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Focus and Scope

Mathematics and Systems Science (MSS) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on Mathematics. The journal welcomes submissions relate to mathematics, applied mathematics, computational mathematics, system theory, system control, system engineering, system biology, operations research and management, probability theory, statistics, information processing. 

• Engineering Mathematics
• Mathematics and Computer Science
• Network Science
• Dynamical Systems
• Computational and Applied Mathematics
• Fuzzy Sets, Systems and Decision Making
• Difference and Differential Equations
• Financial Mathematics
• Algebra and Geometry
• Probability and Statistics

Section Policies

Original Research Article

Original research article 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

Review Article

Review article is summarized descriptions of recent findings and significant developments at particular subject area of research considering the Journal’s scope. They should include critical assessments of novel technologies, evaluation of subject advancement, elucidate unresolved questions, comparative analysis with a substantial coverage of previous works and highlight future prospects. Although there are no restrictions with the length and content of a review, authors should consider drawing readers’ attention and interest with quality information.

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

Case Report

Case report summarizes the execution of a collaborative research program that is directly related to the advancement of Mathematics and Systems Science.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Perspective

Perspective contains the author's personal opinions on a subject/topic. Unlike Reviews, Perspective articles may cover a more specific, narrow part of the field. However, these are still required to uphold the spirit of academia to be objective as well as aim to initiate or further discussions and novel experimental procedures in the field.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Method

Method presents new or improved version of experimental methods, tests or procedures pertaining to the field of Mathematics and Systems Science.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

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

1. Upon submission, the article is reviewed by Mathematics and Systems Science in-house editors to assess its suitability for the journal based on the editorial policy and procedural guidelines.
2. The Editor-in-Chief (EiC) carefully evaluates each manuscript to determine if its topic and content are suitable for consideration.
3. The received manuscripts are then assigned by the EiC to the associate editors according to their respective areas of expertise.
4. The associate editor selects reviewers from the editorial board or external reviewers who are suitably qualified to assess the paper.
5. 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.
6. 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, major revision or reject.
7. The manuscript is then passed to the EiC who makes the final decision.
8. If EiC suggests minor revisions, authors are given a maximum of 10 days to revise and resubmit the article.
9. If EiC suggests major revisions, authors are given a maximum of 60 days to revise and resubmit the article.
10. After re-submission of the revised manuscript, the above steps are repeated before the paper is accepted for publication.
11. Authors of rejected submissions have the right to make an appeal in writing to editorial-mss@apacsci.com. Written appeals should include specific reasons for the appeal and point-by-point response to the reviewers' suggestions and criticisms.
12. Decisions made on appeals by the EiC are final and no further considerations will be made.

Publication Frequency

The publication frequency of Mathematics and Systems Science is semi-annual.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

• Higher Visibility, Availability and Citations – free and unlimited accessibility of the publication over the internet without any restrictions increases citation of the article
• Ease of Search – publications are easily searchable in search engines and indexing databases
• Rapid Publication – accepted papers are immediately published online

All published content is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), permitting use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium under the condition that the original work is properly cited.

Publishing Ethics

Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. requests all members involved in the journal publishing process to adhere to the Core Practices on publication ethics as stipulated by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The publisher strictly adheres to the guidelines and best practices, which include Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

The journal editors take all possible misconducts seriously. The editors, authors or readers can forward their concerns to the journal if they find out that the description in a submitted article may constitute an academic fraud, research misconduct or publication malpractice. The concerns or complaints on the possible allegations submitted to the journal will be dealt with promptly and appropriately according to the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart on complaints. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the journal at editorial-mss@apacsci.com.

Metaverse adopts a zero-tolerance policy concerning any academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breaching intellectual property rights. In cases of suspected misconduct and ethical violation, a panel will be formed to investigate the allegation. If the allegation is supported by evidence, the submitted manuscript in question will be declined for consideration in the journal and all authors will be informed in this regard. A retraction initiated by authors or by the journal is required to take place if the paper has already been published, and the retraction will be made public. Authors of the work in question will receive the panel’s decision via email and all appeals regarding the decision will have to be made to the journal at editorial-mss@apacsci.com within 30 days of the decision date.

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  Mathematics and Systems Science 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  Mathematics and Systems Science 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.

Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest may exist when professional judgements concerning a primary interest have the possibility of being influenced by a secondary interest (e.g.: financial gains). It is to be noted that even perceptions of conflicts of interest are as important as the actual conflicts of interest.

Any agreements with study sponsors (for profit or non-profit), which interfere with the authors’ access to the study data, ability to analyze or interpret the data and publish manuscripts independently according to their own decision, should be avoided by authors at all costs.

A declaration of interests for all authors must be received before an article can be reviewed and accepted for publication.

