Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

City diversity (CD) is an open access journal which boasts international reputation. It adopts a multitude of academic articles in this field. All the articles submitted will undergo a rigorous double blind peer-reviewed process. City diversity (CD) is an important indicator to evaluate the service function of urban ecosystem, which is important to maintain the ecological security and ecological balance of cities and improve the urban habitat. This journal will help to construct a better city by providing in-depth researches in this field. This journal welcomes different types of articles including original research articles, review articles, book reviews, editorials, commentaries, letters, perspectives, case reports, etc.

The journal will specifically address the following topics but not limited to: Urban habitat, city biodiversity, ecological diversity, ecological balance.

Section Policies

Article

An article offering methods and results of original research. In past publications, this type of article was called the “Research Article” or “Original Research Article”.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Brief Report

A short report of preliminary studies or original research, which provides fewer details compared with an original research article.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book Review

A short article giving a brief summary of a book. The book title and the names of all authors should be included in the title of the book review. The content of a book review may include the content and scope of the book and comments on the quality of the book.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case Report

A report presenting symptoms, signs, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of a patient. Case reports are usually published in medical journals.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Communication

A short article introducing original and significant research that requires rapid publication.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Editorial

Editorial reflects the opinion of an Editorial Board member or staff for particular Journal highlighting recent changes, concerned issues or announcements in relevance to the journal. This may include editorial management and policies.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Hypothesis

An article proposing a new hypothesis or theory with a new interpretation of recent data or findings in the field.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Opinion

A short article containing the authors’ understanding and standpoints on the interpretation, analysis, or methods used in any research area.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Perspective

An article presenting the authors’ viewpoints on a specific area. Different from review articles, perspective articles introduce current advances and focus more on future trends in the field and may take a narrower field of view.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Review

A summary providing a comprehensive review of original research, as well as discussing current research gaps and future trends in the field.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Original Research Articles

Original research articles should contain completely new principal research testifying major contributions to the field. The study should represent new findings or discoveries in a subject area that were not published before. The report may contain significant findings, methodology importance and considerable evidence to the conclusions.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

All papers submitted to City diversity (CD) are subjected to a stringent double-blind peer reviewed process. This is to uphold the high quality of papers published in CD and ensure that the reporting of research work is truthful and accurate.

Upon submission, the article is reviewed by CD in-house editors to assess its suitability for the journal based on the editorial policy and procedural guidelines.
The Editor-in-Chief (EIC) carefully evaluates each manuscript to determine if its topic and content are suitable for consideration.
The accepted manuscripts are then assigned by the EIC to the associate editors according to their respective areas of expertise.
The associate editor selects reviewers from the editorial board or external reviewers who are suitably qualified to assess the paper.
Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript’s originality, methodology, contribution to the literature, presentation of results and support for the conclusions, and appropriate referencing of previous relevant studies
Post-evaluation by the reviewers, the manuscript is sent to the associate editor who makes one of the following recommendations: accept, accept with minor revision, or reject.
The manuscript is then passed to the EIC who makes the final decision.
If EIC suggests minor revisions, authors are given a maximum of 10 days to revise and resubmit the article.
If EIC suggests major revisions, authors are given a maximum of 60 days to revise and resubmit the article.
After re-submission of the revised manuscript, the above steps are repeated before the paper is accepted for publication.
Authors of rejected submissions are advised to make an appeal in writing to editorial-cd@apacsci.com. Written appeals should include specific reasons for the appeal and point-by-point response to the reviewers' suggestions and criticisms.
Decisions made on appeals by the EIC are final and no further considerations will be made.

Publication Frequency

The publication frequency of City Diversity is semi-annual.

Open Access Policy

Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. (APASCI) publishes its journals in the Gold Open Access format. The benefits of this publishing model are as follows:

Authors retain their copyright without restriction.
Articles are immediately published online and available for free reading and download.
No special permission to share or adapt the material in the published articles.

All articles published by City Diversity are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during the submission stage, a paper will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) by default.

Publishing Ethics

APASCI upholds the spirit of strict adherence to high ethical standards. This is consistent with APASCI’s mission of publishing high-quality articles and promoting open scientific exchanges globally. APASCI follows the Ethical Oversight Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in overseeing the publication process, as well as the activities of APASCI journals, editors, and reviewers.

APASCI and all the editors adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Core Practices and Best Practice Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE);

2. Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

3. Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE).

APASCI is committed to protecting the privacy of its contributors and promises not to disclose personal information to third parties without permission, unless for necessary purposes of the publishing process or required by law.

