Publication misconduct refers to practices that undermine the integrity, reliability, or transparency of the scholarly record. Climate-Adaptive Materials Engineering is committed to addressing suspected publication misconduct in a fair, proportionate, and confidential manner, in accordance with applicable ethical standards and the Core Practices of COPE.

Examples of publication misconduct include, but are not limited to:

• Plagiarism: Presenting another person's words, ideas, data, images, or other intellectual work as one's own without appropriate acknowledgment.

• Fabrication or falsification: Inventing research data or results, or manipulating, altering, or selectively reporting research materials or findings in a manner that misrepresents the research.

• Duplicate or redundant publication: Publishing or submitting substantially overlapping work without appropriate disclosure, justification, or cross-reference.

• Inappropriate authorship: Including individuals who do not meet authorship criteria or excluding individuals who made substantial contributions to the work.

• Peer-review manipulation: Attempting to interfere improperly with the peer-review process, including the use of fabricated reviewer identities or inappropriate attempts to influence reviewers.

• Undisclosed conflicts of interest: Failing to disclose relationships or interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or publication process.

Concerns about possible misconduct may arise during editorial screening, peer review, or after publication through communications from authors, reviewers, readers, institutions, or other parties.

Climate-Adaptive Materials Engineering may use appropriate screening tools, including iThenticate or similar services, to identify potential plagiarism or substantial textual overlap. Similarity reports are evaluated in context and do not, by themselves, establish a finding of plagiarism or misconduct.

When a concern is identified, the journal may request relevant explanations, original data, supporting documentation, or other research materials. Where appropriate, the journal may seek independent expert advice or contact the relevant institution or organization.

Depending on the nature and seriousness of the concern, possible actions may include:

• Rejection of a manuscript before publication;

• Correction of a published article where appropriate;

• Publication of an expression of concern;

• Retraction of a published article;

• Notification of relevant institutions or other appropriate bodies; and

• Other proportionate actions considered appropriate under the circumstances.

Investigations will be conducted as fairly and confidentially as reasonably possible. The journal will consider relevant evidence and provide authors with an appropriate opportunity to respond to allegations. Individuals who raise concerns in good faith will be treated fairly and, where reasonably possible, their confidentiality will be respected.

Editors of Climate-Adaptive Materials Engineering are responsible for maintaining the integrity, fairness, and quality of the editorial and peer-review process.

1. Fairness and Impartiality

Editors should evaluate manuscripts objectively and consistently, without discrimination based on authors' nationality, ethnicity, gender, institutional affiliation, career stage, or other irrelevant characteristics. Editorial decisions should be based on the scholarly quality, relevance, originality, and validity of the submitted work.

2. Peer Review Integrity

Editors should select reviewers with appropriate expertise and take reasonable steps to avoid conflicts of interest. The journal's reviewers should provide objective, constructive, and confidential assessments.

Editors may seek additional reviews when necessary and should monitor the peer-review process to ensure that manuscripts receive appropriate and independent evaluation.

3. Confidentiality

Editors must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts, reviewer identities and reports, unpublished research information, and other confidential materials obtained during the editorial process. Such information should not be used for personal advantage or disclosed to unauthorized persons.

4. Conflict of Interest Management

Editors should identify and appropriately manage actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest. An editor should recuse themselves from handling a manuscript when a conflict could reasonably affect editorial impartiality, and an alternative editor may be assigned where appropriate.

5. Upholding Academic Integrity

Editors should respond appropriately to suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, authorship disputes, peer-review manipulation, and other publication ethics concerns. Where necessary, editors may initiate an investigation and take proportionate action in accordance with COPE guidance and the journal's policies.

6. Transparent Communication

Editors should communicate editorial decisions and relevant procedures clearly and professionally. Decision letters should provide appropriate information to authors, while maintaining the confidentiality of reviewers and other participants in the editorial process.

Climate-Adaptive Materials Engineering follows the authorship principles outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), where applicable. Authorship should reflect substantial intellectual contributions to the work and should be accompanied by responsibility for the published research.

Authorship Criteria

Individuals should generally meet all applicable authorship criteria, including:

1. Making substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;

2. Drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content;

3. Approving the final version to be published; and

4. Accepting accountability for the work and helping ensure that questions concerning its accuracy or integrity are appropriately addressed.

Author Approval and Responsibility

All listed authors should approve the manuscript before submission and should agree to the submitted author list. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the work is original, accurately reported, and appropriately attributed.

Corresponding Author Responsibilities

The corresponding author serves as the principal contact with the journal and should ensure that:

• All authors have approved the submitted manuscript and author list;

• Relevant editorial communications are appropriately shared with co-authors;

• Required declarations, including funding and conflict-of-interest information, are accurately provided; and

• Any significant concerns about the research or publication are communicated to the journal when appropriate.

Changes in Authorship

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission should be supported by an appropriate explanation and agreement from the affected authors. The journal may request written confirmation from the authors before approving a change in authorship.

