Journal Policy

1. Journal Philosophy and Scope

Journal Philosophy

WEST seeks to advance fundamental and applied knowledge concerning the conversion of ocean-wave resources into useful and reliable renewable energy.

The journal emphasizes research connecting wave-resource characterization, hydrodynamic energy capture, WEC design, power take-off, control engineering, offshore structures, electrical conversion, reliability, and commercial deployment.

Scope and Relevance

Relevant topics include wave energy converters, hydrodynamics, wave–structure interaction, PTO technologies, control strategies, WEC arrays, mooring systems, structural response, wave-to-wire modelling, grid integration, hybrid offshore systems, digital twins, reliability, operations and maintenance, environmental assessment, and techno-economics.

Manuscripts must demonstrate a substantive relationship to wave-energy systems or technologies. General renewable-energy, coastal-engineering, offshore-engineering, or electrical-system studies without a meaningful wave-energy component may be considered outside the journal's primary scope.

2. Submission Eligibility

Who Can Submit?

WEST welcomes manuscripts from academics, researchers, engineers, postgraduate researchers, technology developers, laboratories, government research organizations, industry professionals, and interdisciplinary research teams whose work falls within the journal's aims and scope.

Equal Consideration

Manuscripts are considered on the basis of scientific merit, originality, methodological rigor, relevance, ethical integrity, and contribution to knowledge.

Nationality, geographical location, institutional affiliation, academic seniority, gender, personal beliefs, or financial status must not determine whether a manuscript is considered for publication.

3. General Submission Rules

Originality

Manuscripts must represent original scholarly work. Text, equations, algorithms, models, software, device concepts, datasets, control strategies, figures, photographs, design drawings, and other externally derived materials must be appropriately acknowledged and cited.

Concurrent Submission

Manuscripts submitted to WEST must not simultaneously be under consideration by another journal.

Authors should disclose related preprints, conference papers, reports, theses, datasets, or earlier publications that substantially overlap with the submission.

Authorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial intellectual or scholarly contributions to the research. All listed authors must approve the submitted manuscript.

Guest authorship, honorary authorship, gift authorship, purchased authorship, and ghost authorship are not acceptable.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose financial, institutional, commercial, professional, or personal relationships that could reasonably influence or appear to influence the research or interpretation of findings.

Funding Disclosure

Research grants, industry sponsorship, prototype-development support, wave-tank access, offshore-testing support, equipment, computational resources, or other relevant assistance should be transparently acknowledged.

Permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted or restricted photographs, figures, datasets, technical drawings, reports, or other materials where required.

Generative Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence systems cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. Human authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, integrity, references, calculations, numerical models, engineering assumptions, and conclusions of submitted content.

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

4. Manuscript Preparation and Scientific Reporting

Formatting

Manuscripts should follow the current WEST Author Guidelines and manuscript template. Authors should ensure consistency in headings, terminology, equations, abbreviations, units, references, figures, and tables.

Scientific Reporting

Methods must be reported with sufficient detail to permit meaningful scientific evaluation and, where reasonably possible, reproduction or independent verification.

Authors should clearly report relevant assumptions, environmental conditions, device geometry, models, materials, instrumentation, numerical procedures, validation methods, uncertainty, limitations, and performance metrics.

Figures and Scientific Visualizations

Wave records, response-amplitude plots, power curves, CFD contours, pressure maps, mooring-load plots, photographs, numerical outputs, and other figures must accurately represent the underlying research.

Manipulation that alters, conceals, introduces, or misrepresents scientifically relevant information is prohibited.

References

References should be accurate, complete, relevant, and sufficient to establish the scientific context of the manuscript.

Excessive self-citation, irrelevant citation, coercive citation, citation padding, or coordinated citation manipulation is not acceptable.

5. Peer Review Process

Initial Editorial Screening

Every manuscript is initially evaluated by the editorial team to determine whether it meets the aims and scope, satisfies minimum scholarly standards, and complies with basic research and publication requirements.

External Peer Review

Manuscripts considered suitable after editorial screening are normally sent to qualified subject experts for peer review before a final publication decision is made.

Reviewer Selection

Reviewers are selected according to relevant expertise, scholarly experience, independence, and absence of significant conflicts of interest.

