Peer Review and Editing

1. Peer Review Policy: The journal adopts a double-blind peer review system.

2. Editing Policy: All authors shall be responsible for their own writing. For accepted manuscripts, the journal may make some technical or wording amendments. Any amendment involving changes in meaning will only be made with the author’s consent.

3. Editing Process and Timing: After submission, the editorial office will conduct a preliminary review of the manuscript within 7 working days. Manuscripts will be selected by their quality and also in accordance with the journal’s aim and scope. Those that passed the preliminary review will be sent to 2 or more reviewers. Review comments and the decision (pass/reject/review after revision) will be communicated to the corresponding author. If the manuscript is requested to be revised, the authors must respond to the review comments point by point and submit a revised version of the manuscript for re-review. After the manuscript has passed the peer review process, the final review will be conducted by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal to make the final decision on acceptance. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the final academic quality of the articles in the journal and is responsible for the entire content of the journal. Authors will be notified of the results of the manuscript review within 2 months, during which time they are not allowed to submit the manuscript elsewhere. Only a few manuscripts may take longer to be reviewed. If the author decides to re-submit the manuscript to another journal or withdraw it, please inform the editorial office before proceeding. Once the manuscript is accepted, frequent changes are strictly prohibited. Manuscripts will be published in 4~8 months after revision is completed.

4. Special Issue Policy: The same review process described above applies to manuscripts submitted for special issues. Manuscripts submitted for special issues will go through the same review and editing process as those submitted for regular issues, and the final decision will be made by the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the entire content of the journal, including the special issue. When organizing a special issue, the editorial office invites leading experts in the field to serve as Guest Editors-in-Chief. The duties of the Guest Editor-in-Chief include proposing the theme of the special issue, soliciting manuscripts, organizing peer review, and resolving any problems that arise in the publication of the special issue. The work of the Guest Editors-in-Chief is subject to the supervision of the Editor-in-Chief to ensure the impartiality of the review of manuscripts.

5. Online Peer Review Instruction

1) The editorial office will send the "Manuscript Submission Form" to the e-mail address provided by reviewers, informing them of the login URL, username and password, and the return time for reviewing the manuscript. Experts are requested to review the manuscript within 15 working days of receipt and to provide feedback to the editorial office via email or the review system. Please contact the editorial office if there are any special circumstances.

2) Search Special Steel or enter the domain name:

http://www.specialsteeljournal.com to access the website of Special Steel. Click the "Peer Review" button on the left side of the home page to enter the "Review Center" of the journal. Click on the "Change personal information" button on the left side of the page to verify and modify the data in the reviewer database.

3) Click the "Unreviewed Manuscripts" button, select the manuscript to be reviewed, and the system will display the review requirements; open the "Fill in Review Comments" button to make a general evaluation of the manuscript or give specific review comments. Reviewer can also directly copy and paste the review comments saved on computer. If the reviewer wants to make changes to the author's original manuscript, he/she can upload the revised "Reviewed Manuscript". Click the "Review Complete" button to end the online review.

4) Click the "Reviewed Manuscripts" button to see all manuscripts that have been reviewed by the same reviewer.

6. Submission by Editors and EBMs: The editorial staff/editors/editorial board members should not be involved in publishing decisions on papers that they have written themselves or have been written by their family members or colleagues. Any such submission should be strictly subject to the journal’s usual editorial process. Peer review should be handled independently by the relevant author/editor and their research groups.

7. Appeal: Authors may make an appeal if they disagree with the comment from the reviewers. The authors need to write an appeal letter (with the manuscript serial number) and send it to tsghs@sina.com. Detailed reasons for appealing must be stated, including a comprehensive and reasonable answer to the reviewers’ comments. The appeal letter should also be stamped by the author’s institute. The editorial office will consider whether to change the decision case by case.

8. Correction and Retraction: Articles published online or in print are considered the final and complete version. In principle, the journal does not make corrections or retractions on published articles. However, in the case of the situations described below, corrections or retractions may be carried out if truly necessary.

1) Correction: If there appears to be an unintended scientific mistake in the article which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusion, the editorial office 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 journal will release the corrected new version of the article, and specify the changes to the original article and the date of update. In addition, the superseded version will also be archived. Readers can obtain it directly, but only the latest version of the article should be used for citation.

2) Retraction: In the following cases, the editorial office would retract published articles and issue retraction statements:

(i) If an article is found to have severe scientific errors making the results and conclusion of the article unreliable;

(ii) For articles suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the editorial office will initiate an investigation and issue a statement to inform readers of the risks associated with the article. Once the investigation is completed, the result will be made public. If the academic misconduct is confirmed, the article will be immediately retracted and a retraction statement will be issued by the editorial office.

Editorial Office of Special Steel

Jan 01, 2022