Advanced Ultrasound in Diagnosis and Therapy (AUDT) is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), adhering to its principles and guidelines for addressing misconduct to safeguard the integrity of research.

In cases where there is suspicion of misconduct or alleged fraud, the journal will conduct an investigation in accordance with the principles and flowcharts provided by COPE. If valid concerns arise, the author(s) will be contacted to discuss the matter. The journal and/or publisher may then implement the following measures, among others:

1) If the manuscript is still under review, it might be rejected.

2) If the paper has been published online, the response will vary based on the nature and severity of the violation:

• A correction may be published,
• An expression of concern may be issued alongside the paper,
• Or, in extreme cases, a retraction of the paper may be warranted.

The Journal acknowledges its responsibility to correct any scientifically relevant errors in published papers that may impact their scientific interpretation. Once approved by the Editorial Office and Editors-in-Chief (EiC), there will be a mark indicating that the paper has a correction. A correction is a distinct publication that is linked to the original paper. It serves to inform all readers that a significant change has been made, and the updated version is available on the website. Notification will be sent to all relevant indexing databases to ensure that they update their records as well.

Corrections can be submitted if:

• There are scientifically relevant errors, e.g., missing sections/tables/figures, raw data errors, images, tables, and figure errors OR,
• There are any added/deleted/replaced references.

Correction must be submitted separately by the corresponding author with the approval of all co-authors. The original article title, author list, and details of the correction should be included in the new manuscript.

The findings and conclusions will be unreliable if a published paper is found with scientific or ethical issues. To correct the scientific record, the published paper should be retracted. Retractions could be requested by the author(s), readers, or the editors and they will be finally decided by the EiC. The Journal adheres to COPE’s Retraction guidelines and procedures for handling retractions.

The original publication will be retained on the platform with a “Retracted” watermark, and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked paper. A paper will only be fully removed from journal website and indexing databases under rare and exceptional circumstances, such as when retaining the article online will be unlawful or pose a risk of substantial harm.

When an investigation is ongoing or the evidence is inconclusive, an Expression of Concern may be issued. Editors believe that it is essential to inform readers about potential issues within the paper to uphold journal’s transparency:

• There is a suspicion of academic misconduct within the paper, yet the evidence is insufficient to determine it OR,
• The results of the study are suspected to be unreliable, but the author(s)’ institution is unwilling to initiate an investigation OR,
• Conflicting interpretations exist among the authors OR,
• An investigation is in progress, and final conclusions may require an extended period.

Appeals only apply to the manuscripts that have been peer-reviewed. Authors who want to appeal concerning the peer-review process and editorial decisions should present substantial evidence or new information/data as well as point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments and the editors’ decisions.

Authors must not submit their manuscript elsewhere until they receive a final decision or decide to withdraw their manuscript from consideration and have informed the Journal accordingly. Each appeal is assessed on its individual merits. Editors will consider only one appeal per manuscript, and the EiC’s decision on the appeal is final.

Readers who have concerns/complaints about published papers may contact the Editorial Office while simultaneously present the details of the concerns/complaints and the evidence. Lack of evidence or complaints with personal attacks would be regarded as vexatious and will be ignored.

The Editorial Office will investigate together with EiC in accordance with the guidelines published by COPE.

To ensure the research that we published is conducted in an ethical manner, especially the research that involving human subject or animal participants, we require that all submissions should conform to the high ethical standards. We reserve the rights to reject any manuscript which could not meet these requirements of ethical standards, even if authors have obtained ethical approval or if ethical approval is not required.

1) Research involving human subjects

Ethical Approval

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. The research also need to conform to international ethical and legal standards for research, Declaration of Helsinki.

• Example of the statement: “The research was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (the approval number).”

2) Participant/patient privacy and informed consent

Published research involving human subjects should ensure that patients’ privacy has not been infringed without prior consent:

Consent to participate

For all published research involving human participants, authors should obtain written consent from the participants prior to the commencement of the research. If the research participants are not adults, or unable to provide informed consent, the written consent must be given from their parents/guardians.

Where consent for participation was not obtained or only verbal informed consent obtained, the journal/editor might ask for the evidence of consent or consent procedures, or even the need for consent was waived by an ethics committee.

