Journal Policy

1. Editorial Principles and Independence

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are based on scientific quality, originality, methodological rigor, relevance to the journal, ethical integrity, clarity, and contribution to knowledge.

Editorial decisions must not be improperly influenced by commercial interests, institutional relationships, sponsorship, publication fees, author nationality, academic status, or personal relationships.

Equal and Fair Consideration

Manuscripts are evaluated without discrimination based on nationality, institutional affiliation, geographical origin, gender, ethnicity, professional seniority, personal beliefs, employment sector, or other characteristics unrelated to scholarly merit.

Editorial Confidentiality

Editors must protect unpublished manuscript content, reviewer reports, author correspondence, industrial data, engineering drawings, facility information, proprietary models, and other confidential material obtained during editorial processing.

2. Submission Policy

Original Submission

Manuscripts submitted to JOPTES must represent original scholarly work and must not be simultaneously under consideration by another journal.

Related Publications

Authors should disclose relevant preprints, conference papers, theses, technical reports, datasets, or previous publications that substantially overlap with the submitted work.

Author Approval

All listed authors must approve the manuscript, authorship order, submission to JOPTES, and the corresponding author's role before submission.

Permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining necessary permissions to publish copyrighted, proprietary, confidential, company-owned, or otherwise restricted information.

Language

Manuscripts must be written in clear and academically appropriate English. Manuscripts whose language prevents meaningful scholarly evaluation may be returned before peer review.

3. Peer Review Policy

Initial Editorial Screening

Every submission is first assessed by an editor to determine whether it falls within the journal's aims and scope and satisfies minimum scientific, methodological, ethical, and presentation standards.

External Review

Manuscripts considered suitable after editorial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent external reviewers with relevant subject expertise.

Reviewer Independence

Reviewers should not have relationships with the authors, institutions, projects, technologies, operators, or commercial interests that could reasonably compromise independent evaluation.

Review Criteria

Reviewers may consider:

• Originality and scientific contribution;
• Relevance to offshore production technology and society;
• Research design and methodological rigor;
• Quality of engineering assumptions;
• Verification and validation;
• Quality and traceability of research data;
• Reliability of numerical or experimental results;
• Engineering and physical interpretation;
• Risk, safety, or societal implications where relevant;
• Reproducibility and transparency;
• Quality of discussion and conclusions; and
• Compliance with research and publication ethics.

Confidentiality

Reviewers must treat manuscripts and related materials as confidential. Unpublished ideas, industrial data, facility information, algorithms, drawings, or engineering concepts must not be used for personal, academic, competitive, or commercial advantage.

4. Editorial Decision Policy

Reviewer recommendations provide expert advice to the editor but do not constitute the final editorial decision.

Final Responsibility

The final decision remains with the authorized editor, who considers reviewer reports, author responses, scientific quality, ethical requirements, and the journal's editorial priorities.

5. Desk Rejection Policy

A manuscript may be declined without external peer review when it does not meet the journal's scope, scientific expectations, ethical requirements, or minimum reporting standards.

Possible Grounds for Desk Rejection

• The manuscript falls outside the aims and scope of JOPTES.
• The contribution is insufficiently original or technically significant.
• The manuscript presents routine simulation without adequate engineering interpretation.
• CFD, FEA, process simulation, or other numerical results lack adequate verification or validation.
• Industrial case studies are primarily descriptive and provide limited transferable knowledge.
• Reliability or risk assessments rely on unsupported assumptions or arbitrary scoring.
• AI or machine-learning studies lack appropriate datasets, validation, comparison, or engineering interpretation.
• Major ethical or research-integrity concerns are identified.
• Significant plagiarism or redundant publication is detected.
• The manuscript is substantially incomplete.
• Language or presentation prevents meaningful scientific assessment.

Desk rejection does not necessarily indicate research misconduct. It may simply indicate that a submission does not sufficiently meet JOPTES' scope or publication priorities.

