Manuscript Submission Overview
Types of Publications
Manuscripts submitted to ASTESJ must not have been published previously and must not be under consideration by another journal, conference proceeding, book, or repository that performs formal publication selection. Authors must disclose related manuscripts, preprints, conference versions, and translated versions during submission.
- Original research articles: full research papers that report original methods, experiments, models, designs, simulations, datasets, or technical results. The paper must explain the research problem, method, results, limitations, and contribution against current literature.
- Review articles: critical reviews that summarize the state of a research area, compare methods or findings, identify gaps, and explain future technical directions.
- Technical notes: shorter papers that report a validated method, implementation, dataset, design, measurement, or technical observation with clear value to the field.
All article types are checked for scope, originality, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and suitability for external peer review.
Submission Process
Manuscripts must be submitted through the ASTESJ online submission system: https://www.manuscriptlink.com/journals/astesj/.
The submitting author is normally the corresponding author and is responsible for communication during submission, editorial screening, peer review, revision, proof correction, and post-publication questions. The corresponding author must confirm that all authors approved the submitted version and agreed to submission to ASTESJ.
The online submission manual is available here: Online Submission Steps.
Authors should review the Editorial Process, Publishing Ethics, and Article Processing Charge pages before submission.
Accepted File Formats
Authors must prepare manuscripts using the ASTESJ Microsoft Word or LaTeX template. The template package is available here: ASTESJ Template Package.
The total size of all submission files should not exceed 30 MB. If the file size exceeds this limit, authors should contact the Editorial Office at m-editor@astesj.com before submission.
- Microsoft Word: manuscripts prepared in Microsoft Word must be submitted as a single editable file using the ASTESJ Word template.
- LaTeX: manuscripts prepared in LaTeX must be submitted as one ZIP folder containing all source files, bibliography files, figures, and any files required to compile the manuscript PDF.
- Figures and supplementary files: figures, tables, datasets, code files, and supplementary materials must be clearly named and cited in the manuscript.
Cover Letter
A cover letter must be included with each manuscript submission. It should explain why the paper fits the ASTESJ scope, what technical contribution the paper makes, and how the work differs from earlier publications, preprints, or conference versions.
Each cover letter must include the following statements:
- The manuscript and its main content are not currently under consideration by another journal, conference proceeding, book, or formal publication venue.
- All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission to ASTESJ.
- The manuscript is original, and all reused text, data, figures, tables, code, or ideas are properly cited and permitted where required.
- All authors have disclosed conflicts of interest, funding sources, data availability, and any required ethics approval or consent information.
- For expanded conference papers, the earlier conference paper is cited and the cover letter explains what has changed in the journal version.
Manuscript Preparation
General Considerations
Manuscripts must be clear, complete, and prepared in a form suitable for editorial screening and external peer review. Authors must use SI units, define abbreviations at first use, and provide enough technical detail for the work to be assessed and verified.
- Use the ASTESJ template for the manuscript file.
- Use clear section headings that match the article type.
- Define acronyms and abbreviations at first use in the abstract, main text, and the first relevant figure or table.
- Use SI units. Non-SI units may be shown in parentheses only where needed for field-specific clarity.
- Prepare equations in editable form using Microsoft Equation Editor, MathType, or LaTeX. Equations must not be inserted only as images.
- Provide software names, version numbers, model settings, datasets, and code availability where relevant.
- Disclose restrictions on materials, data, code, or protocols during submission.
Front Matter
The following front matter should appear in all manuscript types.
- Title: The title must be concise, specific, and technically accurate. It should identify the main method, system, dataset, application, or study type where relevant.
- Author list and affiliations: Provide each author’s full name and institutional affiliation, including department where available, institution, city, postal code where relevant, and country. At least one corresponding author must be identified with an email address.
- ORCID: Authors are encouraged to provide ORCID iDs to support author identification.
- Abstract: The abstract should normally be about 100 to 250 words, depending on the article type. It should state the problem, method, main results, and conclusion without unsupported claims.
- Keywords: Provide three to ten keywords that are specific to the article and commonly used in the relevant field.
Research Manuscript Sections
- Introduction: State the research problem, technical motivation, literature gap, and contribution. The introduction should explain why the study is needed and how it differs from existing work.
- Materials and Methods or Methodology: Describe data, equipment, models, algorithms, experimental design, simulation settings, statistical methods, software, and assumptions in enough detail for assessment and verification.
- Results: Present results clearly using text, tables, figures, equations, or statistical outputs. Avoid repeating the same information in multiple formats unless needed for clarity.
- Discussion: Interpret the results against the research question and current literature. Discuss limitations, uncertainty, practical meaning, and future work.
- Conclusions: Summarize the main technical findings, contribution, and limitations in one concise section.