Contributors

Individuals who contribute to a study but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be appropriately acknowledged where relevant, subject to their permission.

Copyright and Licensing

Articles published by Climate-Adaptive Materials Engineering are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, unless otherwise stated for specific material.

Authors retain appropriate rights in their work while granting the rights necessary for publication and distribution under the CC BY 4.0 license. The CC BY 4.0 license permits others to share and adapt the published work, including for commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the original authors and source, a link to the license is provided, and any changes are indicated.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that they have the necessary rights and permissions for third-party materials included in their manuscript. Material that is not covered by the article's CC BY 4.0 license should be clearly identified, and appropriate permission should be obtained where required.

Data and Research Records

Authors should maintain appropriate research records and supporting materials and should be able to provide relevant information or documentation when reasonably requested during an editorial or research integrity investigation.

Funding and Conflicts of Interest

Authors should disclose all relevant sources of funding and any actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest that could influence the research or its interpretation.

Authors may request withdrawal of a manuscript before it is formally published. Withdrawal requests should normally be submitted by the corresponding author and should include a clear explanation of the reason for withdrawal.

The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors are aware of and agree with the withdrawal request. The journal may request confirmation from the authors where necessary.

The journal may also withdraw a manuscript before publication in exceptional circumstances, including serious publication ethics concerns, suspected misconduct, significant procedural problems, or technical problems that cannot reasonably be resolved.

Withdrawal before publication does not remove any applicable ethical, legal, copyright, confidentiality, or contractual obligations of the authors.

A published article may be retracted when substantial problems are identified that compromise the reliability or integrity of the scholarly record. Reasons for retraction may include major errors that invalidate the conclusions, fabrication or falsification of data, plagiarism, duplicate publication, serious ethical violations, or other significant forms of research or publication misconduct.

Retraction decisions will be made in accordance with applicable COPE guidance and following appropriate editorial assessment and investigation. Concerns may be raised by authors, institutions, reviewers, readers, or other parties.

When an article is retracted, the journal will normally:

1. Publish a separate retraction notice that clearly identifies the retracted article and explains the reason or reasons for retraction;

2. Maintain a permanent link between the retraction notice and the original article;

3. Clearly identify the original article as retracted, including through a watermark or other appropriate indication where technically feasible; and

4. Preserve the bibliographic record of the article so that the history of the scholarly record remains transparent.

Retraction of an article does not necessarily imply that every author was responsible for the circumstances leading to the retraction.

A correction notice may be issued when an error or omission in a published article affects the accuracy, clarity, or completeness of the scholarly record but does not warrant retraction.

Examples may include:

• Errors or omissions in data presentation;

• Incorrect or incomplete references or citations;

• Errors in author information or affiliations;

• Methodological or analytical errors that do not invalidate the overall conclusions; and

• Significant production or formatting errors that affect the interpretation of the article.

Where appropriate, the online article may be corrected and a separate correction notice may be published and permanently linked to the corrected article. The correction record should clearly describe the nature of the change.

Removal of a published article is an exceptional measure and will generally be considered only when serious legal, ethical, privacy, or other substantial concerns cannot reasonably be addressed through correction or retraction.

Possible circumstances may include:

• A legal or court order requiring removal;

• Serious copyright or intellectual property infringement that cannot reasonably be resolved by correction;

• Publication of confidential or personally identifiable information that creates serious and continuing harm and cannot reasonably be corrected; or

• Other substantial and demonstrable legal or ethical concerns requiring removal.

Where an article is removed, the journal will preserve the bibliographic record and provide an appropriate notice explaining the removal where legally and ethically possible.

Article Processing Charges (APCs), where applicable, are generally non-refundable when an accepted manuscript or published article is withdrawn, retracted, or removed because of academic misconduct or serious ethical violations. The journal or publisher may determine otherwise in exceptional circumstances.

Research involving human participants, human data, animals, or other regulated subjects must comply with applicable ethical, legal, and institutional requirements. Authors should provide relevant ethics approval information at submission where applicable.

Human Subjects

Research involving human participants should respect their rights, privacy, safety, dignity, and welfare. Where applicable, studies should comply with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and relevant national or institutional requirements.

Where ethics committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval is required, authors should provide the name of the approving institution and the relevant approval or reference number. Where informed consent is required, authors should obtain appropriate consent and describe the relevant procedures in the manuscript. If an ethics committee has formally waived approval or consent requirements, the authors should provide an appropriate explanation.

Animal Subjects

Research involving animals should comply with applicable institutional, national, and international standards for animal welfare. Authors should take appropriate measures to minimize pain, distress, and unnecessary use of animals and should apply the principles of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement (the 3Rs) where applicable.

Where ethical approval is required, authors should provide the name of the relevant committee or institution and the approval or reference number in the manuscript.

Climate-Adaptive Materials Engineering recognizes that artificial intelligence (AI) tools can support certain aspects of research and manuscript preparation. However, AI tools cannot assume authorship or accountability for scholarly work. Human authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and ethical compliance of their manuscripts.

