A manuscript will be reviewed for possible publication with the understanding that it is being submitted to Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research alone at that point in time and has not been published anywhere, simultaneously submitted, or already accepted for publication elsewhere. The journal expects that authors would authorize one of them to correspond with the Journal for all matters related to the manuscript. All manuscripts received are duly acknowledged. Its responsibilities include:

• Managing the peer review process to ensure manuscripts progress smoothly through peer review. This involves providing reviewers with all the information they need, to guarantee authors receive a review that improves the quality of their manuscript.

• Compiling issues, making sure they are delivered on time and to the highest standard.

• Editing, proof-reading, and reformatting manuscripts to ensure they are finished to a high quality and conform to the journal style.

• Providing assistance with submissions and handling queries and problems.

For publishing and ethical standards, we follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/) issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Cope of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors.pdf) issued by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Once the manuscript has passed quality control check, it is assigned to the strict double-blinded peer review process for a decision, either to accept, revise, or reject the article. Before manuscripts are sent for review, invited peer reviewers are confirmed regarding their availability, conflicts of interest with the manuscript, their agreements to have their names and comments published afterwords. A peer review report together with the reviewer’s name, if permitted, will be posted at the end of the article. Most manuscripts will be evaluated by 3-5 external reviewers. Average time from the submission to the first editorial decision is 1 month. The review time could be shortened to 7 days for the paper with sophisticated review comments from other recognized journals in the field. According to these comments, the academic editors will make a decision as to accept, reject, request a revision or send to another peer review.

We follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Cope of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors issued by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

All of our publishing activities are guided by the following core ethical values:

• Authorship and contributorship: All authors and co-authors must meet criteria for authorship and ensure appropriate credit is given in their manuscript. Authors are encouraged to make a clear statement about contributions to their work.

• Originality: Authors must guarantee the submitted manuscript was originally written by them. The work must not have been published previously nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. If the work and/or words of others are included, they must be appropriately cited or quoted.

• Data access and citation: Authors may be requested to provide the raw data relevant to the paper for editorial review. They should also be prepared to provide public access to such data. Data must be cited in the same way as article, book, and web citations and authors are required to include data citations as part of their reference list.

• Acknowledgement of sources: The authors should properly acknowledge any work in the manuscript that has been contributed by others.

• Declaration and conflicts of interest: All submissions must include disclosure of all relationships that could be viewed as presenting a potential conflict of interest.

• Reporting standards: Authors of original research papers should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance.

• Human and Animal Rights: For research that includes experiments involving humans, a statement of compliance is required to show that procedures were followed in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). For research that reports on experiments involving animals, authors are asked to indicate whether the institutional and/or national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

• Research ethics: The research we publish must have received a statement of approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and, where applicable, informed consent. Clinical trials must have been registered in clinical trial registries, in adherence with local and international standards.

• Authors’ ethical statement: Authors are accountable for all aspects of their work (including full data access, data integrity, and the accuracy of the data analysis) in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

CJTER retains the right to reject any manuscript on the basis of unethical conduct in either human or animal studies.

Human Research

For research involving human experiments, the article must include a statement that ethical approval was obtained (or a statement that ethical approval was not required and why), including the name of the ethics committee(s) or institutional review board(s), the number/ID of the approval(s), and a statement that the participants gave informed consent before taking part (or a statement that consent was not required and why). Authors should also state that the study conformed to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in Edinburgh 2000), available at:

https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/doh-oct2000.

In line with the recommendations of the World Health Organization and the Declaration of Helsinki, clinical trials should be prospectively registered before participants are enrolled. Clinical trial registration numbers should be included in all papers that report on clinical trials.

Where illustrations include recognizable individuals, living or deceased, great care must be taken to ensure that consent for publication has been given. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects from being recognized, and (at a minimum) the eyes and eyebrows must be masked using coarse pixilation to make the individual unrecognizable.

Animal Research

For any experiments involving animals, the authors must indicate the nature of the ethical review permissions, relevant licences (e.g. Animal [Scientific Procedures] Act 1986), and national or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals by which the research was conducted.

Where necessary, the Editorial Office reserves the right to request additional information in relation to experiments featured in a manuscript.

The data and information of individuals (e.g., information obtained through a doctor-patient relationship) must be handled with the highest levels of confidence and discretion. It is therefore almost always necessary for authors to obtain written informed consent from any patients described in case reports and from those who are the subject of photographs. However, a report may be published without explicit consent if it meets all three of the following conditions: it is of great significance to public health (or is important in some other way); consent would be unusually difficult to obtain; and a reasonable individual would be unlikely to object to publication.

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

CJTER comply with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)’s uniform requirements on Conflicts of Interest.

1. Participants

Conflicts of interest exist when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, editor, editorial board member has financial or personal relationships with other individuals or organizations that could inappropriately influence his or her actions in a way that creates bias. The existence of such a relationship does not necessarily represent a true conflict of interest. The potential for conflicts of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects their judgment. Financial relationships (e.g., employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patents) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and are most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and the scientific value of the research (http://www.icmje.org/index.html).