- Patents: Include this section only if patents or patent applications are directly related to the reported work.
Back Matter
The following declarations should be included before the reference list where applicable.
- Supplementary Materials: List supplementary figures, tables, datasets, code, videos, spreadsheets, or appendices. Use clear labels such as Figure S1, Table S1, Dataset S1, and Code S1.
- Author Contributions: State each author’s contribution. Authors may use a contribution taxonomy if suitable for the field.
- Funding: State all funding sources and grant numbers. If no external funding was received, use: “This research received no external funding.”
- Institutional Review Board Statement: Required for studies involving human participants, human data, human materials, animals, or other regulated research.
- Informed Consent Statement: Required where individual participant consent is needed.
- Data Availability Statement: State where the data, code, or materials can be accessed, or explain why access is restricted.
- Acknowledgments: Acknowledge support that does not meet authorship criteria.
- Conflicts of Interest: Disclose all relevant conflicts. If none exist, use: “The authors declare no conflicts of interest.”
- Use of AI Tools: Disclose any AI-assisted writing, editing, coding, image generation, data processing, data analysis, or literature screening that affected the manuscript content.
References
References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. In-text reference numbers should be placed in square brackets before punctuation, for example [1], [1–3], or [1,3].
The reference list should include complete bibliographic information, article titles, page ranges or article numbers, and DOI links where available. Authors should check that all cited works have been read and that citations accurately support the statements made in the manuscript.
Example Formats
Journal article
[1] M. Uzunoglu, M.S. Alam, “Dynamic modeling, design and simulation of a PEM fuel cell/ultra-capacitor hybrid system for vehicular applications,” Energy Conversion and Management, 48(5), 1544–1553, 2007, doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2006.11.014.
Conference proceeding
[2] N. Cao, M. Štěpnička, M. Burda, “Fuzzy quantifiers and compositions of partial fuzzy relations employing dragonfly algebras,” in 2019 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE), 1–6, 2019, doi:10.1109/FUZZ-IEEE.2019.8858832.
Thesis
[3] H. Lihua, “Analysis of Fuel Cell Generation System Application,” Ph.D. thesis, Chongqing University, 2005.
Book
[4] X. Li, Principles of Fuel Cells, Taylor & Francis Group, 2005.
Preparing Figures, Schemes, and Tables
- Figures and schemes should be submitted at sufficient resolution, normally at least 300 dpi or 1000 pixels in width or height.
- Preferred figure formats include TIFF, JPEG, EPS, PDF, and editable source formats where available.
- Figures, schemes, and tables should appear close to their first citation in the manuscript text.
- All figures, schemes, and tables must be numbered in order of appearance and must include a clear title or caption.
- Table columns must have explanatory headings. Tables should be created using the table function in Microsoft Word or LaTeX, not pasted as images.
- Image adjustments must not change, hide, move, remove, or exaggerate any information in the original image.
Research and Publication Ethics
Authors must follow the ASTESJ publication ethics requirements before submission and throughout peer review. Manuscripts may be returned, rejected, corrected, or retracted if required declarations are missing or if publication misconduct is confirmed.
Full journal ethics requirements are available on the Publishing Ethics page.
Human Participants, Consent, and Clinical Trials
Research involving human participants, human data, human tissue, personal information, surveys, interviews, images, health records, or behavioral data must include ethics approval or a documented exemption from an appropriate ethics committee. The manuscript must state the approval body, approval date, approval number or project code where available, and consent process.
Studies that report clinical trials or interventional human-subject research must provide a public trial registration number and registry name. Registration should occur before participant enrollment where required by the study type, institution, funder, or national regulation.
Identifiable participant information, including images, case details, audio, video, or personal data, must not be published without written informed consent for publication. Authors should keep signed consent forms and provide them to ASTESJ only if requested.
Authors may consult the Declaration of Helsinki, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform for guidance.
Animal, Cell Line, Plant, Sex, and Gender Reporting
Animal Research
Studies involving animals must state the approval body, approval date, approval number where available, and national or institutional regulations followed. Authors should report housing, husbandry, pain management, welfare monitoring, and humane endpoints where applicable. ASTESJ supports reporting practices consistent with the ARRIVE guidelines.
Cell Lines
Manuscripts using cell lines must identify the source and authentication status of each cell line. Human-origin cell lines require ethics approval or consent information where applicable.
Plants and Biological Materials
Research involving cultivated or wild plants, genetic resources, or protected biological materials must comply with institutional, national, and international requirements. Authors should state collection permits, voucher information, source details, and access permissions where applicable.
Sex and Gender
Where sex or gender is relevant to the research question, authors should describe how sex or gender was considered in study design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Authors may consult the SAGER guidelines.
