Maintaining a good sense of ethics and practicing them at all times is essential for everyone involved in academic research and publishing. The following are the vital publishing ethics followed by the journal. For more details on the publishing ethics complied by us, please refer to the official website of Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) (http://www.publicationethics.org/) and the publication ethics standards of the European Association of Scientific Editors (EASE) (https://ease.org.uk/).

1. Duties of Authors

Authors are obliged to show that their articles are original content (except for review articles), and do not contain any falsified or plagiarized content. Authors shall guarantee that the articles do not involve any state secrets, infringement issues related to intellectual property rights, or multiple submissions. They shall also guarantee that the articles have not been published in any other journal or media in any other language, and they will not submit the articles to other journals before receiving the notice of rejection from the editorial department.

Citations shall be clearly identified as to the sources and listed as references. The institutions and individuals who provided scientific support and consultation for the research should be listed in acknowledgements. Authors should respect reviewers' and editors' comments.

Authors must refrain from the following academic misconduct:

(1) Multiple Submissions: Authors are obliged to ensure the originality of the submitted manuscripts and to confirm that they have never been published. Intentionally redundant publication is a serious violation of publication ethics.

The most important principle shall be that the submitted article must be original and not have been submitted to other journals. If the article has been published in a different form, including different languages, or if a similar article has been published or translated, the author must indicate this during submission.

In order to prevent academic misconduct, the editors will use the AMLC system provided by China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) to check the articles during the initial review process, as well as the editing and proofreading process of accepted articles.

For manuscripts found to be involved in academic misconduct, the journal will reject them. In serious cases (e.g., intentional multiple submissions), not only will the manuscript be rejected by the journal, but all manuscripts from the first author and corresponding author will not be accepted for the next 2 years.

(2) Plagiarism: Plagiarism is one of the most common violations of publication ethics. It is the deliberate use of a work without the consent of the original author and without citation or acknowledgement. Plagiarism can take the form of direct copying or rewriting of another's work, and may involve data, text, ideas and concepts. The journal does not allow any plagiarism.

(3) Authorship Criteria: Authorship should be clearly indicated to ensure that those who contributed to the research are recognized. Deliberate distortion of the relationship between researchers and research is improper, and this would undermine the credibility of the research. Authorization and consent of all co-authors are required for submitting manuscripts. All named authors must meet the journal's requirements for authorship, i.e., all authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation. All authors should have made substantial contributions to the following: conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data; drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; or final approval of the version to be submitted. To prevent academic misconduct such as titular authorship, all authors must fill in and submit the form of "Author Contribution Statement" provided by the journal to declare their personal contribution to the article and indicate that they meet the criteria for the authorship requirements. It is not allowed to change the authorship after submission. If the authorship indeed needs to be modified, the corresponding author must state the reason for the change and send the editorial department a confirmation letter that all authors agree to the change. When adding or deleting authors, the letter should also include the confirmation of the added or deleted authors.

(4) Originality: Authors should not submit published data as original material, except when the authors clearly inform the journal, or the reuse of the data are moderate.

(5) Research falsification: Research falsification means that data or conclusions are not derived from experiments or studies, but are falsified and altered by the author. Under no circumstances should a researcher involve research falsification.

(6) Conflict of interest: All authors have the duty to disclose all conflicts of interest by filling the Conflict of Interest Statement in the Download Centre of this website. A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence (or bias) the author’s decisions, work, or manuscript. Authors should also disclose conflicts of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

2. Duties of Reviewers

Reviewers should review manuscripts scientifically and accurately, and make objective and fair comments. They should keep the reviewed contents strictly confidential and respect the authors' research results, and avoid reviewing manuscripts with interests. Reviewers shall also:

(1) Use their professional knowledge and ability to review the innovative, scientific, and practical aspects of the manuscript; provide fair evaluation of whether the research methods are appropriate, the scientific design is reasonable, the results and conclusions are accurate, and whether there is leakage of confidentiality; provide detailed revision advice to help authors improve the quality of the articles.

(2) Review manuscripts only in terms of academic value, and do not evaluate or make personal attacks on individuals. The selection of manuscripts should not be influenced by the race, gender, religion, faith, or status, seniority, or authority of the authors, and must clearly articulate its views with sufficient arguments and facts.

(3) Complete the review comments on the reviewed manuscript on time and return them to the editorial department within the specified time. If it cannot be done on time, the reviewer should make an explanation and return the manuscript back to the editorial department.

(4) Keep the reviewed manuscripts strictly confidential, and do not circulate or discuss them with others; do not use or publish the data, views, or conclusions of the reviewed manuscripts without the authors' consent.

(5) Explain to the authors the similarity or duplication between their manuscripts and other published articles or data according to the reviewers’ own knowledge and perception.

(6) All review comments and information must be kept confidential and must not be used for personal use. If the author or the author's organization or enterprise has a conflict of interest with the reviewer due to competition or cooperation then the reviewer shall not review the articles form the author.

