Journal of Offshore Production Technology and Society (JOPTES) is committed to maintaining a fair, transparent, independent, and academically rigorous editorial process. Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological quality, technical validity, ethical compliance, relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope, and contribution to offshore production systems, subsea technologies, asset integrity, reliability, safety, sustainability, and offshore energy governance.
Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial, financial, institutional, governmental, industrial, technological, or personal interests. The publisher does not determine whether an individual manuscript is accepted or rejected.
Editors assess submissions according to scholarly quality, originality, technical validity, methodological soundness, ethical compliance, transparency, relevance, and contribution to offshore production and offshore energy scholarship.
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening before external peer review. The editorial team assesses whether the manuscript fits the journal's Focus and Scope and meets minimum scholarly, technical, ethical, and presentation standards.
Initial screening may include assessment of:
Manuscripts that are clearly outside the journal's scope, lack sufficient technical or scholarly contribution, or do not meet minimum editorial standards may be declined without external peer review.
JOPTES applies a double-anonymous peer review process. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other during the review process.
Manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with expertise relevant to offshore production, subsea technology, integrity, reliability, safety, digital systems, sustainability, or related fields.
Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, confidential, evidence-based, and technically competent assessments.
Reviewer recommendations inform but do not automatically determine the final editorial decision. The responsible editor considers reviewer reports together with the manuscript's scholarly merit, technical validity, methodological quality, ethical compliance, transparency, and relevance.
Editorial decisions may include:
Submission of a revised manuscript does not guarantee acceptance. Final publication decisions remain the responsibility of the editorial team.
Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose financial, institutional, professional, consulting, commercial, technological, or personal relationships that could reasonably influence or appear to influence the research, peer review, or editorial process.
Potential conflicts may include relationships with offshore operators, oil and gas companies, engineering contractors, technology suppliers, classification societies, regulators, consultants, or other organizations directly affected by the research. Editors should transfer responsibility where a relevant conflict exists.
JOPTES supports internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing and publication-ethics practices informed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, manipulated peer review, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, data misrepresentation, image manipulation, and undisclosed conflicts of interest are not acceptable.
Allegations of research or publication misconduct will be assessed objectively, confidentially, and proportionately based on available evidence.
Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. Similarity reports are evaluated contextually and are not judged solely on the basis of a numerical percentage.
Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, duplicate submission, redundant publication, or substantial reuse of previously published material may result in rejection or appropriate post-publication action.
Artificial intelligence systems, generative AI tools, large language models, or autonomous software agents cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for scholarly content, originality, ethical compliance, or accountability.
Authors remain fully responsible for all AI-assisted content, including text, coding, calculations, simulations, data analysis, classifications, figures, references, interpretations, and engineering conclusions.
Substantive use of AI in writing, coding, predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, inspection analysis, optimization, risk modeling, digital twins, simulation, image processing, or literature synthesis should be disclosed where relevant.
Editors and reviewers should not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished engineering data, offshore operational records, proprietary models, reviewer reports, or editorial correspondence to publicly accessible AI systems where confidentiality, intellectual property, privacy, or data security cannot be assured.
Research involving offshore workers, operators, maintenance personnel, contractors, or other human participants should comply with applicable ethical requirements, including informed consent and institutional ethics approval where required.
Authors should protect confidential, commercially sensitive, proprietary, or safety-critical information concerning offshore facilities, production systems, process operations, inspection records, asset integrity data, incident investigations, and company procedures.
Studies using operational data, sensor data, inspection records, process data, production histories, failure databases, digital twins, or industrial datasets should describe data sources, time periods, preprocessing, assumptions, access conditions, and limitations.
Research involving environmental impacts, decommissioning, carbon capture and storage, or community and stakeholder dimensions should comply with relevant ethical, environmental, legal, and regulatory requirements.
Authors may submit a reasoned appeal when they believe that a significant factual, methodological, technical, procedural, or ethical issue affected an editorial decision.
Appeals should identify the specific issue being challenged and provide a clear scholarly or technical justification rather than merely expressing disagreement with the editorial outcome.
Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, conflicts of interest, publication ethics, or published content will be considered objectively by an appropriate journal representative.
JOPTES is committed to preserving the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.
Corrections may be issued when errors affect the accuracy, attribution, interpretation, calculations, figures, metadata, or completeness of a published article without invalidating its principal findings.
Retractions may be considered when findings are unreliable because of major error, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, manipulated data, or other serious integrity concerns.
An Expression of Concern may be issued when substantial concerns exist but sufficient information for a definitive editorial action is not yet available.
