Advances in Mechanical Engineering

1. Open Access
2. Article processing charge (APC)
3. Article Types
4. Editorial policies
   4.1 Peer Review Policy
   4.2 Concurrent submission
   4.3 Authorship
   4.4 Acknowledgements
   4.5 Funding
   4.6 Declaration of conflicting interests
   4.7 Research Data
5. Publishing policies
   5.1 Publication ethics
   5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
6. Preparing your manuscript
   6.1 Word processing formats
   6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
   6.3 Supplementary material
   6.4 Reference style
   6.5 English language editing services
7. Submitting your manuscript
   7.1 ORCID
   7.2 Information required for completing your submission
   7.3 Corresponding author contact details
   7.4 Permissions
8. On acceptance and publication
   8.1 Sage Production
   8.2 Technical Edit
   8.3 Continuous publication
   8.3 Promoting your article
9. Further information

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/aime to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Advances in Mechanical Engineering will be reviewed. As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.

1. Open Access

Advances in Mechanical Engineering is an open access, peer-reviewed journal. Each article accepted after peer review is made freely available online immediately upon publication, is published under a Creative Commons license and will be hosted online in perpetuity. Publication costs of the journal are covered by the collection of article processing charges which are paid by the funder, institution or author of each manuscript upon acceptance. There is no charge for submitting a paper to the journal.

For general information on open access at Sage please visit the Open Access page or view our Open Access FAQs.

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2. Article processing charge (APC)

If, after peer review, your manuscript is accepted for publication, a one-time article processing charge (APC) is payable. This APC covers the cost of publication and ensures that your article will be freely available online in perpetuity under a Creative Commons licence.

The article processing charge (APC) for this journal is 2,650 USD.

As part of the manuscript submission process, authors can request a full Technical Edit of their manuscript to take place after peer review. For articles opting to receive a Technical Edit, the APC is 3,800 USD.

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3. Article types

Original Research Article: Describes a piece of complete or substantially complete research, or some aspect of design development, or engineering education

Review Article: A critical review of the state-of-the-art with examples of applications in design and profitable manufacture without extensive analysis

Special Collection Article:  This may be an Original Research Article or a Review Article that is appropriate for the subject matter of the Special Collection. Any article deemed not to be appropriate for the subject matter of a Special Collection will be considered for standard publication.

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4. Editorial policies

4.1 Peer review policy

Once a manuscript is submitted for publication, the manuscript is checked by the journal’s editorial office to ensure that it is suitable to go through the normal peer review process. Once this is done, the manuscript is sent to an appropriate Editor based on the subject of the manuscript and the availability of the Editors. All manuscripts shall be handled by an Editor who is not from the same institute as any of the manuscript’s authors.

If the Editor finds that the manuscript may not be of sufficient quality to go through the normal peer review process, or that the subject of the manuscript may not be appropriate for the journal’s scope, the manuscript shall be rejected with no further processing.

If the Editor finds that the submitted manuscript is of sufficient quality and falls within the scope of the journal, they should assign the manuscript to at least two external reviewers for peer-review who make recommendations on the suitability of the articles for publication.

When all reviewers have submitted their reports, the Editor can make one of the following editorial recommendations:

Accept

Minor Revision

Major Revision

Reject

If the Editor recommends “Accept”, the manuscript is accepted for publication.

If the Editor recommends “Minor Revision”, the authors are notified to prepare and submit a final copy of their manuscript with the required minor revisions suggested by the reviewers along with a detailed reply to the reviewer comments. The Editor reviews the revised manuscript after the minor revisions have been made by the authors. Once the Editor is satisfied with the final manuscript, the manuscript can be accepted.

If the Editor recommends “Major Revision,” the recommendation is communicated to the authors. The authors are expected to revise their manuscripts in accordance with the changes recommended by the reviewers and to submit their revised manuscript in a timely manner. Authors are requested to upload a detailed reply to the reviewer comments along with the revised version of their manuscript. Once the revised manuscript is submitted, the Editor can then make an editorial recommendation which can be “Accept”, “Minor Revision”, or “Reject.”

If the Editor recommends rejecting the manuscript, the rejection is immediate. Also, if the majority of the reviewers recommend rejecting the manuscript, the rejection is immediate.

The editorial workflow gives the Editors the authority to reject any manuscript because of inappropriateness of its subject, lack of quality, or incorrectness of its results. The Editor cannot assign himself/herself as an external reviewer of the manuscript. This is to ensure a high-quality, fair, and unbiased peer-review process of every manuscript submitted to the journal, since any manuscript must be recommended by two or more external reviewers along with the Editor in charge of the manuscript in order for it to be accepted for publication in the journal.

