Editorial Policies
Chemical Technology and Engineering Application (CTEA) adheres to the highest standards of academic integrity, transparency, and industrial relevance. Our editorial policies are aligned with COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines and aim to advance rigorous, reproducible, and impactful research in chemical technology and engineering.
1. Scope and Aims
CTEA publishes original research, reviews, and technical notes in the following domains:
- Chemical Process Engineering: Optimization, scale-up, and sustainability of industrial processes (e.g., catalysis, separations).
- Materials Innovation: Design and characterization of functional materials (e.g., polymers, nanocomposites).
- Energy and Environment: Clean energy technologies, carbon capture, and waste valorization.
- Safety and Compliance: Protocols for handling hazardous materials, reactor safety, and risk assessment.
2. Submission Requirements
All manuscripts must:
- Be submitted via the Editorial Manager system.
- Include structured abstracts (Background, Methods, Results, Conclusion) and 5–8 keywords.
- Provide raw data files (e.g., Aspen Plus simulations, MATLAB scripts, GC-MS spectra) as supplementary materials.
- Follow ACS or AIChE formatting standards.
- Declare conflicts of interest (e.g., industry sponsorship, patent applications).
3. Peer Review Policy
- Double-Blind Review: Authors and reviewers remain anonymous.
- Technical Rigor: Reviewers validate experimental reproducibility (e.g., ±5% error tolerance for yield calculations) and safety protocols.
- Industrial Relevance: Submissions must include cost-benefit analyses or comparisons with existing industrial benchmarks.
- Review Timeline: First-round decisions are typically made within 8–10 weeks.
4. Ethical Policies
Authorship and Originality
- Authorship requires substantial contributions to conception, execution, or manuscript drafting.
- Plagiarism Check: All submissions undergo screening via iThenticate; manuscripts with >20% similarity (excluding references) are rejected.
- Self-Plagiarism: Reuse of prior work must be explicitly cited and justified.
Data Integrity
- Reproducibility: Authors must provide sufficient detail for replication (e.g., catalyst synthesis steps, reactor operating conditions).
- Fabrication/Falsification: Cases of manipulated data (e.g., altered FTIR spectra, omitted outlier data) result in immediate retraction.
Safety Compliance
- Hazardous Protocols: Submissions involving high-risk processes (e.g., high-pressure reactions, toxic chemicals) must include safety certifications from institutional review boards.
5. Open Access and Copyright
- Open Access: CTEA offers Gold Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
- Copyright: Accepted manuscripts are copyrighted to CTEA; authors retain rights for non-commercial reuse.
- APCs: Article Processing Charges (APCs) are waived for submissions from low-income countries.
6. Corrections and Retractions
- Errata: Minor errors (e.g., typographical mistakes) are corrected via an online erratum.
- Retractions: Articles with proven ethical violations (e.g., data fraud, undisclosed conflicts) are retracted with a public notice detailing the rationale.
7. Appeals and Complaints
- Authors may appeal editorial decisions by submitting a rebuttal letter to the Editor-in-Chief within 4 weeks.
- Complaints regarding ethical concerns or procedural issues should be directed to ethics@ctea-journal.org.
By upholding these policies, CTEA ensures the publication of innovative, ethical, and industrially actionable research in chemical technology and engineering. For further details, consult our Ethics Guidelines or contact the editorial office at ctea@gospub.com.