6. Authorship and Contributorship Policy

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the conception, methodology, investigation, modelling, data analysis, interpretation, or preparation of the manuscript.

Unacceptable Authorship Practices

Contributor Roles

Authorship Changes

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be explained and agreed to by all affected authors. The journal may request written confirmation before approving the change.

7. Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose interests that could reasonably influence or appear to influence scholarly judgment.

Funding Statement

Authors should identify funding sources and relevant support such as operator data access, offshore testing, laboratory facilities, software licenses, equipment, industry sponsorship, computational resources, or technical assistance.

Editorial Conflicts

Editors and reviewers must withdraw when relationships or interests could compromise or reasonably appear to compromise impartiality.

8. Plagiarism, Similarity and Research Misconduct

Similarity Screening

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using recognized similarity-detection software during editorial evaluation or another stage of publication.

No Automatic Percentage Rule

Similarity percentages are not interpreted as an automatic determination of plagiarism. Editors consider the source, location, context, extent, attribution, and nature of matching material.

Research Misconduct Includes

Editorial Investigation

Where credible concerns arise, the journal may request raw datasets, laboratory records, model files, source code, engineering calculations, original figures, authorship documentation, permissions, or other relevant evidence.

9. Research Data and Reproducibility Policy

Authors should retain original research records and supporting data sufficient to substantiate the results reported in the manuscript.

Data Availability

Where legally, ethically, commercially, and technically appropriate, authors are encouraged to make supporting data, code, and research materials available through recognized repositories or supplementary files.

Confidential Industrial Data

Offshore industry research frequently involves commercially sensitive or restricted information. Legitimate confidentiality restrictions do not automatically prevent publication.

Authors should describe relevant restrictions transparently and provide sufficient methodological information to permit scholarly evaluation without violating legitimate confidentiality obligations.

10. Offshore Production Research and Technical Reporting Policy

Industrial and Field Data

Studies based on offshore operational data should clearly distinguish between directly measured values, operator-provided information, calculated variables, inferred values, assumed parameters, and simulated results.

Asset Anonymization

Fields, facilities, operators, contractors, or locations may be anonymized when required by legitimate confidentiality restrictions. However, anonymization must not prevent meaningful scientific interpretation.

Numerical Engineering Studies

CFD, FEA, multiphysics, process simulation, hydrodynamic analysis, reliability models, and optimization studies should report relevant assumptions, input parameters, boundary conditions, numerical methods, verification, validation, uncertainty, and limitations.

Flow Assurance

Multiphase-flow and flow-assurance studies should report relevant fluid properties, operating conditions, geometry, thermal conditions, transient assumptions, and applicable hydrate, wax, scale, asphaltene, corrosion, erosion, or slugging parameters.

Subsea Production

Studies involving subsea trees, manifolds, pumps, compression, processing, tiebacks, flowlines, risers, power or controls should clearly identify the system configuration and engineering interfaces relevant to the conclusions.

Floating Production Systems

FPSO, FLNG, FSO, semi-submersible, spar, TLP, or related studies should report relevant facility configuration, environmental conditions, hydrodynamic assumptions, topsides interfaces, station-keeping systems, or production constraints where applicable.

Integrity and Reliability

Structural integrity, corrosion, fatigue, remaining-life, RAM, FMEA, HAZOP, QRA, barrier management, or probabilistic studies should clearly identify data sources, assumptions, failure criteria, probability models, uncertainty, and limitations.

Verification and Validation

Authors should verify and validate analytical, computational, or numerical models using appropriate experimental, field, benchmark, analytical, manufacturer, or published evidence where reasonably possible.

11. Technology and Society Research Policy

Socio-technical manuscripts must demonstrate a direct and substantive relationship to offshore production technology, offshore operations, safety, workforce, governance, sustainability, or energy transition.

