I. Publication Ethics for Authors

1. The paper shall not involve state secrets, any intellectual property infringement disputes, or any conflicts of interest.

2. The paper is guaranteed to be an original work that has not been publicly published in any form or language at home or abroad. There shall be no duplicate submission, no involvement of state secrets, no plagiarism or appropriation of others’ work, and no content that violates laws and regulations or infringes upon the rights and interests of others.

3. The signature and order of all authors are guaranteed to be free of objections. For manuscripts co-authored by multiple institutions, the order of institutions is guaranteed to be free of objections and free of intellectual property disputes. This agreement shall take effect only after being signed by all authors.

4. Authors shall respect the revision comments of peer reviewers and editors. All authors of manuscripts accepted for publication shall sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement, agreeing that, upon publication, the exclusive license to use copyright and the exclusive agency right of the paper shall be granted to the Editorial Office of Current Biotechnology.

5. If authors discover material errors or inaccuracies in their published papers—especially those not caused by intentional misconduct—they are obligated to promptly notify the Editorial Office and cooperate in withdrawing the paper or issuing an appropriate Corrigendum statement.

Additional Notes:

1. For experimental studies involving animals, authors may refer to the Guidelines for Ethical Review of Laboratory Animal Welfare and the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.

2. For clinical trials involving humans, authors must provide ethical approval documents for the research protocol. Informed consent must be obtained from patients (subjects) involved in the study.

II. Publication Ethics for Peer Review

1. Peer review aims to evaluate the originality, scientific rigor and innovation of submitted manuscripts, assist the Editorial Office in filtering out low-quality papers, and provide detailed revision suggestions for acceptable manuscripts to help authors improve paper quality. To prevent reviewers from being subjectively influenced by authors, Current Biotechnology maintains its academic standards through a rigorous peer review system employing double-blind review: neither the identities of reviewers are disclosed to authors, nor the identities of authors and their institutions are disclosed to reviewers.

2. Upon receiving a review invitation, reviewers shall first understand the journal’s scope and review requirements. They shall assess whether their expertise and research field match the manuscript; if not, they shall promptly and clearly inform the editor and suggest alternative reviewers.

3. Reviewers shall evaluate their schedule to determine whether they can submit comments within the specified time. If not, they shall promptly notify the Editorial Office or negotiate an acceptable review timeline with the editor to avoid delays.

4. Reviewers shall keep reviewed manuscripts strictly confidential, refrain from circulating or discussing them with others, and shall not use or publish data, viewpoints or conclusions from the manuscripts under review.

5. Guided by the principles of upholding academic integrity and respecting academic freedom, reviewers shall use professional knowledge and sound judgment to provide honest, objective and fair assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of manuscripts, and submit timely, reasonable and constructive review comments.

6. When submitting a manuscript, authors may recommend reviewers who specialize in fields closely related to the research topic; recommending experts from the same institution or research group is prohibited. Authors may also request exclusion of reviewers who may have academic competition or potential bias. The Editorial Office will avoid sending manuscripts to such excluded reviewers.

III. Publication Ethics for Editors / Editorial Board Members

To ensure the fairness, rationality and effectiveness of peer review, journal editors and editorial board members must abide by the following academic ethics standards:

1. Editors and editorial board members shall process each manuscript fairly, impartially and promptly. Decisions to accept or reject a manuscript shall be based solely on its scientific merit, innovation, readability and relevance to the journal’s scope.

2. Editors and editorial board members shall not discriminate against authors based on their affiliation, gender, professional title, academic honors or other non-academic factors.

3. Editors and editorial board members shall abide by the principle of confidentiality: keeping authors’ research content confidential, as well as reviewers’ identities and review comments.

4. Editors and editorial board members shall not be influenced by conflicts of interest to interfere with the peer review process, ensuring that reviewers provide independent recommendations.

5. For reviewers recommended by authors, editors and editorial board members shall carefully verify their basic information, academic relevance to the manuscript, and potential conflicts of interest with authors, and prudently decide whether to invite them. For excluded reviewers, if authors provide sufficient justification, their preferences shall be respected as much as possible.

6. Strictly implement the three-stage review system to ensure transparency at all stages. Authors may check the processing status of their manuscripts at any time via the online system.

7. Promptly communicate with authors when major revisions are required, and confirm final details with authors before formal publication.

Ⅳ. Measures for Dealing with Academic Misconduct in Published Papers

To uphold research integrity and maintain the order of academic publishing, the Editorial Department of Current Biotechnology adopts a zero-tolerance policy toward all forms of academic misconduct.

For the purposes of this policy, academic misconduct includes, but is not limited to: plagiarism, misappropriation or infringement of others’ academic achievements; fabrication or falsification of research data, figures, tables or conclusions; duplicate submission and redundant publication; improper authorship or fake authorship; failure to disclose the use of AI in a standardized manner; fabrication of references; paper trading, ghostwriting, and any other acts violating research integrity.

The editorial office uses the Academic Misconduct Literature Check System (AMLC) to detect papers involving misconduct such as plagiarism, unauthorized copying of ideas or expressions, duplicate submission, excessive citation, and redundant publication.

Once a manuscript is confirmed to involve academic misconduct:

If unpublished, the manuscript shall be rejected outright, and the author(s) shall be prohibited from submitting to this journal for a period of two years.

If already published, a formal retraction notice shall be issued, relevant databases shall be notified to remove the indexed record, and the author’s affiliation and related journals shall be informed to prevent recurrence.