Journal Policy

1. Journal Philosophy and Scope

Journal Philosophy

JSTS seeks to advance scholarly knowledge concerning the development, operation, integrity, sustainability, and societal implications of subsea and offshore technologies. The journal encourages research that critically examines how engineering science, marine technology, digital innovation, environmental responsibility, operational safety, and societal considerations interact within subsea and ocean environments.

Scope and Relevance

Relevant areas include subsea production systems, subsea processing, pipelines, risers, flowlines, umbilicals, offshore structures, underwater vehicles, ROVs and AUVs, underwater robotics, instrumentation and sensing, structural integrity, corrosion, reliability, risk assessment, inspection and maintenance, digital twins, artificial intelligence, computational modelling, marine renewable energy, decommissioning, environmental monitoring, blue economy, and technology–society interactions.

Manuscripts must demonstrate a substantive contribution to subsea, underwater, offshore, ocean engineering, marine technology, or their societal applications. Purely technical studies without clear relevance to these fields may be considered outside the journal's primary scope.

2. Who Can Submit?

Submission Eligibility

JSTS welcomes manuscripts from researchers, academics, engineers, postgraduate students, industry professionals, government researchers, policy specialists, and practitioners whose work falls within the journal's aims and scope.

Manuscripts may originate from universities, research institutes, government agencies, offshore and marine industries, engineering organizations, independent research groups, or interdisciplinary collaborations.

Academic status, institutional affiliation, nationality, geographical location, professional seniority, or funding status shall not determine whether a manuscript is considered for publication. Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, relevance, integrity, methodological quality, and contribution to knowledge.

3. General Submission Rules

Originality

Submitted manuscripts must represent original scholarly work. Authors are responsible for ensuring that text, data, equations, figures, photographs, illustrations, software, models, engineering drawings, and other materials originating from external sources are appropriately cited, acknowledged, and used with permission where required.

Concurrent Submission

A manuscript submitted to JSTS must not be simultaneously under consideration by another journal. Authors must disclose any closely related manuscript, preprint, conference proceeding, report, thesis, or previously published work that could substantially overlap with the submission.

Author Responsibility

All listed authors must have made a meaningful scholarly contribution to the work and must approve the submitted version. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have agreed to the submission and that authorship information is accurate.

Conflict of Interest

Authors must disclose any financial, institutional, professional, commercial, or personal relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research, interpretation of findings, or publication of the manuscript.

Funding Disclosure

All research funding, industry sponsorship, grants, equipment support, institutional support, and other relevant financial assistance should be transparently acknowledged.

AI Transparency

Generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted tools cannot be listed as authors. Human authors remain fully accountable for all submitted content. Substantive use of generative AI for manuscript preparation, coding, analysis, image generation, or other research activities should be disclosed transparently in the manuscript where appropriate.

4. Manuscript Preparation

Formatting

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the current JSTS Author Guidelines and journal template. Authors should ensure consistency in terminology, abbreviations, symbols, units, headings, citations, references, tables, and figures.

Research Reporting

Research methods must be described with sufficient detail to permit scholarly assessment and, where appropriate, reproducibility. Authors should clearly report research objectives, assumptions, data sources, experimental procedures, analytical methods, uncertainty, limitations, and relevant validation procedures.

Numerical and Computational Studies

Manuscripts involving CFD, FEA, hydrodynamic modelling, digital twins, artificial intelligence, machine learning, reliability modelling, optimization, or other computational methods should provide sufficient information concerning model assumptions, governing equations, boundary conditions, numerical settings, validation, verification, convergence, uncertainty, and limitations.

Figures and Data

Figures, photographs, maps, engineering drawings, simulation images, graphs, and tables must accurately represent the underlying data. Manipulation that changes or obscures scientifically relevant information is prohibited.

Final Manuscript

Authors of accepted manuscripts may be required to provide editable source files, high-resolution figures, metadata, supplementary materials, authorship information, funding information, and other materials required for production.

5. Peer Review Process

Initial Editorial Evaluation

Every submission is first evaluated by the editorial team to determine whether it falls within the journal's scope, satisfies basic scholarly and ethical requirements, and demonstrates sufficient academic quality to proceed to external peer review.

Double-Anonymous Peer Review

Research manuscripts considered suitable for review are normally evaluated through a double-anonymous peer-review process, in which author and reviewer identities are not disclosed to each other during the review process.

Reviewer Selection

Reviewers are selected on the basis of subject expertise, relevant scholarly experience, independence, and absence of significant conflicts of interest. Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, evidence-based, and confidential evaluations.

Review Criteria

Reviewers may consider originality, scientific contribution, methodological rigor, technical validity, clarity, reproducibility, literature engagement, quality of analysis, appropriateness of conclusions, ethical integrity, and relevance to JSTS.

Editorial Decisions

Following peer review, the editorial decision may include: Accept Submission, Revisions Required, Resubmit for Review, or Decline Submission. Reviewer recommendations inform the editorial decision, but responsibility for the final decision remains with the journal's authorized editor.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit and publication standards. Author fees, institutional affiliation, sponsorship, commercial relationships, or personal interests must not influence acceptance or rejection decisions.