2. Reporting Conflicts of Interest

All authors will be asked to fill in the ICMJE’s unified disclosure form (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). Each author should submit a separate form and is responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the submitted information. The corresponding author should use the information in the form completed by each author to create the COI statement for the manuscript. The statement (but not the forms) must be included along with the submission. The statement should include the initials of the author along with the conflicts of interest. The following examples show the format in which the Conflicts of Interest statement should appear in the manuscript:

“Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.”

“Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form. KSS and VS are former employees of Scanco Medical AG. NV is a current employee of Scanco Medical AG. The other authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.”

Where necessary, we encourage authors to share data to support the publication of studies and to interlink data with their published articles. “Research data” refers to the results of observations or experiments that confirm research findings, including but not limited to raw data, processed data, software, algorithms, protocols, models, methods, and other related materials.

In following this policy, if authors have made their study data accessible in a data repository, they can link their articles directly to the dataset.

Specifically, authors are required to fill in a data-sharing statement form, which should be submitted along with their manuscript. If the article is accepted for publication, the Data Availability Statement will be published (online only) alongside the article. Data sharing statements include information regarding whether individual de-identified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared (n.b. “undecided” is not an acceptable answer) and/or what data in particular will be shared. They may also indicate whether additional related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol or a statistical analysis plan) as well as when and for how long the data will be available and what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism).

Meanwhile, as a member of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), we require clinical trials that began enrolling participants on or after January 1, 2019, to include a data-sharing plan in the trial’s registration. The ICMJE’s policy regarding trial registration is explained at www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html. Should the data-sharing plan change after registration, this should be reflected in the statement submitted and published with the manuscript, and updated in the registry record.

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:

1.Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;

2.Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and

3.Final approval of the version to be published.

Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors. The journal prescribes a maximum number of authors for manuscripts depending upon the type of manuscript, its scope and number of institutions involved (vide infra). The authors should provide a justification, if the number of authors exceeds these limits.

Ethical responsibilities of authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. The journal will follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which includes:

• The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.

• The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (“self-plagiarism”)).

• A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g. “salami-publishing”).

• No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions.

• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the authors own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted. Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

• Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.

Changes to authorship or contributorship:

• Changes of authorship or in the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

• Requests to add or delete authors at revision stage or after publication is a serious matter, and may be considered only after receipt of written approval from all authors and detailed explanation about the role/deletion of the new/deleted author. The decision on accepting the change rests with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.

• Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc.

If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the journal will carry out an investigation following the COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. If misconduct has been proven, this may result in the Editor-in-Chief’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.

• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either an erratum will be placed with the article or in severe cases complete retraction of the article will occur. The reason must be given in the published erratum or retraction note.

• The author’s institution may be informed.

Author contributions

This section is only required for original articles, review articles, systematic reviews, and meta-analysis articles. It describes the contribution made by each author to the manuscript. Authorship credit should be based on:

1) Substantial contributions to the conception and design of the study, the acquisition of the data, or the analysis and interpretation of the data;

2) Drafting the article or critically revising it for important intellectual content; and

3) The final approval of the final version to be published.

Authors should meet all three of these conditions.

Note: the acquisition of funding, collection of data, language editing, or general supervision of the research group alone do not constitute authorship.

The “Author contributions” section should be presented as follows:

(I) Conception and design:

(II) Administrative support:

(III) Provision of study materials or patients:

(IV) Collection and assembly of data:

(V) Data analysis and interpretation:

(VI) Manuscript writing: All authors

(VII) Final approval of manuscript: All authors

Note: 1. With VI and VII, “All authors” is obligatory, while the other credits are case-based; 2. The “Author contributions” section is not required when there is only one author.

All content of the the journal is published with open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). All articles published with open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy, and distribute as defined by the applied license.

Free access and usage

Permitted third party reuse is defined by the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This license allows users to copy and distribute the article under the following conditions:

this is not done for commercial purposes and does not permit the further distribution of the article if it is changed or edited in any way.

the user gives appropriate credit (with a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI) and provides a link to the license, but does not in an any way imply that the licensor is endorsing the user or the use of the work.

no derivatives including the remixing, transforming, or building upon of the material is allowed for distribution.

The full details of the license are available at

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

We ask you to confirm that your paper is original, has not been published in its current form or a substantially similar form (in print or electronically, including on a web site), that it has not been accepted for publication elsewhere, and that it is not under consideration by another publication. The ICMJE has provided details of what is and what is not duplicate or redundant publication. If you are in doubt (particularly in the case of material that you have posted on a web site), we ask you to proceed with your submission but to include a copy of the relevant previously published work or work under consideration by other journals. Authors must draw attention to any published work that concerns the same patients or subjects as the present paper in a covering letter with their article.

