Journal of Wave Energy Systems and Technology (WEST) 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 wave energy conversion, marine renewable-energy systems, hydrodynamics, control, reliability, deployment, and sustainability.
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 wave energy and marine renewable-energy scholarship.
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening before external peer review. The editorial team assesses whether a 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.
WEST 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 wave energy conversion, hydrodynamics, control systems, power take-off, reliability, marine deployment, environmental impacts, 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 wave-energy developers, marine-energy companies, technology manufacturers, engineering contractors, research consortia, regulators, consultants, or organizations directly affected by the research. Editors should transfer responsibility where a relevant conflict exists.
WEST 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, control optimization, resource prediction, fault diagnosis, condition monitoring, digital twins, simulation, image processing, or literature synthesis should be disclosed where relevant.
Editors and reviewers should not upload confidential manuscripts, unpublished experimental data, proprietary models, reviewer reports, or editorial correspondence to publicly accessible AI systems where confidentiality, intellectual property, privacy, or data security cannot be assured.
Research using wave-tank measurements, field measurements, wave-resource datasets, numerical models, control systems, prototype data, sensor records, or industrial datasets should clearly describe data sources, time periods, preprocessing, assumptions, access conditions, and limitations.
Experimental studies should report test conditions, model scale, instrumentation, calibration procedures, uncertainty, repeatability, and relevant scale effects.
Computational studies should transparently report governing equations, assumptions, boundary and initial conditions, mesh or numerical settings, convergence criteria, verification procedures, and validation data where applicable.
Research involving environmental impacts, marine ecosystems, stakeholder participation, or human participants 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.
WEST 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.
