Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University should comply with fundamental principles to maintain academic integrity and publication ethics. We firmly oppose plagiarism in any form. Our Journal performs peer-review strictly, andexecutive three-level referee system, including first-review by editor, review by experts, and final judgment by associate editor and editor-in-chief, which can ensure and enhance the quality of papers.The ethic statements are based on the guidelines and standards developed and published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The authors submitting articles to the journal should affirm that manuscript contents are original. They should also warrant that their article has neither been published elsewhere in any language fully or partly, nor is it under review for publication anywhere.
The editors, authors and reviewers of Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University should perform the following duties, and adhere to the submission guidelines and other requirements of the journal.
Authors’ responsibilities:
1. Authors should report original researches truly and objectively, no plagiarism, no fraudulent use of data, without duplicate submission.
2. Content of the submission should conform to the scopes of Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University. Submission should be permitted to be peer-reviewed according to the requirements of Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University. Authors should provide initial data or source code when they are needed.
3. All signed authors should contribute substantially to the research. All copyright owners should agree to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement. Authors should permit sharing the paper and research data in proper database or the original publishing source.
4. Authors should properly cite the reproduced content from other sources after acquiring permission. If the work is supported by a fund, its full name should be listed. It is authors’ duty to provide published literatures which have overlap or closed relationship to the submission.
5. Authors should ensure that any studies involving human or animal subjects conform to national, local, and institutional laws and requirements.
6. Authors can declare to avoid or recommend reviewers in the manuscript submitting stage.
7. The format of the manuscript should follow the writing guideline of Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University, composite the manuscript by Word.
8. Authors should notify the journal editor or publisher promptly if a significant error in their publications is identified. Authors should also cooperate with the editors to publish an erratum, corrigendum, or to retract the paper, where it is deemed appropriate.
Editors’ responsibilities:
1. Through the Editorial System, send the submission to proper peer reviewers. Send the summarized peer reviewers’ opinions and the manuscript back to the Editorial Board member to justify and make the decision: accept, accept with minor revision, reevaluate after major revision, reject. Send the manuscript to be accepted to Editor-in-Chief for final decision.
2. Avoid the peer reviewers with conflict interests in the peer review process. Follow the author’s request of avoiding specific experts to review the submission, if it is deemed reasonable and available.
3. Editorial Office has the right to decide to accept or reject a submission independently, while such decision should not be based upon the private opinion of editors. Unless serious misconducts or mistakes arise, editors should not change the original decision to a manuscript.
4. Handle submissions for special issues (special columns) or invited submissions in the same way as other submissions, so that articles are considered and accepted based on solely on their academic merit, without other influence.
5. Give entire, detailed, and clear revising suggestions for manuscript to be accepted or to be revised. If the author disagrees with any changes made to the article, editors should give the author response to any complaints, and communicate comprehensively with author to reach the agreement of changes.
6. Find and end the academic misconduct through CNKI sci-tech periodical academic misconduct checking system.
7. Collect evidence; investigate for the published papers which involve academic misconduct. Publish erratum or corrigendum, or retract the published papers according to the severity of the misconduct. Then action should be declared on Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University website.
8. Protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts before publishing.
9. Timely upload the online and final version to the website of Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University, CNKI, EI and other Databases, for the convenience of fellow readers.
10. Act in balanced, objective, and fair way to authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board members. Keep friendly connections with all the parties associated with the journal.
11. Answer every question from readers, authors, or any other parties timely and record the answers in related documents.
12. Protect and update the private information of authors and reviewers, develop new reviewers on regular bases.
13. Maintain an active Editorial Board who made contributions, and find new authors to improve the journal in addition to inviting high level literature reviews and innovative paper, and hold Editorial Board meetings to get helpful suggestions.
14. Hard copies of the issue will be sent to the corresponding author after the paper published.
Reviewer’s responsibilities:
1. Giving objective, detailed, and clear comments to assist Editorial Board members in improving the quality of the paper timely.
2. Being aware of any potential conflicts of interest (financial, institutional or other relationships that might lead to bias or a conflict of interest) and to alert the editor without retaining or copying the manuscripts.
3. Alerting the editor to any published or submitted articles which are substantially similar to that under review.
4. Giving clear reasonable decision suggestion to editors and specific modifying suggestions to authors to improve the quality of the manuscript.
5. Must not disclose information about manuscripts to anyone, other than the authors. Reviewers should not use knowledge of the manuscript before its publication to further their own interests.
6. Reviewers also have the right to confidentiality; their personal information and their comments will remain anonymous to authors.
Editorial Board members’ responsibilities:
1. The members are obligated to select proper peer reviewers for the manuscript based on their specialty.
2. The members should follow the recruitment criteria of Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University to decide should the submission be accepted, accepted with minor revision, reviewed after major revision, or rejected without revision. The decision should be clear and rational.
3. The Editorial Board takes all necessary steps to maintain the accuracy and quality of the papers published in Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University.
Sponsor’s or Publisher’s responsibilities:
1. The requirements of sponsors and publishers for the journal are obeying the academic publishing ethics standard, publishing the accurate, timely, fair, and ethical publication of scientific papers, and improving academic communication.
2. The publishing organization can not intervene in the decision-making power of editors.
3. Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University(http://ch.whu.edu.cn). All the published contents of the journal are open accessed at above website.