Authors, reviewers and editors should declare any (potential) non-financial conflicts of interest and declare any unpaid roles or relations that may influence the decision on the article publication. This includes, but is not limited to, unpaid role in a government or non-governmental organization, unpaid role in an advocacy or lobbying organization, and unpaid advisory position 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 of such activities could include personal or work-related relationships and events.

Common reasons for editors and reviewers to be replaced include but are not limited to:

• The editor or reviewer works at the same organization as one of the authors.
• The editor or reviewer is one of the authors of this work.
• The editor or reviewer is on the avoidance list from the author(s).
• The editor or reviewer has a financial relationship or personal relationship with an author.

Misconduct Policy

Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts submitted to Mathematics and Systems Science should:

1) not have been published before;

2) not concurrently be submitted elsewhere.

If part of a manuscript has been published or will be published elsewhere, the authors must let the editors know in a cover letter. If duplicate submission is detected during peer review, the manuscript may be rejected. If it is detected after publication, the manuscript may be retracted.

Plagiarism

Authors are advised to observe high standards in the aspect of publication ethics. Any plagiarism (fabrication or falsification of data) are strictly unacceptable practices in Mathematics and Systems Science, including duplicate publication of the author’s work without proper citation.

Every manuscript submitted for publication is checked for plagiarism via CrossCheck (powered by iThenticate) after submission and before being sent to the editor for editorial review. Any detection of overlapping and similar texts in the manuscripts submitted will be investigated promptly and may lead to the manuscript being rejected.

Ethical Oversight

Met always follows the Ethical Oversight policy of COPE, and monitors every stage of the completion of best practice followed by the Core Practices and the ethical problem of COPE. All academic misconduct is strictly prohibited. If there is any potential for, including but not limited to academic fraud, plagiarism, and multiple contributions, the manuscript will not be assigned to the next stage for evaluation, and authors are responsible for explaining doubts to the Editorial Office. Met promises that all the submissions are private, and they will not be disclosed to third parties unless the publishing purposes. Authors, editors, and reviewers should expose any potential conflict of interest timely according to the Conflict of Interest Policy.

For subjects involving humans or animals, Met asks authors to be deeply concerned the privacy and welfare of the subjects based on the policy of Statement of Human and Animal Rights. Authors should provide the approval from the institutional ethical regulator or committee. All the information of the subjects is private, and authors should hide the identifiable information such as face picture, name, and fingerprint picture. Most importantly, Informed Content Statement from all the research subjects should be obtained, and authors need to inform the subjects that this research will be published in future. For the vulnerable, it is necessary to obtain oral or written Informed Content Statement from their parent of kinship.

Errata & Withdrawal Policy

Errata

All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to the author at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by the author and corrected by the publisher before final publication. Any errors in published articles discovered by readers, authors, editors, etc., please contact the journal editor. Asia Pacific Academy of Science will only instigate a corrigendum to a published article after receiving approval and instructions from the editor.

Withdrawal

If authors change their mind and decide not to pursue publication of papers with the journal, they must write a letter addressed to our editors at editorial-mss@apacsci.com, explaining the reason(s) of submission withdrawal. Consents of all co-authors must be obtained for author-initiated submission withdrawal. The decision to withdraw a submission would eventually rest with the editors, including the Editor-in-Chief.

It is relatively more difficult to withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer-review or is under peer-review compared to withdrawing a new submission because the editors and reviewers have expended much time and energy in editorial process and manuscript evaluation, respectively. To withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer-review, authors should clearly argue their case on scientific reasons; only valid and sound reasons will be accepted. He/she would be required to pay a penalty fee (USD 200). Authors are advised to keep in mind that an article should only be withdrawn if the authors detect significant errors or flaws, as it is not an acceptable practice to withdraw an article after it has been sent for peer review. Once the approval of submission withdrawal is granted, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors. The withdrawal process is considered to be complete once the author receives a confirmation of withdrawal from the Journal Editorial Office.

Submission withdrawal is also possible for accepted papers that have not been formally published, including the newly accepted papers and Articles in Press.

Withdrawal of an accepted paper and Article in Press is usually editor-initiated. The reasons of withdrawing accepted papers and Articles in Press are similar to those of retracting a published article, i.e., academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The misconducts and violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breaching intellectual property rights. Once the suspected misconduct and ethical violation is brought to our attention, the editors will organize an investigation and authors are required to cooperate in the investigation; any accepted papers or Articles in Press subject to investigation at this stage will not be arranged for article production or finalization. A Panel will be organized to investigate the allegations. If the allegations are proven true with supporting evidence, the accepted paper or Article in Press will be marked for withdrawal, and a notification email regarding the Panel’s Decision will be sent to all authors of the work. Any appeals regarding the Panel’s Decision will have to be made to the journal within 14 days of the decision date. In the absence of an appeal from the authors within the 14 days, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors.

