Editorial Policies of Fuzzy Information and Engineering
Fuzzy Information and Engineering, sponsored by Tsinghua University, has the responsibility to maintain the rigor of scientific research and protect the researchers’ intellectual property rights. In order to comply with the Publishing Ethics Committee of journal publishing ethics rules, Fuzzy Information and Engineering Editorial Policies have been formulated as the guideline for the editing and publishing of journal.
Editorial guidelines for journal publication
Each peer-reviewed article published in Fuzzy Information and Engineering is an approval of the progress of scientific research in the field of artificial intelligence and its application. It directly reflects the quality of the authors’ work and the institutions that support them. Peer-review is designed to support and embody scientific methods. Each paper is assigned to at least three reviewers. At least two favorable reviews out of three are required for a paper to be considered for publication.

Therefore, it is very important that all parties involved in the act of the publication, including the authors, journal editors, peer reviewers, publishers, and social organizations, should commit to perform the Editorial Policies as the code of conduct.

Fuzzy Information and Engineering recognizes the Editorial Policies as the standard of behavior, and takes the duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing seriously.

1. Guideline of the paper
1.1 The papers published in Fuzzy Information and Engineering should be original and the content should be within the scope of Fuzzy Information and Engineering.
1.2 A paper should contain sufficient detail, such as the research work and the experimental method. Data must be guaranteed to be real. If any reference and open literature resources are quoted in the paper, they should be listed in detail for peer evaluation.
1.3 It should be avoided to split one research result into fragmented papers to submit.
1.4 Contention issues and the words in the paper should be clear and concise. Photographs and graphs in the paper should be of high quality. If the authors use the work and/or words of others, that should be appropriately cited or quoted. Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
1.5 Authors should give clear indication of research funding sources in the paper, if the research work is supported by the funds.
1.6 The journal use iThenticate to check the similarity of submissions and existing documents.
1.7 After the publication of the paper, the copyright belongs to the authors.

2. Duties of authors
2.1 Authors should cherish the opportunity of publication on Fuzzy Information and Engineering and maintain the reputation of Fuzzy Information and Engineering.
2.2 Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. When submitting the manuscript, all authors should certify the manuscript is original and has not been published on or submitted to other journals.
2.3 Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, execution, and/ or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the article, and contributed to drafting the article or reviewing and/ or revising it for intellectual content. The others, who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication.
2.4 One of the authors should be indicated as the corresponding author in the case of articles with multiple authors. The corresponding author has responsibility for communication with the editorial office, overseeing the publication process and ensuring the integrity of the final document.
2.5 Once the list and order of authors has been established, it should not be altered without writing permission of all living authors of the paper. In the cases that the authorship adjustment is necessary, the corresponding author should put forward a written application including the consent of all authors before the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) makes final decision for the paper. Any applications for authorship adjustment after the final decision will not be considered.
2.6 It is the author's obligation to correct the errors in the article no matter the error is found by author or reviewers.
2.7 All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest stage possible.

3. Duties of editors
3.1 Editors of Fuzzy Information and Engineering consist of academic editors (EiC and Associate Editors) and publishing editors. The EiC is ultimately accountable for acceptance or rejection of an article.
3.2 Articles submitted by the academic editors shall be handled by another academic editors of Fuzzy Information and Engineering.
3.3 Editors should treat all manuscripts fairly. An editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regarding to ethnic, religion, nationality, gender, age, or affiliation of the authors. However, the editor may consider the relevance of the manuscript to previous publications of the authors or to other contemporaneous manuscripts. The editor can directly reject the manuscript if it is not accord with the requirement of Fuzzy Information and Engineering in the theme, breadth, depth, and English expression.
3.4 Editors should respect the independence of the author's ideas. For unpublished manuscripts, editors may not use their content without the consent of the author. Editors and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about the submitted manuscript to anyone other than the reviewers, potential reviewers, EiC, and the publisher, as appropriate.
3.5 Publishing editors should exercise their responsibilities based on the EiC’s suggestion that whether a paper needs to be modified or it can be accepted to publish. No matter what the outcome of the review is, reviewers’ comments and marked articles are returned to the author entirely.
3.6 It is essential that the editors assure that the anonymity of the reviewers is protected during the review process. Editors shall not disclose the contents of manuscripts under review. Correspondence within the review process must be recorded, and the reviewer anonymity policy protects the review results from the interference of authors.
3.7 Editors must not arbitrarily refuse the reviewers’ comments, unless the editor deems them clearly to be irrelevant, incorrect, or otherwise inappropriate. In particular, editors should not arbitrarily ignore reviewers’ suggestions for modifications of the article without sufficient technical cause to do so.
3.8 If an article is returned for revision, it is important to make clear to the corresponding author whether on the one hand the article will be accepted if the indicated changes are made or, on the other hand, the article will be returned to the reviewers for further review.
3.9 Once the EiC confirms that the manuscript can be published, publishing editors should prepare for publication as soon as possible.
3.10 If there is sufficient evidence to show that a published paper has mistake(s), Editors should take corrective action whenever possible and the corrected text can be provided by the mistake finder or the author of the manuscript.

4. Duties of reviewers
4.1 Manuscript review is an essential step in the process of publishing and peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication. Fuzzy Information and Engineering shares the view of many people that all scholars who wish to contribute to publications have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing.
4.2 Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify and return the manuscript to the editor immediately. Or they should remind the editor of the possibility of delaying the review and give a possible return time.
4.3 Based on the standards of maintaining a high level of scientific and textual expression, referees should objectively evaluate the quality of the manuscript, the level of the experiments and the theory, and the rationality of the interpretation and inference. Referees should respect the independence of the author's thought.
4.4 Selected referee shall not have a personal or business relationship with the authors or partners of the paper that may affect the evaluation impartial.
4.5 Information contained in an article under review is confidential and shall not be shared with others, nor shall reviewers use non-public information contained in an article to advance their own research or financial interests.
4.6 Referee comments should sufficiently explain the basis of their judgment in order to be understood by the editor and the author. The facts or opinions in the evaluation comments shall be supported by related literature to avoid assertions that lack facts.
4.7 Referees should identify whether the important relevant published work has been cited or not by the authors. It is absolutely forbidden guiding the author to cite the reviewer's own paper. The authors should be reminded of the substantive similarities between the author's manuscript content and published papers or manuscripts submitted to other journals.
4.8 Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.

5. Misconduct
5.1 Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. And that is highly likely to have serious moral and legal consequences. The journal uses plagiarism detection software to screen the submissions. If plagiarism is identified, the manuscript will not be considered for publication.
5.2 In case an author has submitted the paper under consideration to another journal, the paper will not be considered any longer.
5.3 In the case that concerns on misconduct are raised, the journal commits to investigate the misconducts to protect research integrity.

6. Archive
The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research.

7. Open Access, article licensing, and copyright
7.1 All articles in the journal shall be published on an Open Access basis.
7.2 The Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) shall apply to all articles published in Fuzzy Information and Engineering. In order to reflect updates to the CC-BY license the publisher reserves the right to update its Copyright Policy and License Agreement.
7.3 Copyright in articles published in Fuzzy Information and Engineering shall remain vested in the authors or original copyright holders.