Updated November 1, 2024

Energy Materials and Devices (the Journal) is sponsored by Tsinghua University, published by Tsinghua University Press (TUP), and hosted in SciOpen. Tsinghua University Press is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), adhering to its principles and guidelines on transparency and trusted publishing; however, the Journal will independently make decisions. Basically, the Editorial Office acts on behalf of the Journal, and makes decisions jointly with the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board except that they have competing interest.

Definition of Authorship

The Journal endorses the definition of an author by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (updated January 2024). Individuals (limited to humans) that meet all following four criteria could be recognized as authors:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Authors should be aware that authorship is more of a responsibility than honors. Individuals who conduct the work are responsible for identifying who meets these criteria, not the Journal. They should agree before submitting their work to the Journal. If the agreement cannot be reached, the Journal will consider unsubmitting or withdrawing the undecided manuscript, or retracting a published article. The institutions where the work was performed may also be informed about the situation.

The Journal assumes that all listed authors have agreed with the authorship, agreed with the contents, agreed with publishing in the Journal under the an OA license, obtained consent from the related institute and subjects, retained the copyright, or obtained permissions from the copyright holder.

Author’s Contribution

The contributions of each author should be clarified in the Declaration–Author Contribution Statement when submitted to the Journal. The CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) author statement is suggested for use. Note that the descriptions should also meet the criteria of authorship.

Corresponding Author

For manuscripts with multiple authors, one or more authors should be indicated as the corresponding author. The corresponding author primarily communicates with the Editorial Office, oversees the publication process, ensures the integrity of data and authorships, and is responsible for meeting all Journal’s administrative requirements. The Journal will address some of the correspondence (e.g., to inform of submission) to all listed authors if given valid E-mail addresses, but commonly contact and ask for a response from the corresponding authors only.

Changes to Authorship

Authors must ensure the presence, the order, and the role before submission. Changes to the authorship should be approved by all the authors, and the Editorial Office will review the request and decide whether to approve it. The Editorial Office should be informed in writing about any change to the author list, including adding, deleting, changing orders, and correcting the spelling. Uninformed changes to the author list may be considered misbehaviors. The Change of Authorship Request form (see below) could be used.

Changes at the revision stage are permitted only if valid reasons for these changes are explained, and a signed statement by all listed authors is given. The related document could be uploaded as Supplementary Not for Review.

Changes after acceptance of a manuscript are generally prohibited. In rare cases, such as spelling mistakes, or due to gender transition or religious conversion, the request could be considered. Credible and sufficient evidence should be provided.

Acknowledgments

Individuals who have participated in certain aspects but meet fewer than all four criteria could be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section. The Journal advises the authors to require permission from the individuals to be acknowledged. The use of AI could be reported in Acknowledgments or the Method.

ORCID

The Journal strongly recommends the use of ORCID iD for author identification. Authors, editors and peer reviewers could link their contribution to the Journal with ORCID iD through the following:

• Create a new account in the manuscript central that is associated with their ORCID iD; OR
• Log into the manuscript central using the Web of Science account to which the ORCID iD is connected; OR
• Log into SciOpen with ORCID iD; OR
• Simply address the ORCID iD for each author in the Title Page and Declaration.

The social relationship or bias of researchers may influence their reports of findings. Usually, it is difficult to judge whether such impact exist. The Journal, therefore, requires the authors to transparently disclose their affiliations, fundings, and conflicts of interest along with their articles to allow the readers to make their own judgment. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed when the manuscript is submitted to the Journal.

Conflicts of interest may also impact the peer review for reviewers and decision-making for editors. Before handling a manuscript, potential peer reviewers and editors should report any conflict of interest (See Peer-Review Policy–Conflict of Interest).

Potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include but are not limited to

• Funding: Research grants from the government and not-for-profit academic societies. It should be declared in the Funding section with the correct funder’s name and the grant number.
• Financial relationships: Benefits, gifts, or services received from commercial organizations or companies who may benefit from or lose through the publication of an article. Employment (especially when an author’s affiliation is a commercial company), patents (include issued or pending), stock ownership, consultancies, equipment and materials (offered for free by a commercial company), etc., should be declared.
• Editorial relationships: If the authors are members of the Journal’s editorial board or a guest editor for the current Special Issue during the peer-review process of a manuscript, they should never be involved in the decision-making and review of this manuscript. It needs to be declared who and what roles they play.
• Non-financial relationships: Academic commitment, personal relations, political or religious beliefs, etc. They should be declared if such relations are strong enough to be a competing interest.

An ICMJE Disclosure Form or Conflict of Interest Policy by WAME may assist in determining what should be disclosed.

To maintain a correct scientific record, authors have the responsibility to ensure the accuracy of the content before submission to the Journal. The editors and the publisher should correct any scientifically relevant errors in published papers. Authors can revise the manuscript pre-acceptance, and check the full content post-acceptance but before final publication (i.e., proofreading).

After the final publication, substantial changes could only be updated by corrections; in some extreme circumstances, this may result in retraction. Any post-publication correction is not “silent”; the original contents will be maintained on the platform, marked, and linked to a corrigendum/erratum, editor’s note, expression of concern, or retraction note. The reason will be given in the correction note to inform all readers that a significant change has been made and that the updated version is available on the website. Notification will be sent to all relevant indexing databases to ensure that they update their records.

The Journal will conduct investigations following the COPE principles and guidelines if there is suspicion of misconduct or alleged fraud during pre- or post-publication. The authors will be contacted through their given E-mails if valid concerns arise. The authors have the obligation to cooperate with the editor, including providing evidence and corrected materials. Based on whether the evidence is adequate to support the article’s publication, the Journal and the publisher will adopt the corresponding measure.

Pre-Publication Revisions

Commonly, revisions pre-acceptance to improve the quality of the manuscript are recommended. Only revisions that may result in integrity issues will be refused or investigated, such as intending to circumvent academic integrity checks, changing the authorship with no appropriate reasons or undeclared (See Authorship and Contribution–Changes to Authorship). Untrustable manuscripts will be:

• Rejected and unsubmitted to the author if it is not determined; OR
• Withdrawn if it has been accepted but not published yet.

Post-Publication Corrections

The Journal is committed to correcting any error introduced by either the authors or the publisher. Corrections may be suggested by the authors, readers, or the Editorial Office, but they will be finally approved by the Editorial Office.

A correction may take place when there are

• Errors in scientific contents (e.g., missing sections/tables/figures, errors in raw data/images/tables, and added/deleted/replaced references); OR
• Errors in non-scientific content (e.g., authorship, funding, and data availability); OR
• Typos making the article unreadable.

A corrigendum usually refers to the correction of errors caused by the authors. An erratum is usually released when a production error caused by the Journal occurs. In both cases, authors will be informed; ideally, authors would agree with the wording of the corrigendum/errata, but this is not a requirement.

If a correction request comes from the authors, it should be submitted by the corresponding author with the approval of all co-authors, especially when it is related to scientific or nonscientific content. The original article title, author list, link to the article, and correction details should be included in the communication with the Journal. A new manuscript to address the correction is strongly recommended when it relates to scientific content. If new materials that add to/replace the original article probably change the scientific findings, they must be submitted for peer review. Regarding nonscientific content, the Editorial Office will carefully review the evidence to avoid ethical misconduct. Authors should understand that the Editorial Office may refuse the author’s correcting request, express editorial concerns, or retract this article after investigation.

If a correction request comes from the readers or the Editorial Office, the Editorial Office will investigate it in collaboration with the authors. The authors’ institution may be informed when there is a suspected research integrity issue.

