and fax number, may be included in this data.

Activities that may involve the use of personal information include administering, personalizing, enabling access to services, processing manuscripts, publishing articles, communicating with authors, sending statements and invoices, collecting payments, and sending marketing communications.

Third-party links

Links to third-party publications and/or websites are provided for informational reasons only and it does not represent an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell any services or products of any type. USP is not responsible for the accuracy, legality, or content of the external site or subsequent links. Third parties are responsible for the content on their own websites. Authors are recommended to read and analyze the privacy and security policies of the site they are visiting. For responses to content-related questions, please contact the external site.

Contact USP

For any inquiries concerning USP’s privacy policy or how USP handles authors’ personal data, please contact reviewer@usp-pl.com.

11. Preprint Policy

Prior to formal submission to a journal, USP permits and promotes early publication on accredited industry preprint servers for evaluation by other scientists. A cover letter that accompanies a manuscript submission must include information about any accession numbers and any preprint sites. USP prohibits all in-process or peer-reviewed revisions from being posted on preprint servers. A manuscript whose corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g., in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

Once a manuscript has been accepted by a USP journal, authors should link all preprints to the final online publication in the journal.

12. Disclaimer

Before submitting a manuscript, authors should understand USP’s publishing policies and strictly abide by the relevant laws, regulations, and ethics. Authors are responsible for all contents in their article(s) including the accuracy of the content, statements, citing data, and so on. Facts and opinions in articles published by USP are personal statements of the respective authors.

The journals and the Publisher disclaim any liability for any errors or consequences arising from the use of information contained in the journals. The journals and the Publisher disclaim all responsibility for any injury to a person or property of any person caused by any idea or product mentioned in the articles or in advertisements to which it refers.

In addition, peer reviewers, once they accept the invitation to review, must maintain an objective attitude and be responsible for a fair review of the article. They must be aware of the review policy and proactively disclose any potential conflicts of interest. As for editors, they must avoid the evaluation process of manuscripts that they are involved in as one of the authors and take the initiative to disclose potential interest disputes.

13. Article Processing Charges (APCs)

The Gold Open Access format is used for all journal publications. Article Processing Charges (APCs) are charged to authors. Fees will come from the authors’ institution or other research funding agencies. All articles published in our journals are open access and freely available online. The Publisher does not require readers to purchase a subscription of any kind to view the online version of its publications. Our belief is to create a better academic environment with our authors and readers.

Waiver and Discount Policy

USP offers APC waivers and discounts to reduce the financial burden on authors or institutions from low-income countries. For information about our waiver and discount policy for authors in financial need, please contact reviewer@usp-pl.com. The Publisher reserves the right to approve or reject an application.

For further information on APCs, authors should consult the journal to which they wish to submit their manuscript.

14. Indexing & Archiving

Authors are encouraged to archive the final version of their published article in institutional repositories (such as those listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories).

The National Library Board of Singapore will archive all articles published in USP journals, and all the publications will be digitally preserved by the PKP Preservation Network for the long term.

The final PDF version published can be acquired on the website by authors.

15. Special Issue Policy

For the convenience of readers, some USP journals have a virtual section according to the journal’s scope, and authors can choose any of the topic sections in which to submit their manuscripts. The submission process is consistent with that of the regular issue (refer to Submission of a manuscript of the Author Guidelines).

Proposal

The proposals of a special issue generally include two ways. The first one is where the editorial office proposes a special issue theme, and then Guest Editors will be recruited. The second one is where scholars propose a special issue theme to the editorial office, and then the editorial team evaluates the proposal’s content and the credentials of Guest Editors; once the proposal is approved, Guest Editors should prepare the special issue’s introduction, keywords, and deadline. Proposals are welcome if they fit the scope and standards of qualification. The editorial team reserves the right to reject those unsuitable or unqualified proposals.

Peer review process

The Editor-in-Chief will oversee all the processes of special issues, and all submissions to special issues will comply with the same editorial and publishing ethics and undergo the same peer review process as regular submissions. Accepted articles will be archived both in a regular issue and in the special issue.

