Submission Guidelines

l Peer Review

l Manuscript Submission

l Title Page

l Text

l Manuscript Acceptance

l Copyright

After preparing your manuscript as per the instructions given below, please visit the journal's online submission system. Please ensure your article adheres to the instructions before submission.

Peer Review

All manuscripts sent for publication to PSB are comprehensively peer reviewed following a strict double-blind process. The initial review is conducted by the editors and executive editors where they check if the paper is interesting for a broad scientific audience, and if the content is innovative and has value. Papers that pass the initial review are forwarded to at least 2 reviewers for a double-blind peer review, each of whom recommend to either accept, reject, or modify the manuscript. The editorial board then makes the decision of acceptance or rejection of the manuscript based on the reviewer comments. The review process may take about 60 days. Regardless of whether a paper is accepted or rejected, the author shall be informed of the evaluation results. The editorial office shall process all manuscripts at the earliest. Please wait patiently for the response.

Manuscript Submission

Submission of a manuscript implies that: the work described has not been published previously, that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else, and that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities—implicitly or explicitly—at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher shall not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

 

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted, when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Title page

The title page should include:

           l The name(s) of the author(s)

           l A concise and informative title

           l The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e., institution, (department), city, (state), country

           l A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author

Manuscript title

The full manuscript title should be concise (less than 100 characters) and informative. It should not contain any unconventional abbreviations.  

Authorship

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship. Each author should have made substantial contributions to the work and accept public responsibility for its content. All authors should be involved in the drafting of the article or its critical revision for important intellectual content, and must have read and approved the final version of the manuscript. Any other contributors should not be listed as authors; rather, they should be acknowledged appropriately in the Acknowledgments section. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors have made bona fide, substantial contributions to the research and have seen and approved the final manuscript prior to submission.

 

Multiple corresponding authors are accepted for a single submission. The journal does not permit addition or removal of author names after submission other than in case of exceptional circumstances. A satisfactory explanation for any proposed changes in authorship will be required. We will also require a letter of consent from any person whose name has been removed indicating that they agree to the removal of their name from the author list. Owing to the complexity of these rules we strongly advise authors to fix the author list before submission and not to attempt to make changes at a later date.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 400 to 500 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords that can be used for indexing purposes.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations'. If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.

Funding

Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled ‘Funding’.

Conflicts of interest/Competing interests

All authors must make a formal statement at the time of submission indicating any potential conflict of interest that any of the authors may have. Such conflicts may include, but are not limited to, shareholding in or receipt of a grant or consultancy fee from a company whose product features in the submitted manuscript or which manufactures a competing product.

Text

Manuscripts should be submitted in MS Word .doc or .docx format.

           l Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.

           l Use italics for emphasis.

           l Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.

           l Do not use field functions.

           l Use tab stops or other commands for indents, and not the space bar.

           l Use the table function, and not spreadsheets, to generate tables.

           l Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.

           l Save your file in .docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

Headings

Please use the decimal system of headings with no more than three levels.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to give additional information and may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

 

Acknowledgments  

Acknowledgements and details of non-financial support must be included at the end of the text before references and not in the footnotes. Personal acknowledgements should precede those of institutions or agencies. Please note that acknowledgement of funding bodies should be provided in a separate Funding section.

References

Number references consecutively in the order in which they are mentioned in the text. Reference numbers in the text are full-sized Arabic numerals in brackets within the sentence. For 3 or more consecutive references cited all at once, use, for example, [1-4]. Format other references as [4,5,12], with no space between the reference numbers.

References must be verified against the original documents and must include the exact authors’ last names, initials, and article title. Please include the year of publishing, volume number and entire page range. For manuscripts accepted (not submitted) but not yet published, designate the journal followed by a period and then ‘In press’. For references to papers presented at conferences, give the location (city and state or country), month, days, and year of the conference. For references published online in advance of print publication, provide the journal abbreviation followed by the digital object identifier (DOI) number in parentheses.

The reference list should be limited to published or ‘in press’ references. No ‘submitted’ manuscript should appear in the reference list. A manuscript submitted for publication but not yet accepted may be referenced in parentheses in the text. Give the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and ‘unpublished manuscript’. However, authors should not refer to ‘forthcoming’ papers or promise future publication of results.

Tables

        l All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.

        l Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.

        l For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.

        l Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.

        l Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Figures

Figures should be well-designed drawings or well-chosen photographs that illustrate key points in your article or present relevant data economically. Editors will work with you to enhance your figures’ legibility, color, style, and consistency. Modified figures will be sent to you for approval before publication.

Please submit artwork as a separate file. Before submitting artwork, please ensure that your image(s) fulfill the following criteria:

         l Figures should be in a vector image format. Vector images consist of many individual elements or vector objects, allowing each vector object to be transformed independently within the image.

         l gures should be supplied at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Editors will determine the appropriate final figure size unless you provide specific instructions.

         l Figures should be supplied in CMYK, not RGB. Please note that the use of red and green in figures is particularly problematic for approximately 5% of the male population. Preparing color-blind friendly figures is advisable.

          l Fonts should be embedded and editable. Font color should be black only.

          l Figure legends should be included at the end of the main text file. Please ensure that the figures and figure legends match. Symbols must NOT be included in figure legends; ALL symbols used in figures should be described in the legend using words (e.g., filled triangle, open circle).

          l Ensure all copyright issues regarding the artwork are properly handled. We require that you obtain permission to use copyrighted figures. In addition, they should be cited clearly.

Manuscript Acceptance

Upon acceptance, your article will be exported to production and undergo typesetting. After typesetting is complete, you will receive a link asking you to confirm your affiliation. After you confirm the same, your article will be processed, and you will receive the proofs. The publication costs for PSB are covered by China University of Petroleum-Beijing, hence authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge.

Copyediting

Accepted manuscripts will be copyedited for grammar and style before proofs are generated. The authors should carefully check and proof the manuscript to ensure that all sections are correct. After the corrections are made, the article will be posted online as part of the continuous online publication of PSB.

Offprints and Issue Copies

Authors publishing in PSB are entitled to two free copies of the issue in which their paper is published. Please contact the editorial office for more information about this arrangement.

 

Proofs

The journal will deliver electronic page proofs to the corresponding author with the offprint order forms. Corrections should be returned within 48 hours. ‘Note added in proof’ should only be inserted when there are essential changes. Notes added will be reviewed for appropriate content and style and are subjected to approval by the editors. Excessive changes on the proof should be avoided unless they are for correction of errors introduced during production.

Copyright

All authors guarantee that they have the full copyright for the article and agree to submit the paper to PSB.

After the paper is published in PSB, the authors agree to transfer the copyright of the paper to the editorial office of PSB, including the rights of printing and publishing, electronic publishing, multimedia publishing, online publishing, and other forms of publishing.

Authors should guarantee that the paper is an original paper, and that all or parts of the contents of the paper have never been published in any other journal in any form, and that there is no problem of repeated contribution, plagiarism, and content that violates laws and regulations and infringes the rights and interests of others.

Authors should make sure that the paper does not disclose state secrets.

In case any of the above issues are found to exist, PSB has the right to return the manuscript, in order to maintain publishing ethics.