Publication Ethics Statement
ASTESJ evaluates manuscripts for originality, research integrity, authorship transparency, conflict-of-interest disclosure, ethical approval, data reporting, and peer-review suitability. The journal does not accept plagiarism, data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, citation manipulation, undisclosed duplicate submission, inappropriate authorship, or peer-review manipulation.
- Authors must present research findings accurately and avoid unsupported claims.
- Data, methods, materials, and code should be described in enough detail for assessment and verification.
- Raw data, code, and protocols should be deposited in a suitable repository where possible.
- Authors must disclose any restriction on access to data, code, materials, or protocols.
- Simultaneous submission to more than one journal is not permitted.
- Errors discovered after submission or publication must be reported to the Editorial Office promptly.
- Permission must be obtained for reused figures, tables, images, datasets, or copyrighted material where required.
Plagiarism, Text Recycling, and Image Integrity
Plagiarism is not acceptable in ASTESJ submissions. Plagiarism includes copying or closely paraphrasing text, ideas, images, data, code, tables, or technical content without proper citation and permission where required. Text recycling from an author’s own previous publications must be cited and limited to material that is necessary for clarity.
Similarity reports are used as screening tools, not as automatic decisions. ASTESJ assesses the type, location, source, and context of overlap. High similarity in original analysis, results, discussion, figures, tables, or conclusions may lead to rejection even when the total similarity percentage is low.
Image files must not be altered in a way that changes the interpretation of the original data. Unacceptable changes include adding, removing, moving, enhancing, obscuring, or selectively adjusting image features. Any global adjustment to brightness, contrast, or color must be applied consistently and must not hide information.
If plagiarism, data fabrication, image manipulation, or other misconduct is identified during review, the manuscript may be rejected. If misconduct is confirmed after publication, ASTESJ may publish a correction, expression of concern, or retraction.
Citation Policy
- Authors must cite the original source when using text, ideas, methods, data, software, images, or results from other work.
- Authors must not cite sources they have not read.
- Authors must avoid excessive self-citation or citation of colleagues, institutions, or editors without clear relevance.
- Authors must not cite advertisements, advertorial content, or irrelevant sources to influence citation counts.
- References must support the statements made in the manuscript and should reflect the current state of the field.
Reviewer Suggestions
During submission, authors may suggest three potential reviewers with relevant expertise. The editorial team may use or ignore these suggestions. Suggested reviewers must be independent and must not have a conflict of interest.
Suggested reviewers should not be current collaborators, recent co-authors, members of the same institution, direct supervisors, students, close personal contacts, or individuals with financial or professional conflicts. Authors may also identify reviewers who should be excluded from review, with a short reason.
Editorial Board Members may be suggested only if they meet the same independence requirements. Suggested reviewers do not replace the journal’s external peer-review process.
English Corrections
Manuscripts must be written in clear English before submission. Language quality must be sufficient for editors and reviewers to assess the technical content without ambiguity.
Authors who need language support may use a professional editing service or ask a qualified colleague to review the manuscript. Language editing does not guarantee acceptance and does not influence editorial decisions.
Accepted manuscripts may undergo copy-editing and proofreading before publication. Extensive language correction may require additional author revision before production.
Conference Papers
Expanded conference papers may be considered if the journal version provides a substantial extension beyond the conference version. The submitted manuscript must cite the conference paper and explain the new contribution.
- The journal version should include substantial new technical content, such as new experiments, simulations, data, analysis, theory, validation, or discussion.
- The conference paper must be cited on the first page or in the introduction.
- The cover letter must state that the submission is expanded from a conference paper and must summarize the changes.
- Authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder if the conference publisher owns material reused in the journal version.
- The journal version must not duplicate the conference paper without clear extension and transparent citation.
Authorship
Authorship criteria
ASTESJ follows authorship principles consistent with the ICMJE recommendations. Authorship should be limited to individuals who made substantial intellectual contributions to the work and accept responsibility for the published content.
- Substantial contribution to conception, design, data acquisition, data analysis, data interpretation, method development, or technical implementation.
- Drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
- Final approval of the submitted and published version.
- Agreement to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.
Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be listed in the acknowledgments with permission. Gift authorship, guest authorship, and ghost authorship are not permitted.
Author Changes
Any change to the author list after submission must be explained in writing and approved by all authors, including any author added or removed. ASTESJ may request signed confirmation from all authors before processing the change.
Conflicts of Interest
All authors must disclose relationships or interests that could influence, or appear to influence, the research. Conflicts may be financial or non-financial.
- Financial conflicts include employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, patents, paid expert testimony, grants, sponsorship, or paid travel.
- Non-financial conflicts include personal relationships, professional relationships, institutional relationships, academic competition, unpaid advisory roles, or strong personal beliefs directly related to the work.