Consent to publish

For submissions that include any information which might identify an individual, authors should obtain written informed consent to publish from individual participants (or their parents/guardians if the participant is not an adult or unable to give informed consent). Identifying information includes (but is not limited to) photographs, videos, individual clinical data, written description and any other details that might identify the participant. A statement to confirm that consent to publish has been obtained must be included within the manuscript.

3) Research involving animals, specimens and heritage sites

Research involving animals

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.

Research involving specimens

For published research involving the collection of biological specimens (cultivated or wild), samples or fossils, authors should carry out it follow the authors’ institution(s) guideline and national/international regulations. Authors should also comply with the local laws. All such samples must be collected in an ethical and equitable way, and in accordance with relevant applicable laws comply with local legislation, and the manuscript should include a statement of appropriate permissions granted and/or licenses.

The manuscript should include the Ethical Statement of appropriate permissions granted. Voucher specimens must be deposited in an accessible herbarium or other public collection providing access to deposited material. Information on the voucher specimen and who identified it must be included in the manuscript. Editors reserve the rights to reject any manuscript which could not meet these requirements.

1) Authorship

Author(s) are encouraged to value the opportunity for publication and uphold the esteemed reputation of the Journal. Before submitting the findings, author(s) should carefully read and adhere to the following responsibilities:

• Author(s) should be the persons who have made substantial contributions to the work, e.g., the conception/experimental design of the research, theoretical development, prototype development, data acquisition/analysis/interpretation and who have contributed to drafting the paper or reviewing and/or revising it critically. The others who have participated in certain aspects could be listed as contributors and acknowledged in the “Acknowledgment” section. AI tool should not be listed as an author.
• For papers with multiple authors, one author should be indicated as the corresponding author. The corresponding author should ensure obtaining the consent of all co-authors prior to submitting a manuscript and ensure all co-authors’ approval of the final version before publication. Besides, the corresponding author has responsibility for communication with the Editorial Office, overseeing the publication process, and ensuring the integrity of the final document.
• Any change to the author list during editorial process should be applied ahead of final decision. An application form manually signed by all authors should be sent for the Editorial Office’s approval. Post-acceptance applications will not be considered.

2) Duplication, plagiarism and originality

The Journal only publishes original content and author(s) should ensure the originality of their works. Author(s) should not submit the same manuscript to multiple journals at the same time, and should wait for the final decision on the manuscript before submitting the research to another journal. Once the unethical publishing behavior is found, an investigation or action would be taken based on the COPE code of conducts.

Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. All submissions will be checked for plagiarism via iThenticate. The paper will be rejected once the paper is found too similar to the previous documents. If plagiarism is detected after publication, an investigation or action would be taken based on the COPE principles on plagiarism.

Reuse of text work should be appropriately cited or quoted. Authors should obtain the appropriate permission prior to publication where the research involves any third-party figures, tables, and images.

The fabrication/falsification of data or images is not allowed and will be regarded as misconduct which will lead to a retraction of the publication affected.

3) Conflict of interest

All contributors involved, author(s), editors and reviewers should disclose any potential conflict of interest that might inappropriately influence (bias) the results of the manuscript.

Potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include but are not limited to financial interests (employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, grants or funding sources) and non-financial interests (personal or professional relationships, affiliations, and personal beliefs).

Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest stage possible. For author(s), conflicts of interest should be disclosed when the paper is submitted to the Journal, stating fully the personal, institutional, and financial interests and support which might influence the research. Reviewers/Editors assigned to a manuscript should disclose any personal, financial, or intellectual interests that would affect the fair evaluation.

A statement of conflict of interest should be published in the final version and if there are no conflict of interest to be declared, it can be stated as “The author(s) declare no conflict of interests”.

4) The use of AI or AI-assisted technologies

AUDT follows the COPE position statement when it comes to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technology in manuscript preparation. TUP is a member of STM, Environmental Chemistry and Safety also follow the Ethical and Practical Guidelines released by STM Generative AI in Scholarly Communications.

Authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author. AUDT will monitor this development and will adjust or refine this policy when appropriate.

