Guidelines for Authors

Ant journals are open, transparent and easily-accessed platforms for professionals from all over the world to present, discuss and share their ideas, findings and opinions.

Ethical Guidelines for Authors

• Research should be designed and conducted in an ethical and responsible manner obeying relevant national legislation and internationally-accepted principles;
• Research methods should be described clearly, so that the conclusions can be confirmed by reviewers and the audience, and experiments can be repeated by others;
• Research results should be presented honestly and faithfully; fabrication, falsification or inappropriate manipulation are unacceptable;
• All authors should significantly contributed to the study and manuscript preparation; individual contribution should be specified accurately and appropriately;
• All sources of research funding and relevant conflicts of interest should be declared;
• Papers should be checked by authors carefully at all stages to ensure the contents of each publication are reported accurately.

Publication Ethics

Our in-house editors will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors' institutions or funders if necessary. If evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract the publication. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing with Ant.

We recommend authors to refer to Responsible Research Publication: International Standards for Authors and our Research Ethics Guidelines when preparing manuscripts.

Editorial Guideline for Authors

Ant journals implement standardized editorial procedures, basically following the flow: pre-check, peer review, revision, editor decision, acceptance/rejection. For more details regarding editorial process, please see Editorial Process and Quality Control.

Before Submission

Before submitting a manuscript, authors are welcome to consult or discuss a manuscript theme with the Editor-in-Chief/Associate Editor for a regular manuscript, or with the Guest Editor if the manuscript intends to be submitted to the special issue he/she edits. Authors need to generally prepare the manuscript in Ant style. A Word/Latex template that might be helpful can be downloaded at each journal’s Instruction for Authors. When received the submission, handling editors help further edit the manuscripts during pre-check step, in order to present a better and clearer look to reviewers and Academic Editors.

Furthermore, authors need to have all the required information/materials ready in hand in order to successfully submit a manuscript in Editorial System:

Information for register: In order to submit a manuscript, corresponding author(s) and co-authors all need to register in our editorial system first.

• Full names are necessary;
• Institutional email addresses are preferred where possible (the email addresses will be used when check the status of a manuscript in our editorial system);
• Research interests should be specified by keywords.

Materials to be submitted: A cover letter, the manuscript, supplementary/supporting materials (figure, datasheet, video, etc, are all acceptable) if any, will be asked to submit.

• In the cover letter, authors should briefly introduce the theme of the manuscript and highlight the novelty and contribution of the study;
• If authors are willing to suggest possible reviewers, a list contains reviewers’ name, institutional email address, degree (PhD or MD), expertise, homepage if available, can be prepared as well before submitting;
• If there are data, figures or tables that are cited from published works that require permission or purchase for citation, a written proof of permission should be obtained better before submission, but no later than proofreading step.

During the Editorial Process

During the editorial process, handling editors are always available. Authors may seek help from them for any questions.

When received review reports from handling editors, since usually review comments from peer scholars are constructive to authors’ current and subsequent studies and publications, authors should do their best to incorporate reviewers’ suggestions. However, there are occasions that authors and reviewers do have different opinions. Under this circumstance, authors should properly provide explanations or rebuttals. Academic Editors will look into the case and make an objective decision based on their own knowledge.

If authors would like to appeal a decision, please contact the handling editor; to complain a handling editor, please contact the Managing Editor of the journal.

Material Intended for Publication

Authors could cite the material that have not been fully published in the following style: Author 1; Author 2; Author 3; et al. Title of Unpublished Work. Journal Abbreviation, phrase indicating stage of publication.

After Publication

Once a paper is published online, authors are free to announce and distribute the paper in their community circles. As we are operating low cost, environmental-friendly, online Open Access publishing, we usually do not print the papers for authors. If print products are needed, authors have to request and order it with each journal’s Managing Editor, and the print products are charged.