Section 1 Ethics

I. For Authors
1. Repetition Detection: In order to eliminate academic misconduct and to keep national standard on journal quality management, all manuscripts, once submitted to the journal, will be test by plagiarism detection system developed by CNKI. Manuscripts that do not meet our requirements on repetition rate will be rejected.
2. Authorship: Those who are named as authors should directly participate in the conception or design of the academic content of the article, the research work or the writing work. The order shall be determined before submission and shall not be changed thereafter. If truly necessary, the order could be changed if a consent letter signed by all authors is provided. Other contributors of the paper may be listed in acknowledgement. “Gift author” is strictly prohibited. The authors should specify their contribution in Authors Contribution Form and submit it along with the manuscript. In 2018, the Chinese Academy of Sciences issued the “Integrity Reminder on Common Issues or Errors in Academic Paper Authorship” (see the “Announcements” on this website), aiming to promote honesty and integrity in scientific research and further reiterate the basic norms for authorship in academic papers. Authors must strictly comply with these norms.

3. Disclosure of Competing Interests: All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing / personal status / affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization / employer) may affect the authors' decision, work or manuscript. When a product is involved, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest against competitive products. Authors should also submit Statement of Competing Interests along with the manuscript.
4. Forgery: Forgery refers to data or conclusions that are not obtained from experiments or research, but are forged and tampered by authors. Date forgery is strictly prohibited.
5. Confidentiality Requirements: Authors must promise to comply with the Regulation on Confidentiality of Science and Technology and Regulation on Confidentiality in Press and Publication. Articles submitted to the journal should have passed the confidentiality review of the author’s institute and the content should not involve national secrets or business secrets of the institute. When submitting a manuscript, authors are required to submit Submission Statement and Copyright Transfer Agreement signed by all authors and stamped by the institute. After the manuscript passes the peer review, authors are required to submit the Confidential Review Form (Original Copy).

II. For Reviewers
1. Reviewers shall guarantee that they review the manuscripts accurately, objective and fairly on the basis of scientific quality. They should use their professional knowledge and ability to review the innovation, scientificity and practicability of manuscripts, and give a fair evaluation on whether the research method is appropriate, whether the scientific research design is reasonable, whether the results and conclusions are accurate, and whether confidential issues is involved, so as to help editors select manuscripts. They should put forward detailed comments for problems of manuscripts to help authors make revision.
2. Reviewers should respect the research achievements of authors and avoid reviewing manuscripts with competing interests. The review will only be based on academical standards instead of personal reasons. The selection of manuscripts shall not be affected by authors’ race, gender, religion, belief, social status, qualifications and authority. The review result should be clearly stated with sufficient arguments and facts.
3. Reviewers shall complete comments on the manuscripts and feed back to the editorial office within specified time. In case of any difficulty, the editorial office should be informed in time.
4. Reviewers shall keep confidential the content of the manuscripts strictly, and shall not release to or discuss the manuscripts with other people, nor use/publish the data, opinions and conclusions from the manuscripts.
5. All review comments and information must be kept confidential and not used for personal purposes.
6. Reviewers should avoid processing manuscripts for which they have competing interests.

III. For Editors
1. Editors shall strictly implement laws and national regulations, follow academic and publishing ethical standards, and maintain research integrity. Editors should process manuscripts in a timely and fair manner to keep publishing plan and article quality.
2. Editors shall respect the research results of authors and comments of reviewers, maintain the authentic records of the review, and keep confidential the data in all aspects during review and revision. Editors and editorial staff shall not disclose any information related to the submitted manuscripts except for providing necessary information to correspondence authors, reviewers and editorial committee members as appropriate.
3. Editors shall select articles fairly, and the acceptance or rejection of articles can only be based on originality, significance, clarity of the article and whether it conforms to the aim and scope of the journal.
4. Editors should encourage academic debate and are obliged to answer questions raised by authors against review comments and results.
5. Editors shall have obligation to investigate academic misconduct and communicate with authors. Once there is an appeal from authors, editors shall process the case timely. If necessary, editors shall publish corrections, clarifications, withdrawals or apologies in a timely manner. 
6. Editors shall protect the information submitted by authors and the identity information of reviewers and other relevant personnel in the editorial office during blind review process.
7. Editors should avoid processing manuscripts for which they have competing interests.