Human Participants

Research involving interviews, surveys, focus groups, workforce assessments, behavioural studies, or identifiable human participants must comply with applicable institutional and national ethical requirements.

Ethical Approval

Where required, authors must obtain approval from an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review mechanism.

Informed Consent

Appropriate informed consent should be obtained when required, particularly where participants or identifiable personal data are involved.

Human Factors and Safety Culture

Studies of human error, competence, fatigue, workload, safety culture, decision-making, or organizational reliability should avoid unsupported attribution of incidents solely to individuals and should consider relevant technical and organizational factors.

Stakeholder Research

Studies involving communities, regulators, contractors, local industries, fisheries, or other stakeholders should accurately represent research participants and avoid misleading generalizations.

12. Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy

AI Cannot Be an Author

Artificial intelligence systems, large language models, chatbots, image generators, and other automated tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.

Human Responsibility

Human authors remain fully responsible for all manuscript content, including references, equations, engineering parameters, code, datasets, numerical results, interpretations, and conclusions.

Disclosure

Substantive use of generative AI in writing, programming, data processing, analysis, image generation, simulation, or visualization should be transparently disclosed where applicable.

AI and Engineering Analysis

Machine-learning and AI studies should clearly describe dataset provenance, preprocessing, training and test separation, validation procedures, performance metrics, uncertainty, baseline models, and engineering interpretation.

Synthetic Data

Synthetic or AI-generated engineering data must be clearly identified and distinguished from measured, experimental, or operational data.

Confidentiality

Authors, editors, and reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts, proprietary facility information, industrial datasets, engineering drawings, or restricted operational information to external AI services where confidentiality and data protection cannot be assured.

13. Manuscript Withdrawal Policy

Withdrawal Request

Authors requesting withdrawal should contact the editorial office and provide the manuscript title, submission identification, corresponding author, and reason for withdrawal.

Agreement of Authors

Withdrawal requests should normally be made with the agreement of all listed authors.

After Acceptance

Withdrawal after formal acceptance should occur only in exceptional circumstances because substantial editorial, peer-review, and production work may already have been completed.

Ethical Investigations

Withdrawal does not prevent the journal from investigating credible allegations of plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship disputes, data manipulation, or other research-integrity concerns.

14. Complaints and Appeals Policy

Editorial Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that an important factual, methodological, procedural, or scholarly issue was overlooked.

Appeal Requirements

An appeal should identify the manuscript and editorial decision and provide a concise, evidence-based explanation of the grounds for reconsideration.

Independent Consideration

Where practicable, appeals should be considered by an editor who was not primarily responsible for the original decision.

Complaints

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may submit legitimate complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, conflicts of interest, publication ethics, or published material.

Evidence-Based Review

Complaints and appeals are evaluated fairly and on the basis of relevant evidence.

15. Post-Publication Policy

Corrections

When an error affects part of a published article but does not invalidate the principal findings, JOPTES may publish an appropriate correction or clarification.

Expressions of Concern

An expression of concern may be issued when credible questions arise about a publication's integrity or reliability but sufficient evidence for a final determination is not yet available.

Retractions

An article may be retracted when there is clear evidence that its findings are unreliable because of serious error, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, unethical research, duplicate publication, manipulated peer review, or another serious breach of research integrity.

Publication Record

Corrections, expressions of concern, and retraction notices should remain clearly linked to the original publication so readers can understand its current status.

Post-Publication Discussion

JOPTES supports responsible scholarly discussion of published work. Readers may bring credible concerns regarding data, interpretation, reproducibility, or research conduct to the editorial office.

16. Access, Copyright, Licensing and Publication Charges

Transparency

The journal's access model, copyright ownership, publication license, author rights, and any publication charges must be clearly communicated to authors and readers.

Editorial Office Note: Before publishing this section, replace the descriptive placeholders above with JOPTES' actual copyright, Creative Commons license, APC, waiver, and digital-preservation arrangements.