Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Research involving individuals through surveys, interviews, usability testing, experiments, focus groups, observations, occupational studies, laboratory participation, behavioral data, identifiable records, or other human-participant methods must comply with applicable institutional, national, and professional ethical requirements.

• The approving ethics committee or institutional review board must be identified where approval is required.
• The ethics approval/reference number should be reported where applicable.
• Authors must explain how informed consent was obtained where required.
• An approved waiver of consent must be disclosed and justified.
• Participant privacy and confidentiality must be protected.
• Consent for publication is required where participants may reasonably be identified.
• Additional safeguards must be reported when vulnerable participants are involved.

Research in process chemistry and technology may involve laboratory records, industrial process data, proprietary formulations, manufacturing parameters, process simulations, analytical datasets, pilot-plant results, equipment specifications, confidential industrial information, or third-party commercial datasets.

• Authors must have lawful and authorized access to all laboratory, industrial, and proprietary data used.
• Confidential or commercially sensitive information must be anonymized, aggregated, or withheld where appropriate.
• Industrial partners, research collaborators, facilities, and third-party data providers must be protected from unauthorized disclosure.
• Contractual, licensing, patent, intellectual-property, and confidentiality restrictions must be respected.
• Authors must not disclose protected process parameters, formulations, trade secrets, or identifiable proprietary information without authorization.
• Restrictions affecting data sharing must be stated transparently in the Data Availability Statement.

Authors must report experimental methods, process conditions, analytical procedures, modeling strategies, and computational or engineering methods with sufficient clarity to permit scientific evaluation and, where possible, replication.

• Research design and methodological approach must be clearly identified.
• Materials, reagents, catalysts, feedstocks, samples, process streams, or data sources must be explained.
• Sampling, preparation, synthesis, treatment, and selection procedures must be transparent.
• Experimental equipment, analytical instruments, software, models, and measurement methods must be identified where relevant.
• Reaction conditions, operating parameters, process variables, analytical procedures, statistical methods, and computational techniques must be described.
• Assumptions, exclusions, calibration procedures, transformations, uncertainty, sensitivity analysis, robustness tests, and analytical decisions should be reported where relevant.
• Process simulations and computational studies should provide sufficient model assumptions, boundary conditions, input parameters, and validation procedures.
• Review studies should follow appropriate transparent reporting standards where applicable.

Editors are responsible for maintaining a fair, confidential, independent, and evidence-based editorial process.

• Base decisions on scholarly quality, originality, methodology, relevance, and ethical compliance.
• Apply journal policies consistently and without inappropriate discrimination.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, and editorial records.
• Protect reviewer identities under the journal's double-blind model.
• Declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when impartiality may be compromised.
• Select reviewers with appropriate scientific, technological, engineering, and methodological expertise.
• Prevent coercive citation, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, and inappropriate editorial influence.
• Address complaints, appeals, and integrity concerns fairly.
• Take proportionate corrective action when the scholarly record is unreliable.
• Ensure that APC payment or waiver status does not influence editorial decisions.

• Provide objective, constructive, respectful, independent, and timely assessments.
• Accept assignments only when appropriate expertise and sufficient time are available.
• Treat manuscripts, experimental data, process information, supplementary files, and correspondence as confidential.
• Disclose financial, professional, institutional, collaborative, academic, or personal conflicts.
• Decline reviews where impartiality may reasonably be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, image manipulation, or other misconduct confidentially to the editor.
• Avoid personal criticism, hostile language, unsupported allegations, and discriminatory comments.
• Recommend citations only when genuinely relevant to the manuscript.
• Never use unpublished experimental findings, process designs, formulations, or proprietary information for personal or professional advantage.
• Do not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished data to public generative AI systems.

• Submit original work that has not been formally published and is not under review elsewhere.
• Report experimental methods, process conditions, analyses, findings, limitations, and conclusions honestly and accurately.
• Retain supporting laboratory records, raw data, analytical outputs, process documentation, and relevant research records where appropriate.
• Provide accurate citations and verifiable references.
• Obtain required ethics approvals, permits, permissions, safety approvals, and data-use authorization.
• Disclose funding sources and the role of funders.
• Disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest.
• Ensure all listed authors qualify for authorship.
• Obtain approval from all authors for the submitted version and author order.
• Disclose relevant use of generative AI.
• Notify the journal promptly if a significant error, safety issue, or ethical problem is discovered.

Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contribution and accountability. The journal applies the four authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

1. Substantial contribution to the conception/design or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Drafting or critical intellectual review of the manuscript;
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.

• Author contributions should be described using appropriate CRediT roles.
• Non-author contributors should be acknowledged with permission.
• Authorship changes require written justification and agreement from all affected authors.
• Artificial intelligence tools cannot qualify as authors.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose relationships that may influence, or reasonably appear to influence, their judgment.

Authors must identify funding sources, grant numbers where applicable, and the role of the funder in study design, experimental work, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included in research manuscripts.
• Data repositories, persistent identifiers, access conditions, or restrictions should be reported.
• Experimental data, analytical spectra, process data, simulation inputs, calculation files, code, instruments, or supplementary material should be shared where ethically, legally, and commercially possible.
• Restrictions arising from intellectual property, patents, confidentiality, industrial collaboration, contracts, or proprietary data must be explained.
• Fabrication, concealed deletion, inappropriate alteration, selective exclusion, image manipulation, or misleading presentation of data is prohibited.
• The Editorial Team may request underlying raw data, laboratory records, spectra, process calculations, or other evidence when necessary to evaluate research integrity.

All manuscripts may be screened using Turnitin. The journal normally requires an overall similarity index below 20%, subject to editorial assessment of the nature and location of the matching material.

Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, translation plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and undisclosed reuse of previously published material are prohibited.

• AI must not replace human scholarly judgment or authorship responsibility.
• Meaningful AI-assisted activity must be disclosed according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality, references, calculations, analyses, and interpretation.
• AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• AI-generated references, data, calculations, process designs, analyses, or interpretations must be independently verified.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts into public generative AI systems.
• AI-assisted material must be checked for fabricated citations, factual errors, unsafe recommendations, bias, misleading technical claims, and scientifically invalid outputs.

Eligible manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers.

• Reviewer selection is based on scientific, technological, process-engineering, chemical, and methodological expertise.
• Authors and reviewers remain anonymous to one another during review.
• Reviewer recommendations inform, but do not determine, the final editorial decision.
• Conflicting reviewer recommendations may result in additional review.
• Editors who are authors or have conflicts must not participate in handling the manuscript.
• Acceptance or rejection is based on scholarly merit rather than financial or commercial considerations.

The journal does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, transparency, fairness, or integrity of scholarly publishing.

Credible concerns are evaluated fairly, confidentially, consistently, and without presuming misconduct before relevant evidence has been assessed.

1. Initial assessment: determine whether the concern is specific, credible, relevant, and within the journal's responsibility.
2. Clarification: request explanations, original data, laboratory records, analytical files, process documentation, or supporting evidence where necessary.
3. Independent advice: seek subject, methodological, statistical, engineering, chemical-safety, ethical, or legal expertise where appropriate.
4. Institutional coordination: contact institutions, research-integrity offices, funders, ethics committees, industrial partners, or other responsible bodies where necessary.
5. Editorial action: take proportionate action according to the evidence and seriousness of the concern.

Formal notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, remain freely accessible, and be linked permanently to the scholarly record where applicable.

A manuscript is not considered formally withdrawn until the Editorial Office has reviewed the withdrawal request and provided written confirmation. Ethical concerns such as duplicate submission, authorship disputes, suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, or other research misconduct may continue to be investigated even if an author requests withdrawal.

Authors and other stakeholders may raise concerns about editorial procedures, reviewer conduct, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, ethical matters, laboratory or industrial data handling, or research-integrity procedures.

An editorial appeal should identify a material factual error, procedural irregularity, substantial misunderstanding, inappropriate application of journal policy, or relevant evidence that was overlooked.

Where independent assessment is necessary, complaints or appeals will be considered by an editor or qualified person who was not materially involved in the original matter.

• Authors must submit original work and respect third-party intellectual-property rights.
• Permission must be obtained for copyrighted third-party material, figures, process diagrams, equipment images, analytical spectra, proprietary data, technical illustrations, or reproduced materials where required.
• Authors must respect patents, trade secrets, licensing restrictions, confidential process information, and other proprietary rights.
• Authors retain the full copyright of their work.
• The journal receives a non-exclusive right of first publication.

Manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documents, experimental data, laboratory records, proprietary process information, personal information, allegations, investigations, and editorial correspondence are treated as confidential.

The journal maintains appropriate editorial records to document manuscript decisions, reviewer activity, revisions, ethical assessments, complaints, appeals, corrections, and integrity investigations in accordance with applicable legal and institutional requirements.