Focus and Scope

1. Tourism perception
2. Technologies and equipment in tourism perception
3. Perception platform and system
4. Network system of perception
5. Organization and management of smart tourism
6. Platform of smart tourism
7. Recommendation system of smart tourism
8. Climate system of smart tourism
9. Cultural relic protection detection system
10. Travel planning
11. Special recommendation for tourism
12. Handheld tourism

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

An article providing official news of the journal (e.g., the introduction of a special issue, the launch of a new journal, etc.) or opinions of the journal editors on a closed issue. Editorials are solicited and will not be peer-reviewed.

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

Peer Review Process

To ensure high-quality publication, Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. (APASCI) conducts a stringent double-blind peer review process for all manuscripts submitted to its journals:

1. Upon submission, a manuscript is reviewed by the managing editor of the journal to assess for integrality and similarity. Once the manuscript has passed this pre-screening check, it will be passed to one of the academic editors (the Editor-in-Chief for a regular submission, the Section Editor for a Section Collection submission, or Editorial Board members. Whoever they are, the above-mentioned roles ensure to have no conflicts of interest).
2. The assigned academic editor carefully evaluates the manuscript to determine if its topic and content are suitable for consideration.
3. The assigned academic editor invites at least two independent-external reviewers who are suitably qualified to assess the paper. Authors can recommend reviewers or provide an avoidance list, and basic information for identifying and contacting the reviewers should be given. The recommended reviewers may not be invited upon the decision of the assigned academic editor.
4. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript’s originality, methodology, contribution to the literature, presentation of results and support for the conclusion, and appropriate referencing of previous relevant studies.
5. According to the evaluation reports by the reviewers along with a review from the assigned academic editor, the Editor-in-Chief makes one of the following decisions: accept the submission, accept with minor revisions, accept with revisions required (major revisions), require resubmission for review, or decline the submission.
6. If the Editor-in-Chief suggests minor revisions, authors are given a maximum of 5 days to revise and resubmit the manuscript.
7. If the Editor-in-Chief suggests major revisions, authors are given a maximum of 14 days to revise and resubmit the manuscript.
8. After the re-submission of the revised manuscript, the above steps are repeated before the manuscript is accepted for publication.
9. Authors of rejected submissions have the right to make an appeal in writing to the editorial office of the specific journal (for ST, cherry.gan@apacsci.net) within 4 weeks of receiving the decision. The written appeal should include specific reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' comments.
10. Decisions made on appeals by the Editor-in-Chief are final and no further considerations will be made.

Publication Frequency

The publication frequency of Smart Tourism 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 Smart Tourism 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.

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 this journal 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 this journal 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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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:

1. Contributed substantially to the conception or design of the manuscript or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the manuscript; AND
2. Drafted the manuscript or reviewed it critically for significant intellectual content; AND
3. Have final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. 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.

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 this journal 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 Smart Tourism.

Advertising Policy

1. APASCI reserves the right to accept or refuse advertising.
2. Advertisements must comply with relevant rules and laws in the country where they will appear.
3. Advertisements should be clearly legible and advertisers identifiable.
4. Advertisements should never influence the content of each journal and editorial decisions.
5. 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 (APCs)

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 Smart Tourism 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.

Indexing & Archiving

• All the articles published online will be archived in 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 Smart Tourism.

Smart Tourism has been indexed and archived in National Library Board of Singapore, Scilit, GoogleScholar, Crossref, and  EuroPub, and the journal aims to be included in the first-class academic databases in the world, such as WoS, Scopus, Inspec, and EI.

AIGC Policy

Researchers using an Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC)  tool/service to directly generate the manuscript text must provide clear disclosures and statements, otherwise it will be considered academic misconduct. The journal allows the use of an AIGC tool/service for text embellishment and automatic sorting of references, but does not recommend the use of the AIGC tool/service in the thinking and concluding sessions of human involvement such as data analysis and interpretation, opinion hypothesis and conclusions, and the AIGC tool/service cannot fulfill the role of a textual author. If any part of the manuscript was written using an AIGC tool/service, it must be described openly, transparently, and in detail in the Methods or Acknowledgments section, for example:

"In the preparation of this work, the authors used the [name of the specific AIGC tool/service] to [purpose of use: e.g., literature research/text embellishment, etc.]. After using this tool/service, the authors reviewed and edited the content as needed, and take full responsibility for the content of the publication."

Units of Measurement

Smart Tourism adopts and follows the rules of International System of Units (SI) for physical quantities and units of measurement. For example:

• Quantities including time, length, mass, electric current, etc., should be written as s (second), m (metre), kg (kilogram), A (ampere) after metric numbers.
• Adopt unified format for the same unit of measurement.

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, and the peer-reviewed process.

 Workflow of Section Collection

Manuscripts should be submitted to Open Journal Systems (OJS) and go through a double-blinded peer-reviewed process (refer to Peer Review Policy).