Review Criteria

Reviewers may evaluate:

• Originality and scientific contribution;
• Relevance to wave-energy systems and technology;
• Quality of research design;
• Appropriateness of numerical, experimental, or analytical methods;
• Verification and validation;
• Quality of uncertainty assessment;
• Physical and engineering interpretation;
• Reproducibility and transparency;
• System-level and practical significance;
• Quality of discussion and conclusions; and
• Research-integrity compliance.

Editorial Decisions

Reviewer recommendations inform editorial decisions, but the final responsibility for acceptance or rejection remains with the authorized editor.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by author fees, institutional affiliation, commercial sponsorship, personal relationships, or other factors unrelated to scholarly merit.

6. Desk Rejection Policy

Editorial Screening

A manuscript may be declined before external peer review when it does not satisfy the journal's scope, scientific expectations, ethical requirements, or minimum manuscript standards.

Grounds for Desk Rejection

Reasons may include, but are not limited to:

• The manuscript is outside the scope of WEST.
• The study lacks sufficient originality or scientific contribution.
• A WEC concept is presented without meaningful hydrodynamic, experimental, or system-level evaluation.
• Numerical simulations lack adequate verification or validation.
• CFD results are presented without appropriate mesh, convergence, or numerical-quality assessment.
• Experimental testing lacks sufficient information on scale, instrumentation, uncertainty, or test conditions.
• Performance claims are insufficiently supported.
• The study provides only routine parameter variation without meaningful physical interpretation.
• Significant research-integrity concerns are identified.
• Plagiarism or substantial redundant publication is identified.
• The manuscript is substantially incomplete.
• Language or presentation prevents meaningful scholarly evaluation.

Desk rejection does not necessarily indicate research misconduct. It may simply indicate that a manuscript does not sufficiently align with the journal's scope or scholarly priorities.

7. Plagiarism and Similarity Policy

Similarity Screening

Manuscripts submitted to WEST may be screened using recognized similarity-detection software during editorial evaluation or another stage of the publication process.

Interpretation of Similarity

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

Unacceptable Practices

• Direct plagiarism;
• Inappropriate paraphrasing;
• Unattributed reuse;
• Duplicate publication;
• Excessive text recycling without appropriate disclosure;
• Unauthorized reuse of figures, wave data, photographs, or datasets;
• Fabricated or nonexistent references;
• Misleading reuse of previously published simulation or experimental results.

Editorial Action

Depending on the seriousness of the issue, WEST may request clarification, request revision, decline the manuscript, issue a correction, publish an expression of concern, or retract an article where appropriate.

8. Research Data and Reproducibility

Research Data

Authors should retain original research data and supporting documentation necessary to substantiate the findings reported in the manuscript.

Data Availability

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

Confidential or Proprietary Data

Industrial, commercial, infrastructure, or prototype data subject to legitimate confidentiality restrictions need not be made publicly available, but restrictions should be described transparently.

Data Requests

Editors may request relevant raw data, simulation files, source code, photographs, or supporting records where necessary to assess validity, reproducibility, or research-integrity concerns.

9. Wave Energy Research and Technical Reporting Policy

Wave Resource Assessment

Studies involving wave-energy resources should clearly report data sources, measurement or simulation periods, geographical location, water depth, spectral parameters, sea-state characterization, processing procedures, uncertainty, and limitations where applicable.

Authors should distinguish between short-term measurements and long-term resource characterization when drawing conclusions concerning annual energy potential.

Hydrodynamic Analysis

Hydrodynamic studies should report relevant device geometry, coordinate systems, degrees of freedom, wave conditions, water depth, radiation and diffraction assumptions, damping, nonlinear effects, viscous effects, and other parameters required for interpretation.

Numerical Modelling

Potential-flow, CFD, SPH, finite-element, multiphysics, or other numerical studies should clearly describe:

• Governing equations or numerical framework;
• Geometry and computational domain;
• Initial and boundary conditions;
• Mesh or discretization strategy;
• Time-step or temporal resolution;
• Solver and numerical schemes;
• Convergence assessment;
• Verification and validation;
• Relevant numerical uncertainty; and
• Model limitations.

Physical Model Testing

Wave-tank or wave-basin studies should report model scale, similarity principles, wave generation, instrumentation, calibration, sampling, repeatability, reflection control, uncertainty, and relevant scale effects.