APASCI takes allegations of misconduct (refer to the Misconduct Policy for more details) seriously and will launch an immediate investigation by a group of investigation members. Decisions will be made by the investigation group based on clear evidence, and the authors will be informed. If there is any appeal against the decision, it must be made to the publisher within 14 days of the decision date, or else actions will be taken after 14 days. The decision on the appeal is final.

Any complaints and appeals against APASCI journals and editors can be directed to the publisher at editorial_office@apacsci.com, and APASCI follows COPE guidelines in handling all complaints and appeals.

Research Involving Human Subjects

Authors who carry out research involving humans must declare that their studies followed the WMA Declaration of Helsinki. They must obtain approval from the concerned research ethics committee before carrying out the research and accept the monitoring by the committee. During the submission stage, authors are required to attach a statement containing the name of the ethics committee, the approval code, etc.

Informed consent to participate in the research must be obtained from all human subjects or their guardians. A statement on the consent to participate should also be included during submission. If there is no need for informed consent, authors must provide the name of the ethics committee and the reason for the absence of the need for informed consent.

Human subjects’ right to privacy right is inviolable. Authors should not disclose any identifying information, including but not limited to names, initials, contacts, and medical record numbers, unless the absence of such information may influence the interpretation of the research. In addition, written informed consent for publication from the participants should be obtained. If participants are vulnerable, informed consent should be given by their guardians. Authors must inform the participants if pictures of their bodies (e.g., faces) have to be included in the manuscript and receive consent for publication. In the case of deceased human subjects, their next of kin or legal representative should be asked for consent.

Research Involving Animal Subjects

All studies involving animals should be approved by an ethics committee before the research is conducted. If ethical approval is not required by national laws, exemption from the ethics committee, the name of the ethics committee, and the reason should be provided by the authors during submission.

The following guidelines can be helpful for authors in upholding high ethical standards and avoiding submission rejection

APASCI applies The ARRIVE Essential 10: Compliance Questionnaire for evaluating comparative experiments in living animals. Authors can also use it as a checklist.

Authorship

Based on the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), authorship should be limited to those who meet the following four criteria:

Contributed substantially to the conception or design of the manuscript or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the manuscript; AND
Drafted the manuscript or reviewed it critically for significant intellectual content; AND
Have final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreed to be responsible for the manuscript in ensuring that problems relating to the accuracy or completeness of any part of the manuscript are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Individuals who do not meet the above four criteria should not be listed as authors but should be acknowledged. Authors should disclose whether artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies were used in the preparation of their manuscripts and how they used them. Authors should also report the use of AI for writing assistance in the Acknowledgment section. AI tools should not be used in sections that rely on human intellectual analysis, such as data interpretation and conclusion summarization.

Changes to Authorship

Authorship changes (addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names) should be made before the acceptance of the manuscript. Confirmation from all authors (including existing authors and author(s) to be added and/or removed) should be provided to the editorial office of the journal, together with the reason for such changes. Changes can be made after the approval of the journal.

Conflict of Interest

Authors are required to declare any potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial). Any agreements with study sponsors (for-profit or non-profit), such as those that interfere with the authors’ access to the study’s data or with the authors’ ability to analyze or interpret the data and to publish manuscripts independently according to their own decision, should be avoided by authors at all costs.

APASCI also requires reviewers and editors to declare any (potential) non-financial conflicts of interest and declare any unpaid roles or relations that may influence the decision on the manuscript’s publication. These include, but are not limited to, unpaid roles in a governmental or non-governmental organization, unpaid roles in an advocacy or lobbying organization, and unpaid advisory positions in a commercial organization.

In addition, reviewers and editors must disclose any association that poses a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript. Examples are personal or work-related relationships with one of the authors or the reviewer is on the authors’ avoidance list.

Misconduct policy

Following COPE guidelines, APASCI will not accept any misconduct behaviors that may mislead researchers.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is not acceptable. Using the content from one’s own previously published articles without proper citation is also considered plagiarism. APASCI adopts Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) for checking the originality of submissions. Manuscripts with a high similarity index may be rejected.

Fabrication and falsification

Fabrication and falsification of data or images will mislead researchers. APASCI strongly opposes such practices and will reject suspicious submissions.

Duplicate submission

Duplicate submission of a manuscript that has been published or submitted to other journals at the same time will not be considered.

Language

The language of all manuscripts must be English (either British or American) and non-English words should be used sparingly. Poor English may lead to article rejection. Authors are encouraged to seek language polishing by a native English speaker or a professional editing service.

Correction, Retraction and Withdrawal

Correction

Authors are responsible for approving the final version of their manuscript and they should avoid any errors prior to publishing. In the case of errors that occur in a published article and have no influence on research results, APASCI will issue a correction/erratum.

