The core of academic publishing ethics lies in safeguarding the integrity of the research record and the honesty of scholarly discourse. Explorer Press Ltd (EP) is committed to meeting and upholding ethical conduct standards at all stages of the publication process. We require all authors, editors, reviewers, and participants involved in publishing to comply with the guidelines and Core Practices set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

• Publication Misconduct

Academic misconduct constitutes a severe violation of scholarly integrity principles, compromising not only the reliability of specific research but also eroding the credibility of the entire academic system. Smart Ship Technologies maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward all forms of academic misconduct and has established rigorous mechanisms for its identification and resolution.

Types of academic misconduct include but are not limited to:

• Plagiarism: Appropriating others' ideas, text, or work as one's own, fundamentally violating academic originality.

• Data fabrication/falsification: Manipulating, inventing, or selectively omitting/altering data to support false conclusions.

• Redundant publication: Submitting/publishing articles substantially overlapping with the author's prior works without proper citation, wasting peer-review resources and distorting scholarly records.

• Inappropriate authorship: Listing individuals without substantive contributions as authors (guest authorship) or excluding contributors (ghost authorship), undermining accurate attribution.

Additional violations include intentional misrepresentation, concealment of critical information, and ethical breaches in research. While varying in severity, all threaten academic integrity and warrant serious consequences.

Smart Ship Technologies employs multilayered safeguards:

1. All manuscripts undergo screening via iThenticate to detect plagiarism/redundancy.

2. Editors/reviewers evaluate methodological validity and data authenticity.

3. A public whistleblowing channel (contact@explorerpress.com) enables reporting of suspected misconduct.

Upon identifying potential misconduct:

• A formal investigation commences, involving requests for original data, expert consultation, and author responses.

• Confirmed violations trigger proportionate actions:
  ◦ Manuscript rejection or article retraction
  ◦ Public notification on the journal platform
  ◦ Institutional notification to authors' affiliations
  ◦ Submission bans for severe cases (minimum 3 years)

All investigations adhere to COPE Core Practices, ensuring:
 Due process: Evidence-based decisions with right to appeal
 Whistleblower protection: Anonymity and anti-retaliation safeguards
 Transparency: Retraction notices specify misconduct type (e.g., "retracted for data fabrication")

These measures preserve research integrity, protect honest scholars, and foster a self-correcting academic ecosystem.

• Editors Ethics

Editors play a pivotal role in academic publishing, serving as guardians of scholarly quality, orchestrators of peer evaluation, and monitors of ethical standards. Transnational Supply Chain Resilience holds editorial ethics in the highest regard, mandating that all editors uphold the utmost professional and ethical conduct in their duties.

1. Fairness & Impartiality

Editors must evaluate manuscripts objectively, irrespective of authors' backgrounds, race, gender, or institutional affiliations. Decisions shall be based solely on academic merit, with no preferential treatment or discrimination. During peer review, editors ensure:

• Equitable assessment of all submissions

• Elimination of biases in manuscript assignment

2. Peer Review Integrity

Editors safeguard the legitimacy of peer review through:

        2.1 Reviewer selection:

1. • Matching expertise to manuscript topics

   • Avoiding conflicted reviewers (e.g., collaborators within 3 years)

       2.2 Process oversight:

   • Enforcing timely, constructive feedback

   • Seeking additional reviews when necessary

       2.3 Anonymity protection:

   • Preserving author anonymity (double-blind)

3. Confidentiality Obligations

Editors must protect:

• Unpublished manuscript content

• Reviewer identities and reports

• Author proprietary information

4. Conflict of Interest (COI) Management

Editors shall:

• Disclose potential COIs (e.g., institutional ties to authors, competing research)

• Recuse from decisions when objectivity may be compromised

• Document disclosures in manuscript records
  The Journal Office evaluates disclosures and may implement safeguards (e.g., assigning alternate editors).