We are committed to providing timely assessment of articles and authors are informed of the publication decision as soon as possible.

The name of the Editor recommending the manuscript for publication is published with the manuscript to indicate and acknowledge their invaluable contribution to the peer-review process and the indispensability of their contributions to the running of the journals.

It should be noted that our refereeing process, common to many other publishers, is single-anonymize, that is, the referees remain anonymous and their identities are not released to authors. The referees, however, are informed of the authors’ names and affiliations.

4.2 Concurrent Submission

In order to ensure sufficient diversity within the authorship of the journal, authors will be limited to having two manuscripts under review at any point in time. If an author already has two manuscripts under review in the journal, he or she will need to wait until the review process of at least one of these manuscripts is complete before submitting another manuscript for consideration. This policy does not apply to Editorials or other non-peer reviewed manuscript types.

4.3 Authorship

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

1. Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data, 
2. Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
3. Approved the version to be published, 
4. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section.

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.

4.4 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

4.4.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

•    Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input 
•    Identify any entities that paid for this assistance 
•    Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

4.4.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance”).

It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.

Any acknowledgements should appear first at the end of your article prior to your Declaration of Conflicting Interests (if applicable), any notes and your References.

4.5 Funding

Advances in Mechanical Engineering requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.  Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

4.6 Declaration of conflicting interests

It is the policy of Advances in Mechanical Engineering to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’

4.7 Research Data

The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
• cite this data in your research

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5. Publishing policies

5.1 Publication ethics

Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.

5.1.1 Plagiarism

Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

5.1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published, it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.

5.2 Contributor's publishing agreement

Before publication Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement.  Advances in Mechanical Engineering publishes manuscripts under Creative Commons licenses. The standard license for the journal is Creative Commons by Attribution (CC-BY), which allows content to be copied, adapted, displayed, distributed, re-published or otherwise re-used for any purpose including for adaptation and commercial use provided the content is attributed. For more information, you are advised to visit Sage's OA licenses page.

Alternative license arrangements are available, for example, to meet particular funder mandates, made at the author’s request.

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6. Preparing your manuscript

6.1 Word processing formats

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

6.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.  

Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online.

All equations should be supplied in an editable format.

All tables must be presented in an editable format, not presented as image files.

All figures and tables must appear within the text as they are cited, whether in running text or parentheses, and must be numbered consecutively.

All inline and display equations must be presented in an editable format, not presented as image files.

6.3 Supplementary material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.

6.4 Reference style

Advances in Mechanical Engineering adheres to the Sage Vancouver reference style. Please review the guidelines on Sage Vancouver to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style. All references within the text of your article should be numbered (not listed as author name and year).

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Vancouver output file here.

6.5 English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.

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7. Submitting your manuscript

Advances in Mechanical Engineering is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/aime to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.  For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

7.1 ORCID

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized. 

The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

7.2 Information required for completing your submission

Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors. These details should be presented separately to the main text of the article to facilitate anonymous peer review.

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

7.3 Corresponding author contact details

Provide full contact details for the corresponding author including email, mailing address and telephone numbers. Academic affiliations are required for all co-authors.

7.4 Permissions

Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.

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8. On acceptance and publication

If your paper is accepted for publication after peer review, you will first be asked to complete the contributor’s publishing agreement. Once your manuscript files have been checked for Sage Production, the corresponding author will be asked to pay the article processing charge (APC) via a payment link. Once the APC has been processed, your article will be prepared for publication and can appear online within an average of 20 working days. Please note that no production work will occur on your paper until the APC has been received.

8.1 Sage Production

Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly.  Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.

8.2. Technical Edit

For manuscripts that have opted for a full Technical Edit, once payment of the APC is received, the manuscript is assigned to a qualified scientific editor who will perform a combination of standard copy-editing, scientific content editing and English language editing. The editorial and scientific queries will be raised directly with authors. On average, there are 50-80 queries raised during the Technical Edit stage. These should be answered clearly and quickly, with the agreement of all co-authors and to the satisfaction of the journal. Following that, a final typeset proof will be produced for final checks before publication.

8.3 Continuous publication

One of the many benefits of publishing your research in an open access journal is the speed to publication. With no page count constraints, your article will be published online in a fully citable form with a DOI number as soon as it has completed the production process. At this time it will be completely free to view and download for all.

8.4 Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

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9. Further information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Advances in Mechanical Engineering editorial office as follows:

Peer Review Manager
Sage Publications Ltd
1 Oliver's Yard, 55 City Road
London, EC1Y 1SP
UK

Email: aime@sagepub.co.uk

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