The protection of a patient's right to privacy is essential. Please collect and keep copies of patients’ consent forms on which patients or other subjects of your experiments clearly grant permission for the publication of photographs or other material that might identify them. If the consent form for your research did not specifically include this, please obtain it or remove the identifying material.

A statement to the effect that such consent had been obtained must be included in the “Methods” section of your paper. If necessary the individual journal Editor(s) may request a copy of any consent forms.

All articles dealing with original human or animal data must include a statement on ethics approval at the beginning of the Methods section. This paragraph must contain the following information: the name and address of the ethics committee responsible; the protocol number that was attributed by this ethics committee; the name of the Chairperson of the ethics committee (or the person who approved the protocol) and the date of approval by the ethics committee.

CJTER strives to maintain academic integrity in publishing. All manuscripts submitted to the journal will be screened for plagiarism by the plagiarism checker “AMLC” (https://check.cnki.net/amlc/) at the following points in time:

1.upon receipt of the submission

2.when the author(s) submits the finalized manuscript after peer review

A manuscript will be rejected immediately if considered by the editorial office to be plagiarized or self-plagiarized.

A report of plagiarism will be handled as follows:

1.The complainant contacts the editorial office of the journal in which the published article suspected of plagiarism appeared.

2.The complainant indicates which sections have been plagiarzed by clearly referring to both the original and suspected articles.

3.The editorial office conducts an investigation, during which time the editor of the journal and the corresponding author(s) of the suspected article will be in contact.

4.The corresponding author(s) will be asked to provide an explanation.

5.If the author(s) of the suspected article accepts the complaint of plagiarism, an erratum or retraction is necessary to remedy the situation. However, there may still be a disagreement concerning the wording of the description.

6.In the case of nonresponse within the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article may be permanently retracted.

The journal’s policy for managing allegations of research misconduct is based on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), available at

https://publicationethics.org/misconduct.

Authors are required to read the journal’s author instruction and ethical policies carefully and to adhere to the terms before submission. While authors are given the option to suggest potential reviewers for the peer-review process, the qualifications and potential conflicts of interest of all reviewers will be carefully checked before they are invited to review.

Report of research misconduct may be related to a published article or a manuscript under peer-review process. The procedure for the application and management of complaints of author misconduct should proceed with sensitivity, tact, in confidence, and in the following manner:

1. The editorial office of the journal receives a complaint that an article submitted to or published in the journal is suspected of containing research misconduct.

2. The complainant needs to clearly indicate the specific manner and detail of misconduct; for example, in a case of plagiarism, the plagiarized paragraph should be clearly highlighted and the original and suspected articles should be referred to clearly.

3. The editorial office will conduct an investigation, during which time the editor of the journal and the corresponding author(s) of the suspected article will be in contact.

4. The corresponding author(s) will be asked to provide an explanation with factual statements and any available evidence.

5. If the author(s) of the suspected article accepts the misconduct complaint, the editorial office will take the following actions depending on the situation:

a.If the article has been published, an erratum or retraction may be necessary to remedy the situation. However, there may still be disagreement concerning the appropriate wording of the description.

b.If the misconduct is reported during the review process, the review process may continue, with the author(s) making the relevant changes.

6. In the case of nonresponse in the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article may be permanently retracted or rejected. Before making a decision, confirmation will be sought from the experts of the relevant institution or other authorities as required.

7. The complainant will be informed of the outcome once the issue is resolved.

8. The complaint case will thereupon be considered concluded.

The Process for Handling Cases Requiring Corrections, Retractions, and Editorial Expressions of Concern

CJTER ensures that all of its published journals follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/guidance).   

We aim to ensure the integrity of the academic record of all published or potential publications. Whenever it is recognized that a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement, or distorted report has been published, it must be corrected promptly and with due prominence. If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, it should be retracted. The retraction should be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems.

Corrections

Errors in published papers may be identified in the form of a corrigendum or erratum when the Editor-in-Chief considers it appropriate to inform the journal readership about a previous error and makes a correction to the error in the published article. The corrigendum or erratum will appear as a new article in the journal, and will cite the original published article.

Retractions

Retractions are considered and published when there are severe errors in an article that invalidate the conclusions. Retractions are also made in cases where there is evidence of publication malpractice, such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, or unethical research.

According to industry best practice and in accordance with COPE guidelines, BT implements the following procedure if a retraction is confirmed:

1. A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.

2.In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.

3.The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.

4.The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it has been “retracted.”

Editorial expressions of concern

Where substantial doubt arises as to the honesty or integrity of a submitted or published article, journal editors may consider issuing an expression of concern. However, expressions of concern should only be issued if an investigation into the problems relating to the article has proven inconclusive, and if there remain strong indicators that the concerns are valid. Under some rare cases, an editorial expression of concern may also be issued when an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.

The expression of concern will be linked back to the published article it relates to.