Editorial Policies

 

1. Open Access Policy

Electric Drive for Locomotives officially flipped to a fully open-access journal using the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license agreement in 2022. Starting from the first issue of 2022, all articles published in this journal are open access. After these articles are published, all users can immediately and permanently obtain them free of charge through the journal's official website.

The journal uses the license agreement of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Users may copy and distribute the open access articles published in our journal in any medium or format, provided the terms of the license are followed. The terms of the license include:

When copying and distributing the relevant articles, users must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate whether any changes have been made to the original articles. Users may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the journal endorses the use. In addition, the relevant articles must not be used for commercial purposes. If the articles are remixed, transformed, or built upon, the modified articles must not be distributed. For more detailed information about this license, please visit:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

 

2. Archiving Policy

Starting from the first issue of 2022, all articles published in this journal are open access work under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Upon publication, these articles are immediately and permanently archived on the official website of the journal and are available for free to all users.

Articles published in this journal prior to 2022 were published under a non-open access model, and therefore, are not open access work. For articles published from 2010 to 2021, most have been archived on the journal's official website and are available for free full-text download. For remaining articles, which are not archived on our official website, users may access them from CNKI (https://www.cnki.net/) or other databases for a fee.

In addition, authors may store all versions of their articles in an institution or other knowledge repository of their choice, but it should be indicated in the repository that the article was originally published in this journal.

 

3. Review Policy

Electric Drive for Locomotives employs a three-stage review process, consisting of initial review, external review, and final review, detailed as follows:

1) Initial Review: After successful submission, the editorial department conducts an initial review to check if the manuscript's theme aligns with the journal's scope and whether the writing meets the basic requirements for academic papers. This stage also includes plagiarism detection. Manuscripts that pass the initial review will proceed to external review.

2) External Review: This is a double-blind peer review process. The editorial department selects two experts in relevant research fields to evaluate the significance of the selected topic, application value, academic level, innovation, scientific rigor and logic of the manuscript. The experts will give their opinions on whether to accept the manuscript, including options of priority publication, regular publication, publication after revisions, re-review after revisions, or rejection. The review comments provided by the experts will be verified by the editorial department and then sent to authors. If revisions are required, authors must respond to each review comment and submit a revised version for further evaluation by the editorial department and experts.

3) Final Review: After passing peer review, manuscripts enter the final review process, where the Editor-in-Chief decides on acceptance. The Editor-in-Chief is in charge of the final academic quality control of articles and responsible for the content of the entire journal, including special issues.

The above manuscript review process also applies to special issues published by the journal. Manuscripts submitted for special issues undergo the same review and handling process as regular issue manuscripts, with the Editor-in-Chief making the final acceptance decision. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for all content of the journal, including special issues.

For special issues, the editorial department invites distinguished experts in related fields to serve as a Guest Editor or Guest Associate Editor-in-Chief. Their responsibilities include assisting in manuscript solicitation, organizing peer reviews, and resolving any issues in publishing special issues. Their work is supervised by the Editor-in-Chief (or an editorial board member designated by the Editor-in-Chief) to ensure fair and impartial manuscript review and handling.

In addition, for the journal's editors, editorial board members, Guest Editors and Guest Associate Editors-in-Chief, their submissions follow the same review and editorial processes as other submissions, and these processes are conducted independently of the authors and their research groups. These individuals may not participate in the review of manuscripts written by themselves, their family members, colleagues, or other authors with whom they have a conflict of interest.

 

4. Policy of Academic Misconduct Handling

Electric Drive for Locomotives only accepts original manuscripts that have not been published in domestic or international journals. All forms of academic misconduct, including but not limited to plagiarism, data fabrication, multiple submissions, and redundant publication, are strictly prohibited.

For articles identified with academic misconduct, if not yet published, the editorial department will reject them. If the articles are already published, the editorial department will retract them and notify relevant domestic and international databases and indexing systems to remove them. In severe cases, such as intentional plagiarism or multiple submissions, the editorial department will inform the author's affiliation and cease accepting future submissions from the involved authors.

 

5. Appeals Policy

If authors disagree with the results of review or with the decision that their manuscripts contain misconduct, they may submit a written appeal to the editorial department. Appeals should include detailed explanations and be sent to the editorial department's email address. The editorial department will promptly review the appeals and provide feedback to the authors. Please note that each manuscript usually has only one opportunity for appeal.

 

6. Corrections and Retractions Policy

1) Corrections: If unintentional scientific errors are discovered in a published article, which do not significantly affect the results and conclusions of the article, the editorial department will promptly publish a correction notice in the journal. The notice will provide detailed explanations of the changes made to the original article and indicate the source of the article. The corrected version of the article will be published, clearly specifying the modifications made to the original article and indicating the date of the update. When citing the article, the latest version should be referenced.

2) Retractions: When there are serious scientific errors in a published article, rendering the results and conclusions unreliable, the editorial department will retract the article. Additionally, if a published article is suspected of academic misconduct such as plagiarism or data fabrication, the editorial department will initiate an investigation and publish a statement to inform readers of the risks associated with the article. The results of the investigation will be made public upon conclusion. If the article is confirmed to have engaged in academic misconduct, the editorial department will retract the article.

For retracted articles, the editorial department will notify domestic and international databases and indexing systems, requesting the removal of the article from their repositories to minimize the impact of the article.

 

7. Advertising Policy

The Journal is open to publishing advertisements related to the rail transportation industry. All advertisements must comply with the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China and relevant regulations, and advertisers must provide a business license and related qualification materials. Advertisements that violate the Advertising Law and related regulations or lack proper documentation will not be published. The placement of all advertisements will be discussed and collectively decided upon at the working meeting of the editorial department.

Advertisements are primarily published on the insert pages and back cover of the journal, marked with an "Advertisement" label. The presentation of advertisements in the journal is completely separate from academic articles, and academic articles do not contain any advertising content. Moreover, the published advertisements will not affect the journal's review, editing, or acceptance decisions of any submissions, and advertisers cannot interfere with the publication of any academic content.

 

8. Comments and Feedback

If authors and readers have any comments or feedback on the articles published by the journal, or any opinions on the editorial policies or publication ethics policy of the journal, they are welcome to send their comments to the editorial department's email. Upon receipt, the editorial department will handle them promptly and provide feedback as appropriate. We welcome active feedback from readers and authors to contribute to a positive academic environment.