Research of Soil and Water Conservation is an academic journal focusing on earth science. It is supervised by Chinese Academy of Sciences, and sponsored by Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Science & Ministry of Water Conservation.
The scope of the journal covers: the current and development trends of soil erosion disasters such as soil erosion, droughts and floods, landslides, debris flows, and wind erosion; research on soil erosion patterns, and achievements and findings of relevant monitoring and forecasting technologies; soil erosion control measures and benefit analysis; research on eco-environment construction and socioeconomic sustainable development in soil and water loss areas; application of interdisciplinary new technologies, new theories, and new methods (e.g., computer, remote sensing engineering, and bioengineering) in the research and practice of soil and water conservation; the current situation of soil and water loss, and global research trends in soil and water conservation, etc.
The journal's aims include: tracking the development trend in the field of soil and water conservation, timely reporting the latest research results of scientific theory, technological innovation and practical application in the frontiers in soil and water conservation, and actively guiding and promoting the development of the discipline.
2. Submission Method
The journal adopts online submission. To submit manuscripts, authors need to visit the journal's official website (http://stbcyj.paperonce.org), click "REGISTRATION" on the homepage. After registration, authors can submit manuscripts. Registered authors can directly submit manuscripts after logging in.
3. Review Process
After the Editorial Department receives the manuscript, a notification will be sent to the author. The Editorial Department will initially conduct preliminary review on the manuscript. During the preliminary review, manuscripts with insufficient originality, suspicion of academic misconduct, severe scientific or technical defects, lack of valuable information, or not within the scope of the journal will be rejected.
For manuscripts passing preliminary review, the Editorial Department will invite suitable expert reviewers to conduct single-blind peer review. During this review process, the manuscript will be sent to 2 expert reviewers. If there are differences between the review opinions (acceptance/rejection/modification), the manuscript will be sent to its managing editor, who will decide the review result (acceptance/rejection/modification). The final review comments will be sent to the corresponding author, and the author is required to give a point-by-point response to the comments and resubmit a revised version of the manuscript. This process will be repeated till both the reviewers and managing editor are satisfied with the manuscript.
Authors could check the review results through the submission system after 1~2 months of submission. If the author has not received any review comments or acceptance notice from the journal after 3 months of submission, the author can submit the manuscript to other journals.
After the manuscript is accepted, it will be published within 6 to 10 months, and the Editorial Department will send 3 copies of the issue to the author. The Editorial Department reserves the right to make necessary text processing, technical processing and content abridgement to accepted manuscripts.
Special Note: For manuscripts submitted by the editorial board members or editors of this journal, they must follow all the same review and editing procedures. Peer review on those manuscripts will be conducted independently of the relevant editorial board members, editors and their research teams. All editorial board members and editors of the journal are not allowed to participate in the review, editing and acceptance decisions of the manuscripts written by themselves, their families or colleagues.
4. Academic Misconduct Detection
The journal only accepts original manuscripts that have never been published by any other journals, and manuscripts must not contain any content involving plagiarism. If the manuscript contains any materials that overlap with others' work, the authormust obtain all required permissions for the overlapping materials and properly identify them in the manuscript.
To prevent academic misconduct, the Editorial Department would check all manuscripts for repeated publication, multiple submissions, plagiarism and other issues related to academic misconduct. Manuscripts will be detected for academic misconduct in the following three stages:
In the process of preliminary review, the Editorial Department adopts the Literature Similarity Detection System provided by Wanfang Data to check the manuscripts. In addition, after a manuscript is accepted by the journal, it will be detected for academic misconduct by the AMLC System provided by CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure). Finally, before the publication of each issue, all articles of the issue would be checked again using the AMLC System.
5. Authorship Criteria
All authors are required to fill in and upload the "Author Contribution Statement Form" provided by the journal to declare their individual contribution to the article. All authors must have materially participated in the research or article preparation, and they should have made substantial contributions to the following aspects: conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data; drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; or final approval of the version to be submitted.
Changes to authorship: For manuscripts with multiple authors, if the first author is not the corresponding author, a note should be made. Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made before the manuscript is accepted. If the author list needs to be changed, the corresponding author must specify the reason and send a letter of confirmation from all authors to the Editorial Department to indicate that every author agrees to the change. When adding or removing authors, the confirmation letter should also include the acknowledgments of the added or removed authors.
6. Declaration of Interest
Authors are required to fill in and sign the form of "Conflict of Interest Statement" provided by the journal to disclose any conflicts of interest. A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author's institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence (or bias) the author's decisions, work, or manuscript. Authors should also disclose conflicts of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.
7. Correction and Retraction Policy
Articles published online or in print by Research of Soil and Water Conservatio are considered the final version, and we generally do not accept requests for correction or retraction. However, the Editorial Department would adopt corrections or retractions on published articles in the following cases:
Correction: If it is found that there are unintended scientific errors in the article, which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusions of the article, the Editorial Department will publish corrections in the journal as soon as possible, detailing 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 changes to the original article and the date of the 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.
Retraction: In the following cases, the Editorial Department would retract published articles and issue retraction statements:
1) If an article is found to have severe scientific errors, which makes the results and conclusions of the article unreliable;
2) For article suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the Editorial Department will initiate an investigation and issue a statement to inform readers of the risks associated with the article. After completion of investigation, the results of the investigation will be made public. If it is confirmed that the article involves academic misconduct, the Editorial Department will retract the article and issue a retraction statement.
8. Digital Archiving
Articles published in Research of Soil and Water Conservatio since its inception in 1985 have been digitally archived on the journal's official website. All relevant information is backed-up in the Editorial Department for security reason. Print-copy and digital copy of all issues are archived in the Editorial Department. All other relevant information (e.g., author's additional information and forms during submission) are also archived in the Editorial Department.
In addition to archiving on the journal's official website, all articles published in the journal are also stored in the databases of CNKI, Wanfang Data, Chaoxing, Chongqing VIP, Bookan, etc. We also allow authors to deposit all versions of their articles in an institutional or other repository of the authors' choice. However, it is necessary to indicate the publishing information in the metadata of the repository and use this as a recommended way of citation.
9. Charging Standards
The journal charges review fee and publication fee for accepted articles. The charging standard for the review fee is 200 CNY per article, and the publication fee is generally 300~400 CNY per page. The specific amount of the publication fee depends on the figures and charts in the page. If the page contains color pictures or charts that are complicated and need to be generated by professional institutions or personnel, the publication fee for that page will be charged up to 400 CNY.