Expression of Concern

When an investigation of the Journal contents that have been publicly available online is ongoing, or the evidence is inconclusive, an Expression of Concern may be issued. Editors believe informing readers about potential content issues is essential to uphold the Journal’s transparency. The Journal will express concerns when

• There is a suspicion of academic misconduct, yet the evidence is insufficient to determine it; OR
• The results of the study are suspected to be unreliable, but the authors refuse to explain or correct them, meanwhile the authors’ institution is unwilling to initiate an investigation; OR
• Conflicting interpretations exist among the authors; OR
• An investigation is in progress, and conclusions may require an extended period.

Retractions

The Journal adheres to the COPE’s Retraction Guidelines for handling retractions. A summary is given below:

The main purpose of retraction is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity rather than to punish the authors. Retractions could be requested by an article’s author(s), by an institution, by readers, or by the editor. The Journal may retract publication even if all or some of the authors do not agree.

The original publication will be retained on the platform with a “Retracted” watermark, and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked paper.

The Journal considers retracting a publication if

• Clear evidence reveals that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (e.g., of data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation);
• It constitutes plagiarism;
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication);
• It contains material or data without authorization for use;
• Copyright has been infringed, or there is some other serious legal issue (e.g., libel and privacy);
• It reports unethical research;
• It has been published solely based on a compromised or manipulated peer-review process;
• The author(s) failed to disclose a major conflict of interest that, in the editor’s view, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.

Notices of retraction will

• Be linked to the retracted article wherever possible (i.e., in all online versions);
• Clearly identify the retracted article (e.g., by including the title and authors in the retraction heading or citing the retracted article);
• Be clearly identified as a retraction (i.e., distinct from other types of correction or comment);
• Be published promptly to minimize harmful effects;
• Be freely available to all readers (i.e., not behind access barriers or available only to subscribers);
• State who is retracting the article;
• State the reason(s) for retraction;
• Be objective, factual, and avoid inflammatory language.

Corrections or expressions of concern are usually issued instead of retractions if

• The authorship is disputed, but there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings;
• The main findings of the work are still reliable, and corrections could sufficiently address errors or concerns;
• An editor has inconclusive evidence to support retraction, or is awaiting additional information such as from an institutional investigation;
• Author conflicts of interest have been reported to the Journal after publication, but in the editor’s view, these are not likely to have influenced the interpretations, recommendations, or conclusions of the article.

Removal of the Published Content

The Journal will only consider the removal of a published article from the website and relevant dataset when the Editorial Office believes its availability to the public may pose a risk of substantial harm to the public health or safety, or it infringes a third party’s legal right. A statement will be therefore addressed on why the content has been removed.

Authors may raise appeals over the conduct of editors and/or peer reviewers, or pre-/post-publication decisions. Authors could send their appeals to the Editorial Office or personally to the Editor-in-Chief. Substantial evidence or new information must be presented. Appeals without any evidence will be ignored. Only one appeal will be considered per manuscript, and the Editor-in-Chief’s decision on the appeal is final.

Readers who have concerns/complaints about published papers may contact the Editorial Office and simultaneously present the details of the concerns/complaints and the evidence. Complaints with personal criticisms of the author or a lack of evidence regarding the research’s integrity, and ethical or legal aspects will not be considered. The Editorial Office will investigate this in accordance with COPE guidelines.

Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. The manuscript will be rejected or retracted once plagiarism is confirmed.

All submissions will be checked using iThenticate. Significant overlap may be considered plagiarism, while the authors will have a chance to explain or edit. If plagiarism concerns are raised post-publication, an investigation and action will be taken based on the COPE principles on plagiarism.

Reuse of text should be appropriately cited or quoted, even if the source is the authors themselves. Authors should obtain permission from a third party to reproduce or adapt their materials prior to publication, and clearly address them along with the materials in an appropriate expression.

The Journal follows the COPE position statement and the Ethical and Practical Guidelines for the Use of Generative AI in the Publication Process released by STM regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools. For everyone who may be involved in the academic publication, the Journal adopt below policies and will continuously monitor the development and adjust or refine this policy when appropriate.