5. Upholding Academic Integrity

Editors are required to:

• Reject manuscripts exhibiting misconduct (plagiarism, data fabrication, inappropriate authorship)

• Initiate investigations upon suspicion of violations

• Implement sanctions per COPE guidelines (retraction, institutional notification, submission bans)

6. Transparent Communication

Editors must maintain:

• Timely correspondence with authors/reviewers (72-hour response standard)

• Clear decision letters with actionable feedback

• Publicly accessible journal policies (review timelines, appeal procedures)

Institutional Support Mechanisms

To empower editors, the journal provides:

• Mandatory annual ethics training (COPE/WAME modules)

• Structured decision protocols with escalation pathways

• Consultation access to the Publication Ethics Committee

• Legal protection against retaliation (per WHO-Research Ethics Framework)

• Authorship

Per ICMJE recommendations, author roles must be explicitly defined to ensure transparency and accountability in research. Below is a concise definition of authorship contributions:

Definition of Authorship Roles

1. Conceptualization & Design
   Responsible for study conception, design, or protocol development.

2. Data Collection & Analysis
   Substantially contributed to data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation.

3. Manuscript Drafting
   Drafted the work or critically revised it for important intellectual content.

4. Final Approval
   Reviewed and approved the final version to be published.

5. Accountability
   Accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring integrity and accuracy.

Submission Compliance

      1.Pre-Submission Authorization

         All authors and affiliated institutions must provide explicit consent prior to manuscript submission.

      2. Policy Acknowledgement

        Authors are required to fully comprehend and adhere to:

• Journal's copyright policy (CC BY 4.0 default)

• Open access mandates (if applicable)

• Data sharing requirements

      3. Originality & Data Integrity

         Authors must:
         ✓ Certify the manuscript as their original work
         ✓ Verify authenticity of all data
         ✓ Maintain raw data records for 5+ years post-publication
         ✓ Deposit data in FAIR-aligned repositories (e.g., Figshare, GenBank) with institutional/funder approval

       4. Exclusivity Declaration

          Manuscripts must:

• Not have been previously published

• Not be under concurrent review elsewhere

      5. Funding Disclosure

         Mandatory submission of:

• Funding source statements (grant numbers required)

      6. Copyright Compliance

         Secure permissions for:

• Third-party copyrighted material (images, datasets)

• Reused author-owned content

      7. Post-Publication Accountability

         Authors shall:

• Promptly notify editors of significant errors

• Cooperate in issuing corrections/retractions per COPE guidelines

      8. Final Approval

         All authors must formally approve:

• Final pre-publication version

• Author list sequence

      9. Corresponding Author Responsibilities

         The designated corresponding author ensures:

• Unanimous author consent on submission

• Distribution of editorial communications to all co-authors

• Validation of all data, code, and materials for reproducibility

• Completion of journal-specific attestation forms

Additional Requirements

• All authors must certify exclusion of uncredited contributors with substantive involvement.

• Disclosure of all potential conflicts of interest is mandatory per ICMJE Form.

• Withdrawal Policy

Sometimes after an article has been published it may be necessary to make a change to the Version published. This will be done after careful consideration by the Editor who is also supported by editorial staff to ensure any necessary changes are made with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Any necessary changes will be accompanied by a post-publication notice which will be permanently linked to the original article so that readers will be fully informed of any necessary changes. This can be in the form of a Correction notice, a Retraction, and in rare circumstances a Removal. The purpose of this mechanism of making changes that are permanent and transparent is to ensure the integrity of the scholarly record.

• Retractions

A retraction notice will be issued in cases where a significant error (e.g., in the analysis, methodology, or data interpretation) undermines the validity of the article's conclusions, or where there is evidence of research misconduct or publication misconduct. Examples of such misconduct include, but are not limited to, the absence of required ethical approvals, fabrication or falsification of data, image manipulation, plagiarism, duplicate publication, or other violations of academic integrity.

The decision to retract an article will be made in accordance with the guidelines provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It will involve a thorough investigation conducted by the editorial staff of Editorial department or publisher in collaboration with the Editor-in-Chief or relevant editorial board members. Authors or their affiliated institutions may also request the retraction of their article, provided that the stated reasons align with the established criteria for retraction.