Permitted Uses

AI tools may be used for appropriate supportive purposes, such as:

• Language editing, grammar, spelling, and stylistic improvement;

• Translation or language assistance;

• Organizing or summarizing information, provided that authors independently verify the relevant sources and content;

• Technical, formatting, or accessibility assistance; and

• Other supportive uses that do not replace the authors' intellectual responsibility for the research.

Prohibited Uses

AI tools must not be used to fabricate or falsify research data, results, references, images, experimental evidence, or other scholarly content. Authors must not use AI to create misleading evidence, conceal plagiarism, or otherwise circumvent academic integrity requirements.

Authors should also avoid entering confidential, unpublished, personal, proprietary, or otherwise restricted information into AI systems where doing so would violate applicable confidentiality, privacy, contractual, institutional, or legal requirements.

Disclosure of AI Use

Substantive use of AI tools in the preparation or development of a manuscript should be disclosed when relevant. The disclosure should identify the nature and purpose of the AI assistance sufficiently to allow transparency and reproducibility.

Routine use of tools for basic spelling, grammar, formatting, or language polishing generally does not require a detailed disclosure unless otherwise required by the journal or applicable research policies.

Author Responsibility

Authors remain responsible for verifying all AI-assisted content, including factual statements, citations, data interpretation, images, and other outputs. Authors are also responsible for ensuring appropriate attribution, originality, copyright compliance, confidentiality, privacy, and intellectual property compliance.

AI tools and systems must not be listed as authors or co-authors because they cannot take responsibility for the content, approve the final manuscript, or respond to questions concerning the integrity of the work.

Climate-Adaptive Materials Engineering accepts manuscripts that have previously been posted on recognized non-peer-reviewed preprint servers. The posting of a manuscript on a preprint server does not, in itself, constitute prior publication and does not prevent the manuscript from being considered for publication in this journal.

Authors must disclose the existence of any preprint version at the time of submission and provide the name of the preprint server and the corresponding DOI or URL, where available.

To be considered for publication:

1. The manuscript must not have been formally published in a peer-reviewed journal or other primary publication.

2. The manuscript must not be under consideration for publication by another journal at the same time.

3. Authors must have the necessary rights to submit the manuscript for journal publication, and the preprint posting must not violate any copyright, licensing, confidentiality, or other third-party rights.

4. The existence of the preprint must be clearly disclosed to the journal during submission.

Examples of recognized preprint servers include, but are not limited to, Research Square, arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, SSRN, ChemRxiv, and Zenodo.

Manuscripts previously posted as preprints will be subject to the same editorial assessment and peer-review process as other submissions. A preprint is not considered a substitute for peer review or formal journal publication, and its existence will not, by itself, determine the editorial decision.

If a manuscript is accepted and published, authors are encouraged to update the preprint record with a citation and link to the final published Version of Record.

Failure to disclose a relevant preprint may be considered a publication ethics concern.

The journal is committed to maintaining editorial independence and academic integrity.

Editorial decisions are based exclusively on:

• Scholarly merit;
• Originality;
• Relevance to the journal's scope;
• Methodological rigor;
• Ethical compliance.

Editorial decisions are made independently by the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board and are not influenced by:

• Publication fees;
• Waiver requests;
• Advertising;
• Sponsorship;
• Commercial interests;
• Publisher interests.

The publisher shall not interfere with editorial evaluations, peer review processes, acceptance decisions, or publication decisions.

All manuscripts are evaluated according to the same academic and ethical standards.

The journal is committed to handling complaints and appeals fairly, transparently, and in accordance with COPE guidelines.

Complaints

Complaints may relate to:

• Editorial processes;
• Peer review procedures;
• Publication ethics;
• Alleged misconduct;
• Author, reviewer, editor, or publisher conduct.

Complaints should be submitted in writing to the Editorial Office with sufficient details and supporting evidence.

Appeals

Authors may appeal editorial decisions if they believe that a decision was based on factual errors, procedural irregularities, or significant misunderstandings of the manuscript.

Appeals must:

• Be submitted within 30 days of the editorial decision;
• Clearly explain the grounds for appeal;
• Provide relevant supporting information.

Appeals are reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief or an independent editor who was not involved in the original decision. Additional peer review may be requested when appropriate.(contact@explorerpress.com)

The final decision following the appeal process shall be considered binding.

The journal follows COPE recommendations when handling complaints and appeals.

The journal does not accept or publish commercial advertising in any form, including website advertisements, sponsored content, promotional materials, or paid advertisements.

As the journal does not carry advertisements, no advertising revenue is associated with editorial decision-making.

Editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly merit, peer review outcomes, ethical standards, and the journal's editorial policies.

The publisher, editors, and editorial board operate independently of any commercial influence.

Should the journal's advertising practices change in the future, this policy will be updated accordingly.