Wave Energy Converter Performance

Claims concerning absorbed power, capture width, capture-width ratio, PTO output, electrical power, annual energy production, or efficiency should clearly distinguish the measurement or calculation level used.

Authors should avoid presenting absorbed hydrodynamic power as delivered electrical power unless the conversion chain has been appropriately accounted for.

Power Take-Off Systems

PTO studies should provide sufficient information concerning the mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, or control characteristics of the PTO.

Relevant losses, constraints, saturation limits, efficiencies, and conversion assumptions should be described where applicable.

Control Systems

Control studies should report controller architecture, assumptions, constraints, tuning, prediction requirements, objective functions, performance metrics, PTO or actuator limits, and baseline conditions used for comparison.

Mooring and Station Keeping

Mooring research should clearly report configuration, line properties, pretension, water depth, environmental loads, modelling assumptions, dynamic effects, and relevant safety or design considerations.

WEC Arrays

Array studies should report device spacing, orientation, layout, incident-wave direction, interaction assumptions, array-performance metrics, and relevant boundary conditions.

Wave-to-Wire Research

Complete system studies should clearly distinguish between hydrodynamic capture, mechanical conversion, generator output, power-electronic losses, storage where applicable, and delivered electrical power.

Reliability and Survivability

Research addressing reliability, fatigue, extreme loading, availability, maintainability, survivability, or remaining life should identify relevant load cases, environmental conditions, failure assumptions, material parameters, and uncertainty.

Sea Trials and Offshore Deployment

Prototype and field studies should clearly report deployment location, test period, environmental conditions, instrumentation, operational modes, system interruptions or failures, data filtering, and limitations.

Relevant Technical Standards

Where appropriate to the research, authors are encouraged to identify and apply relevant internationally recognized marine-energy standards or technical specifications, including applicable IEC 62600-series guidance for resource assessment, WEC performance, design, mooring, measurement, and testing.

Techno-Economic Claims

Claims concerning LCOE, CAPEX, OPEX, economic viability, commercialization, or cost competitiveness should clearly identify assumptions, project lifetime, discount rate, energy-production basis, maintenance assumptions, and system boundaries where applicable.

Environmental and Sustainability Claims

Claims such as sustainable, environmentally friendly, low-carbon, commercially viable, cost-effective, or highly efficient should be supported by appropriate scientific, environmental, technical, or economic evidence.

Marine and Environmental Compliance

Offshore experiments and deployments should comply with applicable safety, environmental, navigation, permitting, and regulatory requirements.

10. Withdrawal Policy

Withdrawal Requests

Authors wishing to withdraw a manuscript should submit a formal request to the editorial office identifying the manuscript title, submission number, corresponding author, and reason for withdrawal.

The request should be made with the knowledge and agreement of all co-authors.

During Peer Review or Revision

Authors may request withdrawal during editorial evaluation, peer review, or revision. The editorial office may request additional confirmation where necessary.

After Acceptance

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

Ethical Investigations

Withdrawal does not prevent the journal from investigating credible concerns regarding plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship disputes, data manipulation, or other ethical matters.

11. Complaints and Appeals

Editorial Appeals

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

Appeals should identify the manuscript, specify the decision being challenged, and provide a concise, evidence-based explanation.

Grounds for Appeal

Disagreement with reviewer comments or editorial judgment alone does not automatically justify reconsideration. Appeals should identify a substantive reason why the decision may warrant review.

Independent Consideration

Where practicable, an appeal may be evaluated by an editor who was not primarily responsible for the original decision.

Complaints

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may raise concerns regarding editorial conduct, peer-review procedures, conflicts of interest, published material, or publication ethics.

Research-Integrity Concerns

Allegations involving fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, authorship disputes, citation manipulation, peer-review manipulation, or other misconduct may require supporting documentation and communication with relevant institutions or other responsible parties.

12. Post-Publication Policy

Corrections

When an error affects part of a published article but does not invalidate its principal findings, WEST may publish a correction or another appropriate editorial notice.

Expressions of Concern

An expression of concern may be issued when credible questions arise regarding the reliability or integrity of a publication 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 or publication integrity.

Transparency of the Scholarly Record

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

Post-Publication Discussion

WEST supports responsible scholarly discussion concerning published research. Credible concerns regarding errors, interpretation, reproducibility, data integrity, or research conduct may be submitted to the editorial office for consideration.