16. Author Guidelines

Universe Scientific Publishing respects science, experts and authors. The publisher strictly respects the recommendations made by independent peer reviewers, and the final decision was made by the editor-in-chief on behalf of the editorial board.

1) Open Access Policy

· Open access brings more exposure to research

· Open access increases research impact

· Open access allows more people to participate in science

· Open access eliminates obstacles and facilitates research applications

2) Manuscript Preparing

Authors please choose the target journal, and then prepare a manuscript following the essential information:

· Your manuscript has not been published or is not under consideration by any journal.

· Prepare your manuscript with WORD or LaTeX file.

· Informed Consent has been obtained from original authors for secondary use of images from published articles.

· The style of references is complied with your target journal’s guidelines.

· The author fully understands and adheres to all policies of the target journal.

3) Preparing a cover letter

Authors could prepare a cover letter as the separate file. A cover letter should explain the preface to the study, the innovative and important findings of this study and implications for readers and industry. The cover letter is private and available only to the editors responsible for this submission.

4) Submitting a manuscript

Authors should submit a manuscript following the step-by-step instructions of your target journal. USP rejects duplicated submissions to different journals.

5) Article Processing

· Initial Check

A journal editor will pre-check the manuscript for its structure, consistency of theme and the journal scope, similarity detection. Only original work will be passed to the next stage.

· Peer Review Process

USP follows the strict peer review process, and Open Journal System (OJS) will record all the comments. It contributes to the quality accountability of the article. The final version of PDF file will show the article information, such as submission time, acceptance time, and publication online time.

Upon submission, articles are reviewed by each journal’s Managing Editor, who checks for originality using Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate). Only original works complying with the editorial policy and procedural guidelines are passed to the Editor-in-Chief for initial review.

The Editor-in-Chief (EIC) carefully evaluates each manuscript to determine if its topic and content are suitable for consideration.

Qualified manuscripts are then assigned by the EIC to a senior editor according to his or her respective areas of expertise.

The senior editor invites at least 2 external reviewers who are suitably qualified to assess the paper.

Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript’s originality, methodology, contribution to the literature, presentation of results and support for the conclusion, and appropriate referencing of previous relevant studies.

Post-evaluation by the reviewers, the manuscript is sent to the EIC, who makes one of the following recommendations: Accept, Accept with Minor Revisions, Re-review after Major Revisions, or Reject.

If the EIC proposes to accept with no changes required by the authors, the manuscript will be handed over to the production team.

If the EIC proposes to accept with minor revisions, authors have up to 7 days to revise and resubmit the manuscript.

If the EIC proposes to re-review after major revisions, authors have up to 14 days to edit and resubmit the manuscript.

If the EIC proposes to reject, the manuscript will be rejected outright and the author will be notified of the decision.

· Appeal

Authors of rejected submissions may make an appeal in writing to reviewer@usp-pl.com, in which specific reasons for the appeal and a detailed response to the reviewers’ suggestions are included.

Decisions made on appeals by the EIC are final and no further considerations will be made.

· Production

Only those manuscripts that are peer-reviewed and accepted go into production. In-house editors will copy-edit and layout-edit manuscripts to minimize errors to the best of their ability. Typeset manuscripts will undergo final proofreading by the author before being published online. Authors and readers are welcome to read the final PDF online, and please contact the editorial office as soon as they notice any errors.

· Archive

Electronic versions of all published articles will be digital preservation at PKP on a long-term basis. Authors may choose to preserve their manuscripts on a separate storage platform. Readers and authors are welcome to download and read the final version of the manuscript on the journal's official website.

· Post-Publication

All constructive, instructive and valuable comments are welcome. When necessary, readers are encouraged to communicate with the editors and authors. Please do not hesitate to contact the editorial board as soon as you become aware of potential ethical violations, possible conflicts of interest, or misconduct. The editorial board will take serious action in accordance with COPE’s guidelines.

If any help during article processing, please contact with us.