Authors should disclose the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies with sufficient details at submission via the cover letter. Authors should carefully review and edit the AI generative materials, and be responsible for any submitted materials containing AI technologies. Furthermore, authors should declare the use of these tools or technology and disclose details of how the AI tool was used within Method, Acknowledgement or other related sections.

5) Multiple, redundant publication

Publication of very similar papers based on the same experiment or study constitutes unethical behavior and is unacceptable. Authors should avoid undue fragmentation of their work, that is, unnecessarily splitting a body of work into several shorter papers.

Previous publication on a preprint server such as arXiv, bioRxiv and ChemRxiv could be considered as a subsequent publication in AUDT, but authors should fully disclose the fact at the time of submission and cite the preprint in the reference. When the paper is published, authors are encouraged to link from the preprint server to the AUDT publication to enable readers to find, access, and cite the final peer-reviewed version.

The content could be published which first appeared in an author’s thesis or dissertation so long as this is the only form in which it has appeared. It should be noted in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and cited accordingly in the Reference section.

The conference paper or abstract should expand the content in order to be considered as original work. Authors should get the permission for reuse if they do not hold its copyright, and it should be cited in the Reference section before submission.

Editors are in-house editors and Editorial Board Members (EBMs) who take on an editorial role on behalf of the Publisher. The EIC is ultimately accountable for accepting or rejecting a paper. Editors should exercise their responsibilities based on the EIC or Editorial Board Members’ suggestion of whether the paper needs to be modified or can be published. Editors should obey the responsibilities below:

1) Confidentiality and anonymity

Manuscripts should be handled in a confidential manner. No details should be disclosed to anyone without permission from the author (except the reviewers, potential reviewers, EIC, publisher or the occasion where a formal investigation into the allegations of unethical behavior is being conducted). Editors should respect the independence of the author's ideas.

AUDT perform Double-blind Peer Review. Editors should keep the reviewer anonymity policy which can protect the review results from the interference of authors.

2) Declaration of competing interests

Editors are required to declare any conflict of interests and they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts and the peer review process if a competing interest exists.

The manuscript submitted by editors themselves should be handled by other editors who have no conflict of interest. The manuscript submitted by the EIC or an EBM shall be handled and reviewed by another EIC or EBM.

Editors may not use the content in the manuscripts for their own work, and if the topic is too close, the manuscript must be handled by other editors.

3) Fair play and timely evaluation

Editors should treat all manuscripts fairly and timely. Editors should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regarding to ethnic, religion, nationality, gender, age, or affiliation of the authors. However, the editor may consider the history record of the previous manuscripts submitted by the same authors. Editors can directly reject the manuscript if it is not in accordance with the requirement of a specific journal in the theme, breadth, depth, and English expression.

Editors should follow up on any indications or allegations of questionable research practice timely and consider the appeals which are against editorial decisions fairly and seriously.

4) The use of AI or AI-assisted technologies

The manuscript before publication is a confidential document. Reviewers and editors should not upload the manuscript or any part of it to a public generative AI platform. This confidentiality requirement extends to all communication about the manuscript including any notification or decision letters as they may contain confidential information about the manuscript and/or the authors.

Manuscript review is an essential stage in the process of publishing, and peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication. Reviewers have the following responsibilities.

1) Alertness to ethical issues

Reviewers should inform the editor of any similarity between the submitted manuscript and work that is already published or under consideration at other journals.

Reviewers should alert the editor if there is any indication of potential ethical problems including but not limited to ethical concerns regarding animal experiments or studies involving human subjects, scientific misconduct.

2) Confidentiality and anonymity

Reviewers should treat the manuscript and the review process as confidential. The content in the manuscript shall not be shared with others, nor shall reviewers use non-public information contained in a paper to advance their own research or financial interests.

Reviewers should be careful not to reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format.

3) Declaration of competing interests

Reviewers should report to the editorial office and remove themselves from the peer-review process immediately for any personal or business relationship with the authors or partner of the paper may result in impartial evaluation.

4) Fair play and timely evaluation

Reviewers should focus on the content of the manuscript, avoid personal criticism and evaluate the quality of the manuscript, the level of the experiments and the theory objectively.

• Reviewers should explain and support their judgements.
• Reviewers should identify whether the relevant and important literature has been properly cited or not by the authors. It is absolutely forbidden guiding the authors to cite the reviewer’s own paper.