For authors

• GenAI should not be listed or cited as an author or co-author.
• GenAI cannot be used to create, alter, or manipulate original research data and images.
• GenAI can be used to help authors in formatting, language editing, and correcting.
• Authors should disclose the use of GenAI at submission in the cover letter and provide details of how GenAI was used within the Method, Acknowledgments, or other related sections.
• Any undisclosed use of GenAI is possibly considered as misbehavior.

For the editorial team

• The editorial team (including the Editorial Office and Editorial Members) could use trusted GenAI platforms to perform integrity checks, such as copyright infringement, unauthorized reuse, paraphrasing, or plagiarism, if only they ensure that intellectual property and privacy are protected.
• The Editorial Team should not fully rely on GenAI outcomes.
• If the Journal is informed about the undisclosed use of GenAI by the author, the Editorial Office will initiate an investigation.

For peer reviewers

• GenAI should not be used to create a review of a paper.
• Manuscripts under review, including supplementary material, should never be uploaded to publicly available GenAI services.
• If the peer reviewers suspect undisclosed use of GenAI by the authors, they should inform the Editorial Office.

Tsinghua University Press, the publisher, is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of the published content in the Journal, even after the Journal is ceased or transferred to another publisher.

Concurrent Submission and Duplicate Publication

Authors should not submit the same manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously without disclosure and permission from the Editorial Office, even in different languages. Once the Journal is informed, an investigation will be prompted, and the peer review will be suspended during this period. If misconduct is confirmed, the manuscript will be rejected, withdrawn, or retracted.

The Journal generally does not accept duplicate publication. Manuscripts reporting a work that largely has been published will be recognized as plagiarism.

Prior Publication

Preliminary reports such as abstracts or posters displayed at scientific meetings, and preprints on trusted preprint servers like ArXiv will not be considered duplicate publications. The Journal encourages such rapid communication among researchers, but the authors should be aware that they may be recognized by the peer reviewers. If such a prior publication is publicly available, the authors should inform the Journal. The Editorial Office will carefully choose peer reviewers and responsible editors in consideration of conflicts of interest, and determine whether it should be disclosed on publishing.

Secondary Publication

The Journal aims to publish original works. Secondary publication is not accepted unless the Editorial Office believes it greatly benefits the public.

The Journal encourages data sharing and endorses the principles of open sciences. All original research manuscripts should contain a Data Availability Statement to address whether or not, how, and to whom the data could be shared or obtained. Sufficient details should be provided in the Materials and Methods section or the Supplementary materials to allow replication of the study.

Cost occurs in every aspect of academic publishing. To ensure the sustainability and quality of the publishing services, the article processing charge (APC) is charged for Open Access journals instead of the subscription fee. The Journal is an Open Access journal funded by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua University Press, authors are waived from APC for Open Access publication before December 31, 2026 (submission time).

All articles published in the Journal are copyrighted to the authors (©The Authors). The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license is applied to all articles published in the Journal by default, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. If authors are requested to publish their works under the other licenses by their institution or the funder, they should consult the Editorial Office before submission.

Tsinghua University Press, the publisher, is a signatory to STM Permissions Guidelines. The guidelines allow the reuse of restricted numbers of contents among the signatory publishers without charging. The details can be found in the guidelines.

The Journal endorses the Global Principles on Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly:

• AI system developers, operators, and deployers should not be crawling, ingesting, or using the Journal’s content without express authorization.
• Use of the Journal’s content by AI systems for training, surfacing, or synthesizing is prohibited, even for OA content.

The Journal has no advertisement business and will not post any advertisement.

Manuscripts that report scientific contents, whose article types are original research, review, short communications, etc., will be sent for peer review. In extreme circumstances (e.g., reports on emerging events related to public health and safety), the standard peer-review process will be omitted; editorial notes will be published aside the article to address the reason and what review it received.