6. Desk Rejection Policy

Initial Screening

The editorial team may decline a manuscript before external peer review when the submission does not satisfy the journal's scope, scholarly expectations, ethical requirements, or basic manuscript preparation standards.

Grounds for Desk Rejection

A manuscript may be declined during initial screening for reasons including, but not limited to:

• The manuscript is clearly outside the aims and scope of JSTS.
• The manuscript lacks sufficient originality or scholarly contribution.
• The research question or technical contribution is insufficiently defined.
• The methodology is fundamentally inadequate or unsupported.
• Numerical or experimental findings lack appropriate validation.
• The manuscript contains serious ethical or research-integrity concerns.
• Significant plagiarism, redundant publication, or unattributed material is identified.
• The manuscript is substantially incomplete or does not meet minimum academic presentation standards.
• The English language or manuscript structure prevents meaningful scholarly evaluation.
• Required declarations or supporting information are missing.

Desk rejection is an editorial decision and does not necessarily imply misconduct or poor research quality. It may simply indicate that the manuscript is not sufficiently aligned with JSTS.

7. Plagiarism and Similarity Policy

Similarity Screening

Manuscripts submitted to JSTS may be screened using recognized similarity-detection software during editorial evaluation or at other stages of the publication process.

A similarity percentage alone does not determine whether plagiarism has occurred. Editors evaluate the nature, location, extent, context, and attribution of matching material before taking editorial action.

Forms of Unacceptable Similarity

Unacceptable practices may include direct plagiarism, inappropriate paraphrasing, unattributed reuse of another author's work, substantial self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, unauthorized reproduction of figures or data, and other misleading reuse of previously published material.

Editorial Action

Depending on the nature and seriousness of the issue, JSTS may request clarification or revision, reject a manuscript, contact relevant institutions, issue a correction or expression of concern, or retract a published article when appropriate.

8. Withdrawal Policy

Withdrawal Request

Authors who wish to withdraw a manuscript must submit a formal request to the editorial office stating the manuscript title, submission identification number, corresponding author, and reason for withdrawal.

A withdrawal request should be submitted by the corresponding author with the knowledge and agreement of all co-authors. A manuscript should not be submitted to another journal while a withdrawal request remains under editorial consideration.

Withdrawal Before Peer Review

Requests received during the initial editorial screening stage will normally be processed promptly provided that no ethical or authorship dispute is involved.

Withdrawal During Peer Review or Revision

Authors may request withdrawal while a manuscript is under review or revision. The editorial office may request confirmation to ensure that all authors agree and that no unresolved publication-ethics issue exists.

After Acceptance

Withdrawal after formal acceptance should occur only in exceptional circumstances. The journal may require a written explanation because substantial editorial and peer-review resources may already have been committed.

9. Data, Privacy and Security Policy

Research Data

Authors should retain research data, experimental records, numerical model files, simulation inputs, statistical analyses, sensor measurements, inspection records, and other supporting materials necessary to substantiate the reported findings.

Where legally, ethically, commercially, and technically appropriate, authors are encouraged to deposit supporting datasets in recognized repositories and provide appropriate data-availability information.

Commercially Sensitive and Offshore Data

Research involving proprietary offshore or subsea data must comply with applicable confidentiality agreements and publication permissions. Authors are responsible for ensuring that publication does not improperly disclose commercially sensitive, security-sensitive, restricted, or confidential information.

Personal Data and Privacy

Personal information collected through manuscript submission, peer review, journal registration, or editorial correspondence will be used only for legitimate scholarly publishing and journal-management purposes and should not be disclosed unnecessarily to unrelated third parties.

Peer-Review Confidentiality

Editors and reviewers must protect unpublished manuscripts, research data, reviewer reports, and confidential editorial correspondence. Such materials must not be distributed or used for personal, professional, or commercial advantage.

Digital Security

JSTS seeks to maintain appropriate safeguards for its online journal management system. Users are responsible for protecting their account credentials and should promptly report suspected unauthorized access or other security concerns to the journal.

10. Complaints and Appeals

Editorial Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant factual, procedural, or scholarly issue was overlooked during manuscript evaluation.

An appeal should clearly identify the manuscript, state the decision being challenged, and provide a concise, evidence-based explanation. Disagreement with reviewer comments alone does not automatically constitute grounds for reconsideration.

Independent Consideration

Where appropriate, an appeal may be considered by an editor who was not primarily responsible for the original decision. The result of the appeal represents the journal's final editorial determination unless substantial new evidence emerges.

Complaints

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may raise concerns regarding editorial procedures, publication ethics, conflicts of interest, peer review, published content, or other matters related to the journal.

Complaints should be submitted respectfully and should contain sufficient information and supporting evidence to permit appropriate investigation. JSTS will seek to consider legitimate complaints fairly, confidentially, and without retaliation.

Research-Integrity Concerns

Allegations involving plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, authorship disputes, citation manipulation, peer-review manipulation, or other forms of research misconduct may require additional documentation and consultation with authors, reviewers, institutions, publishers, or other relevant parties.