Authors should note that any amounts of paid Article Processing Charge will not be refunded if their accepted papers or Articles in Press are withdrawn on the grounds of academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication.

Language

The language used in manuscripts submitted to Mathematics and Systems Science is English. Authors whose first language is not English may want to have their manuscripts professionally edited before the final submission to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by its prospective readers.

Preprint policy

Authors are permitted to post their non-peer-reviewed original research manuscripts to preprint servers before submitting to Mathematics and Systems Science. During submission, authors are obliged to declare in the cover letter if the corresponding preprint version of their submission has been deposited on a preprint server, and provide any associated accession numbers or DOIs.

Authors are not allowed to post any versions of articles that have been revised as a result of peer review, accepted for publication or published in the journal on a preprint server. The manuscript whose corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g. in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

We encourage formal citation of preprints in the reference list if appropriate.

Authorship

Authorship of a scholarly paper should be limited to individuals who have contributed substantially to its intellectual content. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or general supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. All authors should hold the responsibility of fairly evaluating their respective roles and their co-authors’ roles in the project. This is to ensure that authorship is attributed according to a fixed standard in all publications for which they will be listed as authors.

In order to be listed as an author for a paper, one should have contributed sufficiently to the project. A co-author is expected to have contributed to some component of the work which led to the paper or be involved in the interpretation of its results. A maximum of two corresponding authors are allowed for the associated responsibilities. All authors should have a say in the final approval of the version to be published, in addition to reviewing the final manuscript prior to submission.

Individuals who do not meet the above requirements, but have provided a valuable contribution to the work, may be acknowledged for their contribution as appropriate to the publication.

Changes to Authorship

Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript is accepted for publication. The corresponding author should provide the reasons for the change in authorship list and the proof of written confirmation from all authors (including the existing authors, author(s) to be added and/or removed) agreeing with such change, to the Editorial Office.

The requests for authorship changes need to be approved by the Editorial Office before any changes can be made.

Disclaimer

This journal is not liable to the statements, perspectives, and opinions contained in the published articles. The appearance of advertisements in the journal shall not be construed as a warranty, endorsement, or approval of the products or services advertised and/or the safety thereof. This journal and the Publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.

As an author, once submitting a manuscript, it means that you have be aware of all publishing policies & ethics,  and will strictly abide by them.

As a reviewer, once reviewing a manuscript, it means that you must be aware of the peer review policies, and proactively disclose of all potential conflicts of interest, and guarantee that an article will be judged fairly and objectively. 

Copyright and License

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

All articles published by Mathematics and Systems Science 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. The authors who would like to publish their work under other license, i.e. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), they should express explicit request during the submission stage. Please include 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 Mathematics and Systems Science.

 

Advertising Policy

All advertisements are subject to approval to the journal. Advertisements must comply with the relevant regulations in the country where the advertisements appear. Advertisements should not be related in any way to editorial decision making, and shall be kept separate from the published content. For more inquiries, please send email to editorial-mss@apacsci.com.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. publishes all its journals in Gold Open Access format. The scientific community and the general public have free of all restrictions on accessing (e.g., subscription) and free of many restrictions on using its contents as soon as it is published online. In order to defray our editorial and production costs, authors of the accepted articles are required to pay the article processing charges (APCs are US $800). The charges will come from authors' institutes or research funding bodies.

Waiver Policy

For high-quality articles graded by our editorial board members and authors from low-income countries with difficulty to pay, Mathematics and Systems Science will access in a case-by-case basis and may approve certain discount to ensure the publication of high-quality articles. Mathematics and Systems Science reserves the rights to approve or decline any such request. Please contact: editorial-mss@apacsci.com.

Statement of Informed Consent

All papers related to the research involving humans, should declare that they have obtain the "statement of informed consent" written or oral during submitting. Any summion involving human experience will not be considered for the next step without obtaining the "statement of informed consent".

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Nonessential identifying details should be omitted. All information which could contribute to identify patients, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, etc., unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives explicit written or oral informed consent for publication. If identifying characteristics are de-identified, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning, and editors will note that. Furthermore, individuals who provide writing assistance should be identified by the authors, and they should disclose the funding source for this assistance.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights

All papers submitted to Metaverse should declare agreement with the following "statement of human and animal rights". Papers describing procedures involving humans or animals must include an explicit and easily identifiable statement pointing out that the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the author's Institutional Review Board or Research Ethics Committee and the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and 2008. If any doubt exists as to whether the research was conducted in accordance with local ethics laws, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and then demonstrate that the institutional ethical committee explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

For vulnerable groups, the written or oral permission of the published experimental data and results must be approved by parents or relatives.