Any reviewer who feels unqualified to review the manuscript or prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor immediately.

The Journal follows a single-blind reviewing procedure. The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript. A regular review process for each submitted manuscript consists of three stages: initial check, preliminary assessment and peer review.

1) Initial check

The submissions will be initially checked by the Editorial Office. At this stage, a decision of “Reject without review” would be made for the submissions which do not meet the aims and scope and/or the ethical requirements of the Journal. In addition, submissions will be screened for plagiarism by iThenticate. Those with high overlap scores might also be rejected directly without further review.

2) Preliminary assessment

The editorial board members of the Journal (Editors-in-Chief and Associate Editors) act as scientific editors. A scientific editor will be assigned to handle the manuscript. They evaluate the manuscript and decide whether it is worth peer review. Manuscripts which pass through the initial check will be preliminarily assessed by the EiCs and then the handling editors. At this stage, the EiCs have sole discretion, with the help of the handling editors, on whether to send the manuscript for peer review or reject it without review. EiCs will be excluded in the process when they are listed as authors. In such cases, an Associate Editor or Editorial Board Members will be assigned to assess the manuscript.

3) Peer-Review

Each paper is assigned to at least three reviewers. At least two favorable reviews out of three are required for a paper to be considered for publication.​ Final decisions are made by the EiCs on the basis of the review reports and their own assessment.

All manuscripts would be evaluated by relevance, quality and originality of the work, potential interest to the Journal’s readership, and clarity (including clear tables and graphics, the standard of technical written English).

The general peer review process for special issues is almost the same with the regular submissions. The only difference is that for special issues, the guest editors will send the submissions out to the reviewers and may recommend a decision to the EiCs or Editorial Board Members. EiCs or Editorial Board Members oversees the aim and scope of the special issue, the background of the guest editors, and the peer review process of all special issues to ensure the high standards of publishing ethics as well as are responsible for the final decisions of the submissions in special issues.

Author(s) will have chance to double check the full content, especially the symbols, formulas, and figure legends before final publication, for these may accidentally be changed during editing. After final publication, substantial changes could only be updated by corrections.

Tsinghua University Press, the publisher, is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of the published content in the Journal, even after the Journal is ceased or transferred to another publisher.

The Journal encourages data sharing and endorses the principles of open sciences. All original research manuscripts should contain a Data Availability Statement to address whether or not, how, and to whom the data could be shared or obtained.  Sufficient details should be provided in the Materials and Methods section or the Supplementary materials to allow replication of the study.

Important update regarding the submission process for the Journal.

Articles submitted since July 1, 2025, will incur an Article Processing Charge (APC) to be paid by the author(s) or funder(s) upon acceptance for publication. This decision has been made to support the increasing costs of maintaining high-quality publication standards and to further invest in the technological infrastructure of the journal.

Key Details:

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: $500.00/CNY3 000.00.

Charge Structure: The APC paid by the author(s) or funder(s) contributes to supporting the extensive work involved in editorial review, peer review and publishing process. This ensures the reliability of research and helps accelerate progress for society.

Waiver Policy: We are committed to ensuring that financial constraints do not impede the dissemination of valuable research. A waiver policy will be in place for authors who are unable to afford the publication fees in developing countries. We will evaluate individual waiver requests from authors who are unable to pay the APC for publishing due to insufficient research funding on a case-by-case basis. We understand that this is a significant change and we are dedicated to making this transition as smooth as possible. Our team is available to answer any questions or concerns you may have regarding this update.

The articles published in Advanced Ultrasound in Diagnosis and Therapy (AUDT) are Open Access, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The copyright is retained by the author(s).

The images or other third-party material in these articles are included in the articles’ Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the articles’ Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Statements in advertisements should carry no direct or implied disparagement of another product. There should be no statements that are misleading, exaggerated, or contrary to proven facts. Advertisements may not be indecent, obscene, or defamatory.

The principle of maintaining editorial independence from commercial influence underlies decision-making. Editorial decisions are not influenced by advertising.

Advertisements must be clearly identifiable as advertisements and clearly distinguishable from editorial content. Tsinghua University Press will not publish advertisements in the form of editorial content.