The editors and the peer reviewers should adhere to the principles of COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

Peer-Review Model

The Journal conducts a pre-publication, double anonymized peer review. Reviewer identity is not made visible to the author, author identity is not made visible to the reviewer, and reviewer and author identity is visible to the (decision-making) editor. Review is facilitated by the Journal, and the editors mediate all interactions between the reviewers and authors. The peer reviews are not published and owned by the authors of the reviews.

In a few instances, when the submitted manuscript has been released as a preprint, a single anonymized peer review will be conducted with the rest policy identically.

Peer-Review Process

All submissions will be technically checked by the Editorial Office, and the plagiarism check will also be performed using iThenticate. Only submissions that meet the basic requirements of writing and ethics and are within the Journal’s Aims & Scope could be sent for scientific assessment.

The editorial board members of the Journal (i.e., Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors) act as scientific editors. A scientific editor will be assigned to handle the manuscript. They evaluate the manuscript and decide whether it is worth peer review. The scientific editor selects external reviewers based on their research area and publications, and decides whom to assign. Diversity will be considered when choosing reviewers, including geographical regions and genders.

The authors could alternatively recommend reviewers or request some exclusion from consideration. The scientific editors will consider such suggestions and requests of reviewers only if given proper reasons and meet the research integrity requirements, but they are not obligated to fulfill them all.

All anonymized materials will be sent for peer review, including the Main Document (without identifiable author information), Table and Figure (if uploaded independently), and Supplementary File for Review. Title Page and Declarations, and Supplementary File NOT for Review will NOT be sent for external peer review.

A minimum of two peer reviews are expected. When it is not possible to obtain two independent peer reviews, the scientific editor may act as a second reviewer or make a decision based on one report; if only the scientific editor has sufficient knowledge in this area, the report is trustable, and the reviewer is not suggested by the author.

Decision-Making

A manuscript may receive a decision of Reject at any stage throughout the peer-review process. It could be made by the Editorial Office after technical and plagiarism checks or by the handling scientific editor at the other stages.

Decisions of Accept and Revision (minor/major) could only be made by a scientific editor.

Conflict of Interest

The Journal realizes financial and non-financial conflicts of interest may lead to peer-review misconduct. All scientific editors and potential peer reviewers should inform the Journal of any possible conflict of interest before being assigned to handle or accept an invitation to review a manuscript.

If a potential peer reviewer has a conflict of interest, they will be excluded from consideration.

If a scientific editor is listed as the author, they will be excluded from the entire review and decision process (i.e., they will not be selected to handle or review the manuscript), and the handling editors and reviewers will be invisible to them.

If a scientific editor is considered to have a potential conflict of interest (e.g., collaborating closely with the authors in recent years, or coming from the same department of an institute), they will be excluded from handling or reviewing the manuscript.

Confidentiality and AI Usage

For the manuscript they handle or review, all editors and peer reviewers should keep confidential before it is published. They should neither talk about or share with others, nor use the data before publication without permission from the author. They should also avoid intended personal contact with authors and revealing their roles in peer review when they have recognized the authors.

For the authors, the communication with the Journal should be treated as confidential unless consent has been received to share.

The editors and peer reviewers should consult the Journal’s policy on GenAI Tools before using AI-assisted tools (See Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Tools).

Special-Issue Process

The Journal occasionally organizes special issues focusing on certain topics (e.g., research hotspots). Commonly, no more than three guest editors, who are experts in this topic and mostly are editorial board members, are invited by the Editor-in-Chief. They act as scientific editors to handle the manuscript submitted as part of this issue, and should follow the same conflict of interest policy as scientific editors. A submitted special-issue manuscript will be assessed to determine whether it is within the scope of the certain special issue. Then, all submissions will be assessed according to the Journal’s criteria and subject to the peer-review policy in the same way as the regular submissions. The Editorial Office will closely monitor the entire process to avoid integrity issues.