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

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 Mathematics and Systems Science.

Special Issue Policy

1. What is a Special Issue?

A Special Issue Program has been launched by Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. A Special Issue is a collection of research hotspots or topics in a specific field. Guest editors who are experts in this discipline, has the responsibility to drive the special issue program. Manuscripts accepted will both be ordered/archived in a regular volume/issue and special issue.

Benefits of Special Issue

• More quickly discovered and cited.
• Promote academic exchanges in this field.
• Avoid repetition of topics.
• Dissemination of the latest achievements.
• Broaden the visibility and maximize the impact of a certain field so that more experts could focus on the topic.

Benefits of being Guest Editors

• Expanding the popularity.
• Faster to initiate the communication and establish co-operatives ties.
• Learn the latest research.
• Publish one article without any APCs as the privilege.

2. How to drive a Special Issue?

There are two ways to obtain a special issue proposal.

• Guest Editors will be invited by the assistant editor to submit a professional proposal.
• Authors and readers could be welcomed to submit proposals on the Special Issue section of the journal website, and EiC will evaluate them for the viability and suitability for this journal.

Preparation for a proposal

A great topic is the crucial element for success. Each candidate topic will be selected by EiC for considering whether it is consistent with the scope of this journal. Hot topics are usually considered to be more attractive.

A proposal should include necessary information:

• List of Guest Editors
• Types of manuscript
• Main topics
• Submission deadline
• Keywords

 

3. Special Issue Ethics

Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. abides to the Code of Conduct of COPE and Best Practice Guidelines in all the editorial process. Each new submission must follow the journal’s Editorial Policies, and any potential unethical manuscript will not passed to the nest stage. Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. promises to protect the confidentiality of all submissions unless the publishing needs. All the editors and reviewers must strictly abide by the Conflict of Interests of the journal, and they are asked to inform the Editorial Office if any potential conflict of interests exists, and then, the Editorial Office may consider to change the editor or reviewer. As authors, they have the right to provide a list of avoided experts. Please appeal to editorial-mss@apacsci.com for any requests related to manuscript promotion.

4. Workflow of Special Issue

Once the members of the Guest Editors are exactly online, the assistant editor will collect manuscripts on behalf of the Guest Editors. Manuscripts are submitted to open journal system and go through double-blined peer-reviewed process. Any new submission will be checked by assistant editor, and then the leader of Guest Editors will assign it to at least 2 reviewers. The leader of Guest Editors will make the final decision and inform the author. Once a manuscript is accepted, it will go into production, and it is both ordered in the current regular issue and collection of the Special Issue. Articles may be archived in different regular volume/issue of this journal, although they are collected and marked as Special Issue articles.

Guest Editor has the privilege to publish only one article free, and experts from the same affiliate with guest editors could not be one of the reviewers at any stage. EiC has the responsibility to oversee all the editorial process for academic fairness.

Section Collection Policy

The Section Collection program has been driven by Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. for a new chance to run an open access journal. This program aims to collect multidisciplinary topics, and concentrate authors from diverse research fields to focus on a special theme. It is great attempt to develop new ideas and applications. Section editorial team is composed of many scientists whose research fields covering various interests. They all supervise the implementation of the program, and the editorial process must comply with editorial policies of the journal.

A Section Collection is usually launched by an expert with great trust among peers and invited by the Editorial Office, or scholars could apply a section collection. Section Editors are representatives focusing on a theme from multidisciplinary topics. They have different research background, and gather to initiate new ideas and collaborations. Great responsibilities of Section Editors include:

• Preparing the title, summary, keywords, submission deadline, etc.
• Preparing a potential contributors’ list.
• Suspecting and contributing to the editorial progress , including but not limited to the initial screening, peer-reviewed process, and final decision making.

 

Workflow of Section Collection

Section Editors are invited to prepare the summary of Section Collections, and advert the project. New manuscripts should be submitted via the open journal system, and then Section Collection Editors will evaluate the research field and the integrality of the manuscripts. Assistant Editors will screen the originality by iThenticate. Any manuscript with potential misconduct must be prevented to the next stage. The Editorial Office will pass it for the double-blind peer-reviewed process for further review comments with no less than two reviewers. The Section Collection Editors have the responsibility to supervise the rigor and scientificity of the whole process. All the comments are collected to Section Editors, who will make the final decision on the manuscript such as acceptance, revision, or rejection. Accepted manuscripts will go through the production stage. Meanwhile, authors will get the article accepted notification. Published papers will be archived in the current issue of the journal, and also collected on the Section Collections page.