Journal of Subsea Technology and Society is committed to maintaining a fair, transparent, independent, confidential, and academically rigorous editorial process. Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, technical validity, ethical compliance, relevance to the journal's Aim and Scopes, and contribution to subsea technology, underwater infrastructure, integrity, inspection, digital systems, sustainability, and society.
Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial, financial, institutional, industrial, governmental, technological, or personal interests. The publisher does not determine whether an individual manuscript is accepted or rejected.
Editors assess manuscripts according to scientific and engineering quality, originality, methodological soundness, technical validity, ethical compliance, transparency, relevance, and contribution to subsea technology and its broader societal context.
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening before external peer review. The editorial team evaluates whether the manuscript fits the journal's Aim and Scopes and meets minimum scholarly, technical, ethical, and presentation standards.
Initial screening may include assessment of:
Manuscripts that are clearly outside the journal's scope, lack sufficient scholarly or engineering contribution, or fail to meet minimum editorial standards may be declined without external peer review.
The journal applies a double-anonymous peer review process. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other during the review process.
Manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise in subsea engineering, underwater technology, asset integrity, inspection, robotics, digital systems, sustainability, safety, or related disciplines.
Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, confidential, evidence-based, and technically competent assessments.
Reviewer recommendations inform but do not automatically determine the final editorial decision. The responsible editor considers reviewer reports together with the manuscript's scholarly merit, engineering validity, methodological quality, ethical compliance, transparency, and relevance to the journal.
Editorial decisions may include:
Submission of a revised manuscript does not guarantee acceptance. Final publication decisions remain the responsibility of the editorial team.
Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose financial, institutional, professional, consulting, commercial, or personal relationships that could reasonably influence or appear to influence the research, peer review, or editorial process.
Potential conflicts may include relationships with offshore operators, subsea equipment manufacturers, engineering contractors, inspection companies, technology developers, classification organizations, consultants, regulators, or organizations directly affected by the research. Editors should transfer responsibility when a relevant conflict exists.
Journal of Subsea Technology and Society supports internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing and publication-ethics practices informed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, manipulated peer review, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, data misrepresentation, image manipulation, and undisclosed conflicts of interest are not acceptable.
Allegations of research or publication misconduct will be assessed objectively, confidentially, and proportionately based on available evidence.
Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. Similarity reports are interpreted contextually and are not judged solely on the basis of a numerical percentage.
Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, duplicate submission, redundant publication, or substantial reuse of previously published material may result in rejection or appropriate post-publication action.
Artificial intelligence systems, generative AI tools, large language models, or autonomous software agents cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for scholarly content, originality, ethical compliance, or accountability.
Substantive use of AI in writing, coding, image analysis, subsea inspection, anomaly detection, corrosion assessment, predictive maintenance, autonomous navigation, computer vision, digital twins, engineering optimization, or literature synthesis should be disclosed where relevant.
Editors and reviewers should not upload confidential manuscripts, proprietary subsea data, unpublished inspection records, offshore operational information, reviewer reports, or editorial correspondence to publicly accessible AI systems where confidentiality, intellectual property, privacy, or data security cannot be assured.
Research involving subsea inspection data, structural measurements, corrosion monitoring, ROV or AUV surveys, sonar records, sensor datasets, offshore operational information, laboratory experiments, or numerical simulations should report sufficient information to allow technical assessment of the methods and findings.
Authors should clearly state relevant assumptions, boundary conditions, loading conditions, environmental parameters, material properties, inspection limitations, calibration procedures, validation methods, uncertainty, and applicability limits.
Where engineering standards, recommended practices, codes, classification requirements, or regulatory criteria are used, authors should identify the relevant documents and explain how they are applied.
Proprietary subsea technology, confidential offshore records, industrial inspection data, and restricted operational information should be handled in accordance with applicable permissions, confidentiality agreements, legal obligations, and institutional requirements.
Authors may submit a reasoned appeal when they believe that a significant factual, methodological, engineering, procedural, or ethical issue affected an editorial decision.
Appeals should identify the specific issue being challenged and provide a clear scholarly or technical justification rather than merely expressing disagreement with the editorial outcome.
Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, conflicts of interest, publication ethics, or published content will be considered objectively by an appropriate journal representative.
Journal of Subsea Technology and Society is committed to preserving the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.
Corrections may be issued when errors affect the accuracy, attribution, interpretation, calculations, figures, metadata, or completeness of a published article without invalidating its principal findings.
Retractions may be considered when findings are unreliable because of major error, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, manipulated data, or other serious integrity concerns.
An Expression of Concern may be issued when substantial concerns exist but sufficient information for a definitive editorial action is not yet available.