To ensure transparency and the integrity of the scholarly record, the following actions will be taken:

1. A "retracted" watermark will be added to the published version of the article to clearly indicate its retracted status.
2. A separate retraction notice, titled "Retraction: [Article Title]", will be published and permanently linked to the retracted article. This notice will provide a clear and detailed explanation of the reasons for the retraction, as determined by the editorial investigation.

These measures are designed to maintain the accuracy, credibility, and long-term reliability of the published scholarly record.

• Correction Notice

A correction notice will be issued in cases where an error or omission in the article requires clarification or amendment to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. Such errors may affect the interpretation, understanding, or application of the study's findings. Examples of errors that may necessitate a correction include, but are not limited to:

• Inaccurate or incomplete data presentation
• Incorrect citations or references
• Misattributions of authorship or contributions
• Errors in methodology or data analysis that do not invalidate the overall conclusions

Correction of the Online Article: The article will be updated to correct the error or omission. This ensures that readers access the most accurate and complete information when viewing the article.

• Removal 

Articles may be subject to removal under the following circumstances:

Legal concerns or copyright infringement: If an article violates copyright laws, includes unauthorized use of someone else's work or content, or raises legal concerns, the journal or publisher may decide to remove the article. Ethical or compliance issues: If an article involves ethical or compliance issues, such as unapproved human or animal research, unauthorized use of personal data, or breaches of ethical guidelines, the article may be subject to removal. Authors should note that any amounts of paid Article Processing Charge will not be refunded if their accepted papers or Articles in Press are withdrawn/Retraction/Removal on the grounds of academic misconduct and ethical violations in research and publication.

• Ethics for the Use of Human or Animal Subjects

Studies involving human or animal subjects must strictly adhere to ethical guidelines and submit relevant ethical review approval documents at the time of submission. For studies involving human subjects, the Declaration of Helsinki and its subsequent amendments should be followed to ensure that all participants voluntarily and fully consent to their participation, with their privacy, safety, and rights protected, and to avoid any unnecessary physical or psychological harm. For animal experiments, compliance with the NIH Animal Welfare Act and the "3Rs principle" (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) is required to ensure a reasonable experimental design and to minimize the number of animals used and their suffering as much as possible. All research must obtain approval from the corresponding ethics committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB), and the approval number and institution name must be clearly stated in the manuscript.

Policy on AI in Scholarly Authorship

The standardized expression of the role of AI in paper creation, including usage boundaries, ethical requirements, and responsibility attribution, is in line with the latest COPE guidelines on Generative AI (June 2024 edition)

Transnational Supply Chain Resilience acknowledges the potential of AI tools to enhance research efficiency while mandating human accountability for academic integrity. The permissible and prohibited uses are defined as follows:

1. Permissible Applications

✓ Information Synthesis

• Literature discovery & trend mapping (e.g., using Elicit for systematic reviews)

• Multilingual reference standardization (e.g., Endnote AI citation formatting)
  ✓ Writing Assistance

• Grammar/style refinement (e.g., Grammarly Premium)

• Terminology consistency checks (e.g., Acrolinx)
  ✓ Structural Optimization

• IMRAD section alignment validation

• Accessibility compliance (WCAG 2.1 via TextLint)

2. Explicit Prohibitions

✗ Core Intellectual Contributions

• Hypothesis generation & experimental design

• Data interpretation & conclusion formulation
  ✗ Authenticity-Bypassing Practices

• Synthetic data fabrication (e.g., ChatGPT-generated datasets)

• Algorithmic manipulation of results
  ✗ Opaque Automation

• Unattended AI writing beyond sentence-level edits

• Undisclosed paraphrasing of AI outputs

3. Mandatory Disclosure Protocol

   3.1 Methodology Statement

• Declare AI tools with version numbers in Methods section

      Example: "GPT-4-turbo (OpenAI, May 2024 release) was used for initial literature screening"

   3.2 Verification Attestation

• Certify human validation of all AI-processed content:

      "The authors confirm manual verification of all AI-assisted outputs per journal guidelines"

  3.3 Copyright Compliance

• Assume liability for AI-generated content copyright status (CC BY 4.0 incompatible with most AI ToS)