Nano Biomedicine and Engineering (Nano Biomed. Eng.) has the responsibility to maintain the rigour of scientific research and protect the researchers’ intellectual property rights. In order to comply with the Publishing Ethics Committee of journal publishing ethics rules, the Publication Ethics for Nano Biomed. Eng. has been formulated as follows:

Ethical guidelines for journal publication

Each peer-reviewed article published in Nano Biomed. Eng. is an approval of the progress of scientific research in the fields of nanotechnology, biology, medicine and engineering. 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. Therefore, it is very important that all parties involved in the act of the publication, including the author, journal editors, peer reviewers, publishers, and social organization, should perform the Publication Ethics as the moral behavior standards. Nano Biomed. Eng. recognizes the Publication Ethics as our moral behavior, and takes the duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing extremely seriously.

1 Guideline of the paper

1.1 The paper published in Nano Biomed. Eng. should be the original scientific paper and the content should be relevant with the journal scope.

1.2 A paper should contain sufficient detail, such as the experimental methods and materials, and the data must be true. 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 issue 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 have used the work and/or words of others, that has to be appropriately cited or quoted.

1.5 Please give clear indication of research funding sources in the paper, if the research work is funded.

1.6 All papers submitted to Nano Biomed. Eng. will be screened for plagiarism by Crosscheck software iThenticate. 

1.7 After the publication of the paper, the copyright belongs to the authors.

1.8  Nano Biomed. Eng. utilizes a single-blind peer review process in which the reviewer’s name and information is withheld from the author.

2 Duties of authors

2.1 Authors should cherish the opportunity of publication on Nano Biomed. Eng. and maintain the reputation of Nano Biomed. Eng.

2.2 Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and it is unacceptable. When submitting the manuscript, all authors should certify the manuscript is the original one and hasn’t published on or submitted to other journals.

2.3 For transparency, we recommend authors to outline their individual contributions to the research and article using the CRediT roles: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Roles/Writing - original draft; Writing - review & editing. More details about the CRediT. 

The statements of Author Contributions should be formatted with the names of authors first and CRediT role(s) following. This part should be placed at the end of the text and before Acknowledgements.

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 Please indicate one author as the corresponding author when there are 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 are established, they should not be altered without the permission from all the living authors of that article. Due to a result of special circumstances, if it is necessary to change, 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. It can be modified after EIC approval.

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 conflicts 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 For Nano Biomed. Eng., the EIC is ultimately accountable for acceptance or rejection of an article.

3.2 Articles submitted by the EIC or an Associate Editor (AE) shall be handled and reviewed by another EIC or AE of Nano Biomed. Eng.

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 by the authors in its early or to other manuscripts contemporaneous period. The editor can directly reject the manuscript if it is not accord with the requirement of Nano Biomed. Eng. 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. The editor and any editorial staff member 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 Editors should exercise their responsibilities based on the EIC or AE's suggestion that whether the paper needs to be modified or it can be published. No matter what the outcome of the review is, reviewers’ comments and marked articles are normally returned to the author in any case.

3.6 Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. It is essential that the editor assures that the anonymity of the reviewers is protected during the review process. Editors shall not disclose the contents of manuscripts under review. Everything within this review process must be done openly, but the reviewer anonymity policy can protect the review results from the interference of authors.

3.7 Editors should respect the opinions of EIC and AE. The editor 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 the article will be accepted if the indicated changes are made or the article will be resubmitted to the reviewers for further review.

3.9 Once the EIC confirms that the manuscript can be published, the editor should prepare for publication as soon as possible.

3.10 The submitted manuscript written by editor him/herself should be handled by other editors or AE who has no conflict of interest.

3.11 If there is sufficient evidence to show that the 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. So, Nano Biomed. Eng. 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, 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 partner of the paper affecting the evaluation impartiality.

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 be explained sufficiently with the basis of his (her) judgment in order to be understood by the editor and the author. The facts or opinions in the evaluation comments shall be attached to related literature to avoid lacking basis assertions.

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 Punitive measure

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.

5.2 After screened, if the paper is found to have more than 25% content similar to the previous published journal articles, the paper will be regarded as plagiarism and will be rejected.

5.3 In case an author has submitted the paper under consideration to another journal, the paper will be rejected. Nano Biomed. Eng. will inform the institute of the author and other journals within the field of biomedicine and nanomaterials, and will reject to publish all the papers submitted by this author ever since.

6 Post-publication

Authors will have chance to check the symbols, formulas, and figure legends before the final publication, for these may accidentally have been changed during typesetting. After final publication, substantial changes in content such as new results and corrected values are not allowed without the approval of the Editor-in-Chief. Erratum might be needed for further corrections.

7 Corrections and Retractions

If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud, the journals and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after an investigation, there are valid concerns, the authors concerned will be contacted under their given email address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the journal and/or Publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

(1) If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.

(2) If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:

• an erratum/correction may be placed with the article.
• an editor’s note or editorial expression of concern may be placed with the article.
• or, in severe cases, retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published correction, expression of concern or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted” and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

-The author’s institution may be informed.

-A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

8 Archive

The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of the published content in Nano Biomed. Eng.

9 Open access, article licensing, copyright, and APC

9.1 All articles in Nano Biomed. Eng. shall be published on an open access basis.

9.2 The Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) shall apply to all articles published in Nano Biomed. Eng.

9.3 Copyright in articles published in Nano Biomed. Eng. shall remain vested in the authors or original copyright holders.

9.4 Nano Biomed. Eng. is a subsidized open access journal where the editorial office pays for the publishing costs incurred by the journal. Authors do not have to pay any article processing charge or Open Access Publication.

10 Ethical statement

10.1 Human subjects

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must:

• Include a statement confirming the study has obtained necessary ethics approval and consent from relevant ethics committee.
• Include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee's reference number if appropriate.

10.2 Informed consent

If your research or manuscript contains any individual person's data in any form (such as any individual details, images or videos), informed consent for publication must be obtained from that person (or parent/guardian if the participant is a minor or incapable or legal representative).

10.3 Animal Experiments

Research involving experimentation on animals must adhere to high ethical and animal welfare standards. If your study involving animal experiments, your article must include a statement confirming authors' compliance with all relevant ethical regulations and providing name of the ethical committee approving these experiments.

11. Advertisement policies

All advertisements are subject to approval of the publisher, editors, or publishing partners which reserves the right to reject or cancel any advertisement at any time.

Statements in advertisements should carry no direct or implied disparagement of another product. There should be no statements that are misleading, exaggerated, or contrary to proven facts. Advertisements may not be indecent, obscene, or defamatory.

The principle of maintaining editorial independence from commercial influence underlies decision-making. Editorial decisions are not influenced by advertising.

Advertisements must be clearly identifiable as advertisements and clearly distinguishable from editorial content. Tsinghua University Press will not publish advertisements in the form of editorial content.