Authors, readers, and editors are encouraged to report any errors found in published papers. Please contact the editorial office of the particular journal.

Retraction

Based on COPE guidelines, the following conditions can lead to the retraction of a published article:

Unreliable findings
Plagiarism
Published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources, disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification
Containing material or data without the authorization for use
Infringement of copyright, violation of privacy, or other legal issues
Unethical research
Dubious peer review processes
Failing to disclose a major competing interest

If any of the above misconduct proved to be true, a retraction notice will be issued with the reason, while the PDF of the retracted article will be watermarked with “Retracted”. The journal editors will inform the authors of the retraction.

Paid Article Processing Charges will not be refunded to the authors if retraction occurs.

Withdrawal

Although not encouraged, authors can initiate the withdrawal of their submission before and during the peer review process by providing the reason. However, authors should note that a penalty fee of US$200 will be imposed for the withdrawal of a submission undergoing the peer review process due to the spent efforts on the evaluation of the manuscript by the editors and reviewers. Upon the approval of submission withdrawal, the submission will be removed from the journal’s operation system, and the authors be informed.

Accepted articles and articles in press may also be withdrawn due to infringements of professional ethical codes (similar reasons to those for retraction).

Indexing & Archiving

All the articles published online will be archived by Portico for long-term digital preservation.

Authors are encouraged to self-archive the final version of their published articles into institutional repositories (such as those listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories).

Authors are also encouraged to use the final PDF version published on the website of City Diversity.

Preprint policy

APASCI allows authors to post preprints of the manuscript of their original research articles (limited to only this type of article) on community preprint servers, such as arXiv, bioRxiv, and PeerJ Preprint, prior to or simultaneous with their manuscript submission to APASCI journals. Authors retain the copyright of the manuscript posted on a preprint server.

Authors should inform the editors of the preprint version of their submitted manuscript in a cover letter, as well as provide any associated accession numbers or DOIs. Revised versions per the result of the peer review process and accepted versions for publication should not be posted on a preprint server.

Upon publication of the article, APASCI encourages authors to link the article in the preprint server to the journal site, so as to guide readers to access and refer to the final version of the article.

Editorial Policies

Authors should read the “Author Guidelines” before making a submission, and make sure that the manuscripts were written in accordance to the style and specifications of the journal’s policy.

All manuscripts submitted to City Diversity are subject to rigorous peer review. Prior to the peer review process, the manuscripts will be screened for acceptable English language, novelty and relevance to the Focus and Scope of the journal.

Any manuscripts submitted to City Diversity will be treated as confidential materials. The manuscripts will not be disclosed to anyone except individuals such as editorial staff, reviewers and editors who participate in the initial screening, review, processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted).

A manuscript would not be accepted if it has been published or is currently under consideration for publication in any other journals. The authors are required to notify the editorial team if the findings and data in their submissions have been presented in conferences.

Disclaimer

The opinions, statements, methods, results, and data in APASCI’s published articles are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of APASCI and its editors. APASCI disclaims responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.

Copyright and License

Authors contributing to APASCI journals retain the copyright.

All articles published by City Diversity are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during the submission stage, a paper will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) by default. Authors who would like to publish their work under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), should express their request during the submission stage. Please include the statement below in the "Comments for the Editor column" on the submission page:

The contributors or authors for this submission entitled “[MANUSCRIPT TITLE]”, i.e. [NAMES of ALL AUTHORS], have given their consents to alter the Creative Commons License to *CC BY-NC 4.0* under which this submission will be published in City Diversity.

Advertising Policy

APASCI reserves the right to accept or refuse advertising.
Advertisements must comply with relevant rules and laws in the country where they will appear.
Advertisements should be clearly legible and advertisers identifiable.
Advertisements should never influence the content of each journal and editorial decisions.
APASCI disclaims responsibility for any damages resulting from advertisements in its journals.

For any advertisement queries, please contact APASCI at editorial_office@apacsci.com.

Article Processing Charges (APC)

APASCI’s publishing model is open access. Open access enables readers to freely access and download articles immediately after publication online. APASCI charges authors article processing charges (APCs) so as to cover operation costs, such as those arising from the evaluation and production processes. APCs should be paid upon the acceptance of articles and ahead of publication.

APCs of City Diversity are US$800.

Waiver and Discount Policy

APASCI believes there should be no barriers to the dissemination of knowledge, and thus APASCI offers APC waivers and discounts to authors from low-income countries and authors with special circumstances. Authors should write to the editorial office of the specific journal to apply for waivers and discounts. The decision to approve such applications is made by the editorial office on a case-by-case basis.

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