The journal advocates scientific research integrity and opposes all forms of malpractice. The editorial board of the Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems refers to the Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China, Measures for the Prevention and Handling of Academic Misconduct in Institutions of Higher Education, Academic Publication Norms - Definition of Academic Misconduct in Journals (CY/T174-2019), and other relevant laws, documents, standards, and so on. As well as the guidelines formulated and issued by the International Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), etc., the Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems publication ethical norms are formulated by combining with the actual situation of the journal.

1. Responsibilities related to authors, editorial board and reviewers

1. 1  Responsibilities of the author

(1) The manuscripts submitted by the authors should be original, without copyright disputes. For manuscripts accepted after review, all authors are required to sign the copyright transfer agreement by hand and upload it to the submission and review system, for the specific process, please refer to the flow chart of the submission process (visit the Author Centre - Submission Guidelines), the template of the submission and the template of the copyright transfer agreement can be accessed in the Author Centre.

(2) Signature authors should be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work of the paper. Corresponding authors should ensure that the order of attribution is not disputed by all authors and that all authors agree to the publication of the paper.

(3) Contributions should not be submitted in multiple drafts, i.e., the paper should not be in any stage of review for any other public publication (ISSN/ISBN) at the time of submission. If the submitted manuscript is a revised version of a conference paper, you should ensure that the conference paper is a non-public publication and indicate this at the time of submission.

(4) Authors should not use all or part of a published paper (e.g., a dissertation) for submission by simple processing, which may be suspected of duplicate publication.

(5) Cited data and previous work (including authors' own citations) should be correctly labelled in the text.

(6) The same research results should not be deliberately split into multiple manuscripts for publication.

(7) All calculations, derivations and data representations should be carefully checked without intentional falsification.

(8) Funded projects should be correctly labelled in the text, and relevant conflicts of interest should be voluntarily disclosed.

(9) After the submission of the manuscript, especially after acceptance or publication, if the authors find that there is a major error in the manuscript, they should inform the editorial board of the journal to coordinate the handling of the matter and cooperate with the editorial board in withdrawing the manuscript or issuing an appropriate "correction" statement.

(10) Respect the suggestions of the reviewers, and appeal to the editorial board in case of disagreement.

1.2   Responsibilities of the editor

(1) The editorial board is responsible for the whole process of receiving manuscripts, sending them for review, accepting them, editing and publishing them. The editorial board can make textual modification and abridgement of the manuscript, and the modification of the content should be permitted by the author, fully respecting the author's viewpoints and style of writing, and the author's submission should be provided with detailed modifications or reasons for the withdrawal of the manuscript.

(2) If the editorial board thinks that the manuscript does not belong to the scope of the journal or the quality of the manuscript obviously fails to meet the requirements for publication, the manuscript can be withdrawn in the preliminary review stage without peer review.

(3) After the manuscript passes the preliminary review, the editorial board shall ensure that the manuscript is sent to the appropriate review experts for review, and shall urge the review experts to return the review comments in time. Reviewers from the same unit as the authors should be avoided.

(4) The editorial board shall maintain the confidentiality of the contents of the manuscript before publication, and shall inform the reviewers and other persons who have access to the manuscript before publication of the manuscript of this principle.

(5) Research papers by members of the editorial board and editorial board should be peer-reviewed before publication.

(6) The editorial board shall treat readers' complaints and authors' appeals with care, and has the responsibility to verify, review, and respond to all complaints and appeals in a timely manner.

(7) When suspected academic misconduct is found, the editorial board shall investigate and verify the case, and contact the authors to listen to their explanations and clarifications. Once it is confirmed that the authors have committed academic misconduct, the manuscripts under review will be withdrawn, and the published manuscripts shall be issued a statement of withdrawal of publication of the paper in the paper journal and on the website of the journal, and at the same time coordinate the deletion of the data of the work in the relevant databases and the termination of the dissemination of the work, in order to eliminate the adverse effects, and the authors shall be criticised and educated, and the unit of the authors may be notified if necessary.

1.3  Responsibilities of the reviewer

(1) The journal adopts "double-blind peer review" for academic review, and the reviewers shall conduct the review objectively and fairly based on their experience and knowledge. If the review is not convenient due to conflict of interest, the reviewer shall take the initiative to avoid the review and inform the editorial board to select other reviewers.

(2) After accepting a manuscript for review, the reviewer should generally complete the review within 10-15 days. If the reviewer is unable to complete the review on time, he/she should inform the editorial board or recommend other suitable reviewers to the editorial board for review.

(3) The reviewer should evaluate the academic level of the manuscript, point out its theoretical significance and engineering application value, whether there is any innovation in the content, and clearly state whether it can be published. For those manuscripts that are basically publishable, they should try to put forward specific modification suggestions (including charts, formulas, data, etc.) for the places that need to be modified. For manuscripts that have not reached the level of publication but have merits, specific modifications should be proposed, indicating the materials to be added or the diagrams that can be deleted, etc., so that the authors can revise or rewrite them. For manuscripts that are not suitable for publication, the authors should specify the problems and propose the direction of further research as well as the literature for reference.

