Ethics Statement

Section 1 For Authors

1.    Authors are responsible for authenticity of their paper and are responsible for cooperating with the editorial department to provide supporting materials such as original images, raw data, funding project proposal, and full title of funding project. The following misconduct is strictly prohibited: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. (1) fabrication refers to making up data with no basis; (2) falsification refers to using fraudulent means to alter or distort data; (3) plagiarism refers to the act of stealing or modifying other’s work as one's own, completely or partially copying other’s work or changing its form or content, including viewpoint plagiarism, paragraph plagiarism, and full-text plagiarism. Specifically, the following actions are considered academic misconduct: forgery, tampering, improper authorship, multiple submission, duplicate publication, salami publication, violation of ethics principles, etc.

2.    Authors should be those who made substantial contribution to the paper, including: (1) those who have made significant contributions to the conception or design of the research work, or obtaining, analyzing, or interpreting research data; (2) drafters of research papers or those who modify papers on important intellectual content; (3) those who can finalized the paper for publishing; (4) agree to take responsibility for all aspects of the research work to ensure that any issues related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the paper are properly investigated and resolved. Those who do not meet all four criteria (such as those who only provide technical assistance to the paper or provide financial and material support) should not be listed as authors but can be mentioned in acknowledgement. Contribution of each author should be described in the Authors Statement.

3.    In principle, authors should be ranked according to their contribution, and it should be collective agreed upon and determined before submission. Authors and affiliations are generally not allowed to be changed. If truly necessary to make changes, the person in charge (the first author or the corresponding author) shall submit a written application to the editorial department, stating the reasons, and signed by all authors. Unauthorized changes are not allowed. In general, only one corresponding author is indicated. 

4.     Authors should indicate their names and affiliations when submitting the manuscript.  If the institution to which the author belongs is different from the institution where the topic selection, research plan design, research work is completed and research conditions are provided, the institution which provided research conditions for research work shall be the first institute.

5.    All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest if the financing/personal status/affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization/employer) may affect authors' decision, work or manuscript. When mentioning a product, authors should also disclose any conflict of interest against competitive products. Authors should report potential conflicts of interest related to the study in the Authors Statement and submit it to the editorial department. When there is no competing interest, it should also be stated that “there is no conflict of interest”.

Section 2 For Editors

1.    Based on the reviewer's review comments and the editorial board's review report, the editor can accept, reject or request modifications to the manuscript.

2.    Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept.

3.    Editors must ensure that each manuscript is initially evaluated for originality by the editors using appropriate software. After this testing, the manuscript is forwarded to two reviewers for double-blind peer review, each of whom will provide specific suggestions for acceptance, rejection, or modification of the manuscript.

4.    Editors must ensure that each manuscript received by Chinese Space Science and Technology is subject to intellectual content review, regardless of the author's gender, race, religion, or nationality.

Section 3 For Reviewers

1.    Reviewers must ensure that authors have confirmed all sources of data used in the research. If the reviewers find evidence of plagiarism or multiple submission, they should immediately report it to editors.

2.    Review of submitted manuscripts must be undertaken objectively and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

3.    Reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders.

4.    Reviewers should point out relevant published works that have not yet been cited.

5.    When the reviewer feels that it is impossible to complete the review of the manuscript within specified time, then this information must be communicated to the editor, so that the manuscript could be sent to other reviewers.

Section 4 Statement on Generative Artificial Intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) lacks the ability for critical thinking and original assessment, which may result in incorrect, incomplete, and biased conclusions. As a non-legal entity, it cannot assert the presence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright or license agreements. The policy regarding using GenAI in submission and review of manuscripts is as follows.

1.    GenAI cannot be used to write entire papers or important parts of papers, such as methods, results, and interpretation and analysis of results. All content falling within the realm of scientific contribution or intellectual work should be completed by humans. This journal does not accept GenAI, its products or teams listed as authors.

2.    If GenAI is used in the composition of papers, authors must disclose in detail how GenAI is used in the methods section. Authors are fully responsible for the content produced by GenAI tools, and are thus liable for any breaches of publishing ethics or infringement.

3.    GenAI is prohibited to assist manuscript evaluation or decision-making process in the editorial department. It must be human editors who are responsible for the paper review, decision-making, and communication with authors. To avoid risks of infringement, privacy breach, and confidential breach, reviewers and editors are not allowed to upload manuscripts and supplementary materials to publicly available GenAI platforms during the paper review and editing process.