3. Duties of Editors

Editors should strictly abide by relevant national laws and regulations, and academic publishing ethics, handle all manuscripts in a timely and fair manner, respect the research results of authors and the comments of reviewers, keep the information of authors and reviewers confidential, and avoid "related articles". In addition, editors are required to:

(1) Take responsibility for all editorial aspects of the journal, including promoting the journal and ensuring that manuscripts are published on time. Editors should adhere to the policies established by the journal's editorial board and comply with legal norms related to defamation, infringement, and plagiarism in the selection of articles.

(2) Ensure the authenticity of review records, and have the obligation to conserve and keep confidential all information and documents generated in the review and revision process of manuscripts. The editor shall not divulge any information about the manuscript to anyone other than providing necessary information to the corresponding author, reviewers, and related editorial board members.

(3) Select manuscripts fairly, and accept or reject articles only on the basis of the originality, significance, clarity, and conformity to the scope of the journal.

(4) Communicate with authors in a timely manner and obtain authors’ consent in case of making major revisions to their articles.

(5) Avoid all commercial and benefit exchange that are detrimental to academic ethics.

(6) Have the obligation to investigate academic misconduct. If there are complaints about academic misconduct in submitted manuscripts or published articles, editors should take effective countermeasures. If required, corrections, clarifications, retractions, or apologies should be issued publicly in a timely manner. Editors have the duty to hold authors and reviewers accountable for their academic misconduct.

(7) Ensure that the information submitted by authors is not used for personal research by the editor or anyone else; ensure that the identities of reviewers and relevant editorial board members are protected during the blind review process.

(8) Encourage academic debate and have the obligation to respond to authors' differing views on reviewers' comments.

(9) Ensure that the review on all manuscripts is fair and reasonable. If the reviewer has a conflict of interest with the author or the author's organization or enterprise due to competition or cooperation, the editor should propose changing the reviewer, or send the manuscript to the editor-in-chief or other editorial board members for review.

4. Peer Review Statement

In order to ensure the high academic quality of the journal, the editorial department of Journal of Mine Automation strictly implements three rounds of reviews, i.e., initial review by the editorial department, external review by peer experts (in a double-blind format), and final review by the Editor-in-Chief.

(1) Initial Review by Managing Editor: This is the first review process on the submitted manuscripts to check whether the manuscript is in line with the scope of the journal, and to select suitable peer experts for the manuscript. A managing editor will be responsible for the initial review. Manuscripts of poor quality or not in line with the journal's scope, or those detected with plagiarism, multiple submissions, or other academic misconduct will be rejected.

(2) External Review by Peer Experts: Peer review is the most critical part of the whole review process. In order to ensure that peer experts can examine manuscripts fairly and objectively, the peer review will be in a double-blind format, i.e., the managing editor will send the manuscript without any information of the author to the peer experts for review, and meanwhile, the author does not know any information of the experts.

The double-blind review process avoids author’s personal information such as gender, reputation of the author’s institution, etc., so that reviewers can set aside concerns about social relations and avoid non-academic factors affecting the review on manuscripts.

(3) Final Review by the Editor-in-Chief: This is the final review process, which plays a decisive role in the academic quality of the journal. The final review determines the academic quality and of the journal, and hence, manuscripts will be critically evaluated in the final review process.

5. Appeal, Correction & Retraction

(1) Appeal: Journal of Mine Automation accepts authors’ appeals. If authors have any disagreement about the review comments or review results, they could submit a written complaint to the editorial department by sending it to the journal’s email (editor@cari.com.cn). The author who submits the appeal needs to make detailed explanation for each review comment. After receiving the appeal, the editorial department will investigate and deal with it as soon as possible, and the result of the appeal will be fed back to the author.

(2) Correction: If it appears that there are honest scientific errors in published article, which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusions of the article, the editorial department will publish corrections in the journal as soon as possible, detailing the changes made to the original article and indicating the source of the article. The editorial department will release the corrected new version of the article, and specify the changes to the original article and the date of the update. Only the latest version of the article should be used for citation.

(3) Retraction: If a published article is confirmed to involve plagiarized research results, falsified data, redundant publication, or other academic misconduct, the editorial department will retract the article, including publishing a retraction statement publicly, and requiring relevant databases to delete all online versions of the article so that the adverse effects of the misleading article could be minimized.

In addition, if a published article is found to have severe scientific errors, which makes the results and conclusions of the article unreliable, the editorial department will retract the article, including publishing a retraction statement publicly and requiring relevant databases to delete the online versions of the article.

6. Digital Archive & Online Accessibility

Articles published by Journal of Mine Automation since its public publication in 1978 have been digitally archived on the journal’s official website, through which readers can directly access the articles online. All information and material are backed-up in the editorial department for security reason, including the print-copy and digital-copy of all issues, and all other relevant material (e.g., authors’ additional information and forms submitted during submission).

In addition to our official website, readers can access the journal's articles online by visiting the journal's WeChat Official Account, Databases of CNKI, and China Coal Industry Knowledge Service Platform.

It is allowed for authors to deposit all versions of their articles in an institutional or other repository of the authors’ choice. However, it is necessary to indicate the articles’ publishing information in the metadata in the institutional or other repository and use that as a recommended way of citation.