IV. Usage of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) cannot be used to write entire papers or important parts such as methods, results, and analysis. All scientific contributions and intellectual work must be completed by humans. This journal does not accept GenAI or its teams as authors. If GenAI is used, authors must detail its application in the methods section and are fully responsible for any content generated by GenAI, including violations of publishing ethics or infringement. The editorial office prohibits the use of GenAI in manuscript evaluation, decision-making, or communication with authors. Manuscripts or supplementary materials will not be uploaded to publicly available GenAI platforms during the review process to avoid risks of infringement, privacy breach, and confidentiality breach.

V. Advertisement

This journal does not publish commercial advertisement for now.

Section 2 Peer Review and Editing

1.    Peer Review Policy: The journal adopts single-blind review system. All submitted article shall be assigned to a responsible editor. After submission, the editorial office will conduct a preliminary review of the manuscript and reject manuscripts not meeting our requirements. Manuscripts which have passed the preliminary review will be anonymously sent to 2~4 peer reviewers. The authors must respond to the reviewer's every comment and submit the revised version in time. This process would be repeated until the reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript. The Editor-in-Chief will conduct the final round of review and the editorial office shall impartially select manuscripts on the basis of academic quality and review comment.

2.    Editing Policy: All authors shall be responsible for their own writing. For accepted manuscripts, the journal may make some technical or wording amendments. Any amendment involving change of meaning will be sent to authors for confirmation.

3.    Timing: The review result generally will be returned to the authors within 2 months after submission. Authors should return the revised article within the given time. For special circumstances, please contact us by phone or E-mail.

4.     Submission by Editors: The editorial staff / editors / editorial board members should not be involved in publishing decisions on papers which they have written themselves or have been written by their family members or colleagues. Any such submission should be strictly subject to the journal’s usual editorial process. Peer review should be handled independently from the relevant author/editor and their research groups.

5.    Correction and Retraction: After publishing, if there appears to be an unintended scientific mistake in the article which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusion, the editorial office will publish corrections in the journal as soon as possible, and detailing the changes made to the original article. If severe scientific errors are found in published articles, or the article is suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the editorial office will issue a statement to inform readers of the risks, initiate an investigation and announce the final result, or even retract article with a retraction statement if necessary.

6. Appeal and Discussion：If authors have objections against the review comments, they can file an appeal in writing, quoting the manuscript serial number and stating detailed reasons for the appeal, and the appeal letter must be stamped by the author's institution for validation. The editorial office will decide whether to accept the appeal as appropriate. We warmly welcome authors and readers to participate in discussions on our published articles. Comments can be sent to the editorial office, who will handle them promptly and provide feedback as necessary. Furthermore, the journal actively encourages readers and authors to engage in mutual supervision and offer feedback on pertinent information, aiming to cultivate a vibrant and positive academic environment. Appeal and post-publication discussions shall be sent to gk@aiofm.ac.cn.

Section 3: Open Access, Copyright & Archive

1.    OA Policy: Journal of Atmospheric and Environmental Optics changed to open access journal in 2021. Since the 1^st issue of 2021, all journal articles, once published, will be permanently available for readers to read and download free of charge. Permitted third party reuse of the articles published by the journal is defined by the following user license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows reusers to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms below are followed: reusers must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. Reusers may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the use. Reusers may not use the material for commercial purposes. If reusers remix, transform, or build upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material. Authors have right to spread or make use of the article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. The full details of the license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

2.    Copyright: Authors are required to sign the Submission Statement and Copyright Transfer Agreement. All authors shall agree to transfer the copyright of the article, including but not limited to the right of reproduction, distribution, information network dissemination, broadcasting, performance, translation, compilation, editing, etc., to the journal editorial office worldwide.

3.    Archive: All journal articles since the 1st issue of 2021 are open access on this website, and the user’s right is defined by the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. Articles published before 2021 are not open access, but abstracts of articles from the 3rd issue of 2009 to 2020 can be read on this website. In order to ensure data security, all information has also been backed up in the editorial office. In addition, other relevant materials are also kept by the editorial office, such as supplementary information and forms provided by the authors.

4.  Data Sharing: In order to support data sharing and enhance article dissemination, the journal encourages authors to release research data not included in the article. After the article is accepted, authors are encouraged to publish relevant date on ScienceDB (https://www.scidb.cn/). Instruction can be found in 

https://www.scidb.cn/publishing_process.