The corresponding author must include a conflict-of-interest statement before the reference list. If no conflicts exist, use:
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Funding, Data, Code, and AI Use
Funding
Authors must disclose all funding sources, grant numbers, and funder roles. If the funder had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, or publication decision, this should be stated.
Data, Materials, and Code
ASTESJ expects authors to make data, code, and materials available where possible. Restrictions must be explained clearly, especially when data cannot be shared because of privacy, security, confidentiality, intellectual property, or legal limits.
AI-Assisted Tools
Authors must disclose the use of AI-assisted tools when such tools contributed to writing, editing, coding, image generation, data processing, data analysis, or literature screening. AI tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot take responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, or originality of the work.
Authors remain fully responsible for checking all AI-assisted content, including accuracy, originality, citations, data handling, privacy, and ethical compliance.
Editorial Independence
Lack of Interference With Editorial Decisions
ASTESJ editorial decisions are based on scope fit, ethical compliance, reviewer reports, editor assessment, reporting quality, and technical merit. Article processing charges, institutional relationships, special issue status, and author identity do not determine acceptance.
Editorial office staff manage technical checks, correspondence, file preparation, and production support. Scientific evaluation and acceptance decisions are handled by academic editors after external peer review.
Editors and Editorial Staff as Authors
Manuscripts submitted by editors, Editorial Board Members, Guest Editors, journal staff, or related authors are handled by independent editors with no conflict of interest. Such submissions require the same editorial screening and at least two independent external review reports.
Editorial Procedures and Peer Review
Initial Checks
Submitted manuscripts are checked by the Editorial Office for file completeness, formatting, metadata, scope fit, ethical declarations, authorship information, conflict-of-interest statements, data availability, and basic reporting quality. Manuscripts that are incomplete, outside scope, ethically non-compliant, or not prepared for review may be returned or rejected before peer review.
Editorial office checks do not replace scientific peer review. When needed, the Editor-in-Chief or an assigned academic editor may advise whether the manuscript fits the journal scope before external review begins.
Peer Review
Manuscripts that pass initial checks are assigned to at least two independent external reviewers. ASTESJ applies double-blind peer review, where reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors and author identities are not disclosed to reviewers where practical.
Reviewers must not have conflicts of interest with the authors, institutions, funders, manuscript topic, or competing work. Reviewers should not be from the same institution as any author and should not have recent co-authorship or active collaboration with the authors.
Editorial Board Members or Guest Editors may review only when they meet the same independence requirements. Their participation does not remove the requirement for independent external peer review.
Reviewer guidance is available on the Instructions for Reviewers page.
Editorial Decisions and Revision
After peer review, the academic editor evaluates reviewer reports, author responses where applicable, technical quality, scope fit, and ethical compliance. The Editorial Office communicates the decision to the corresponding author.
- Accept: The manuscript is accepted for production.
- Minor revision: The manuscript requires limited revision before final decision.
- Major revision: The manuscript requires substantial revision and may be returned to reviewers.
- Reject and encourage resubmission: The manuscript is not accepted in the current form, but a substantially revised version may be submitted as a new manuscript.
- Reject: The manuscript is not suitable for publication in ASTESJ.
Revised manuscripts must include a point-by-point response to reviewer and editor comments. If authors disagree with a comment, the response must explain the reason clearly and respectfully.
Author Appeals
Authors may appeal a rejection by sending a detailed appeal to the Editorial Office. The appeal must explain the grounds for appeal and include point-by-point responses to reviewer or editor concerns. Appeals are assessed by an editor who was not conflicted with the original decision where possible. A final appeal decision cannot be appealed again unless new evidence is provided.
Appeals involving special issue manuscripts are reviewed under the same independence and conflict-of-interest rules as regular submissions.
Optional Open Peer Review
ASTESJ may offer optional open peer review where review reports and editorial decisions can be published with the article after acceptance. Reviewer names are disclosed only when reviewers agree to sign their reports. Authors may choose open review before publication, subject to journal policy and reviewer consent.
Optional open peer review does not change reviewer independence requirements, editorial decision standards, or the requirement for external peer review.
Production and Publication
Accepted manuscripts enter production after editorial acceptance. Production may include copy-editing, language editing, author proofreading, final corrections, pagination, metadata preparation, DOI registration where applicable, and online publication on www.astesj.com.
Authors must check proofs carefully and respond within the requested timeframe. Proof corrections should be limited to production errors, factual corrections, and minor language issues. Major scientific changes after acceptance may require editorial approval.
Editorial Contact
Submission and editorial questions may be sent to the Editorial Office at m-editor@astesj.com. General contact information is available on the Contact ASTESJ page.