(4) If the reviewer finds that there are academic misconducts such as wrong viewpoints, forged data, duplicate publication or plagiarism, he/she should clearly point them out in his/her review comments and feedback them to the editorial board in a timely manner.

(5) Reviewers shall maintain the confidentiality of the contents of the reviewed manuscripts, and shall not use the contents of the reviewed manuscripts improperly, nor shall they intentionally delay the review of the manuscripts for competitive purposes.

2. Complaints and appeals

The journal accepts appeals from authors: if authors have any objections to the evaluation opinions and results, they can submit written representations to the editorial board and send them to the journal's mailbox. The authors should provide detailed explanation and clarification for each review comment. The editorial board will investigate and deal with the complaint as soon as possible after receiving the complaint, and feedback the result of the complaint to the author.

3. Conflicts of interest

A declaration is required when the author thinks that the paper may have a conflict of interest.

Examples of potential conflicts of interest that are directly or indirectly related to the research may include but are not limited to the following:

(1) Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number);

(2) Honoraria for speaking at symposia;

(3) Financial support for attending symposia;

(4) Financial support for educational programs;

(5) Employment or consultation;

(5) Support from a project sponsor;

(6) Position on advisory board or board of directors or other types of management relationships;

(7) Multiple affiliations;

(8) Financial relationships, for example, equity ownership or investment interest;

(9) Intellectual property rights (e.g. patents, copyrights and royalties from such rights);

(10) Holdings of spouse and/or children that may have a financial interest in the work.

In addition, interests that go beyond financial interests and compensation (non-financial interests) that may be important to readers should be disclosed. These may include but are not limited to personal relationships or competing interests directly or indirectly tied to this research, professional interests or personal beliefs that may influence your research.

The corresponding author will include a summary statement  in a separate section at the bottom of the main page of the manuscript text.Please refer to the following example for declaration.

Funding: This study was funded by X (grant number X).

Conflict of Interest: Author A has received research grants from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X and owns stock in Company Y. Author C is a member of committee Z.

If no conflict exists, the authors may not make a statement.

4. Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility

The journal encourages authors to submit paper-related data for public preservation to guarantee that paper conclusions are verifiable and reusable, to improve paper credibility, and to safeguard the academic reputation of paper authors.

The journal uses and encourages authors to share data formats that can be reproduced. For better dissemination and sharing of thesis-related data, the journal recommends authors to use the CC-BY 4.0 licence agreement.

5. Journal’s policy on intellectual property

Authors are required to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (find it in Author Center) to transfer the copyright of their paper to the editorial board of the Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems, and the copyright will belong to the editorial board of the journal after publication of the paper. However, authors have the right to use their paper under the following circumstances:

(1) Reproducing, disseminating, and using the paper freely in accordance with the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License, such as non-commercial academic seminars, communication, academic reports, and lectures.

(2) Use the paper and its layout to compile individual works (including web pages) or anthologies, provided that the source is credited;

(3) Using the paper in other activities permitted and authorized by the editorial board.

6. Post-publication discussions and corrections

The Journal welcomes discussion of published papers by authors and readers. Comments can be sent to the Journal's email address. The editorial board will process them as soon as possible after receiving them and give feedback as appropriate. The journal welcomes readers and authors to supervise each other and actively feedback relevant information to the journal to create a good academic atmosphere.

6.1 Correction

If errors are found in previously published papers, especially when the errors may affect the interpretation of certain data or content (excluding major errors in the main ideas and conclusions), regardless of the reasons for the errors (authors or editors), the journal will promptly publish a correction notice and update it to the correct version on the journal's website and database platform.

6.2 Withdrawal

For published papers that are found to have legal infringement, defamation and other legal restrictions, or have been proven to have serious academic misconduct, the journal will promptly publish a retraction notice and withdraw it from the journal website and database platform.

7. Publication malpractice statement

Everyone can monitor the whole process of the editorial board from the receipt of manuscripts to the publishing behaviour, identify misconduct and unethical behaviour at any time, and inform the editor or publisher. Any notification should provide sufficient information and evidence for an investigation to be initiated. All criticisms or suggestions should be taken seriously and dealt with in the same manner until a final decision or conclusion is reached.

When suspected academic misconduct is detected, the editorial board shall investigate and verify the criticism and contact the author or reviewer to listen to the author's explanation and clarification. Once it is confirmed that the authors have committed academic misconduct, the manuscripts under review will be withdrawn from publication, and for published papers, a statement of withdrawal of publication of the paper shall be published in the journal and on the website of the journal, and at the same time coordinate to delete the data of the work in the relevant databases and terminate the dissemination of the paper, in order to eliminate the adverse effects, and the authors shall be criticised and educated. In case of serious misconduct, the author's institution may be informed if necessary. If reviewers are found to have engaged in academic unethical behaviour, the reviewers should be notified of their breach of the relevant guidelines or misconceptions, an official statement should be issued detailing the misconduct in question, and in serious cases, the manuscript in question should be formally withdrawn from publication, while the head of the reviewer's unit should be notified for further investigation and action to be taken.