About the Journal

Science of Sintering is an international Diamond open access journal. 

ISSN: 1820-7413 (online); 0350-820X (print)

Science of Sintering is a unique journal in the field of science and technology of sintering. 

Science of Sintering publishes papers on all aspects of theoretical and experimental studies, which can contribute to the better understanding of the behavior of powders and similar materials during consolidation processes. Emphasis is laid on those aspects of the science of materials that are concerned with the thermodynamics, kinetics and mechanism of sintering and related processes. In accordance with the significance of disperse materials for the sintering technology, papers dealing with the question of ultradisperse powders, tribochemical activation and catalysis are also published. 

Science of Sintering journal is published four times a year. 

Types of contribution: Original research papers, Review articles, Letters to Editor, Book reviews. 

Abstracting and Indexing 

    • SciSearch (Science Citation Index – Expanded, ISI Alerting Services, Materials Science Citation Index) 
    • DOAJ
    • Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA)
    • Chemical Abstract Service (CAS)
    • Referativnyi Zhurnal
    • INSPEC

EDITORIAL POLICY

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

The Editor(s)-in-Chief is/are responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the Science of Sintering will be published. The Editor(s)-in-Chief appoint(s) Associate Editors and together they chose regional Editors and Editorial Board Secreteriate. The Editor(s)-in-Chief and the Editorial Board are guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within three weeks from the date of the manuscript submission.

Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If the Editor-in-Chief feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the paper shall be made by the Editorial Board.

Editor-in-Chief shall evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Staff must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process.

The Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editors are responsible for journal management and implementing the journal policies, including appointment and removal of Regional Editors and the members of the Editorial Secretariat.

AUTHORS’ RESPONSIBILITIES

Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes a misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by the Science of Sintering.

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in the Acknowledgments. A paper that has already been published in another journal cannot be reprinted in the Science of Sintering.

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that papers submitted to the Science of Sintering are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Reporting standards
A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the data public.

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Inclusive Language

Science of Sintering promotes accessible, and inclusive language to ensure that scientific research is widely understood and respectful of all individuals. To promote accessibility, authors should:

  • Use clear, simple language that is understandable across disciplines and for non-native English speakers;
  • Avoid overly technical or unnecessary terminology, unnecessary complexity, long sentences, repetition, uncommon acronyms and abbreviations, stereotypes, idiomatic speech, slang, and cultural assumptions;
  • Explain technical terms when needed;
  • Respect diversity and avoid implying superiority of any group based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, health status, age, or socio-economic background. 
  • Use inclusive and appropriate language in relation to race and ethnicity and provide participants with a comprehensive range of categories and subcategories to choose from when collecting self-reported racial or ethnic identity data, as well as the option to select multiple, not mutually exclusive categories; 
  • Be cautious in generalizing findings from studies to groups simply on the basis of a shared identity category and provide the rationale behind any racial or ethnic groupings used in the Methods section;
  • Where it is necessary to make reference to the indigenous identity of a person or group, use the terms preferred by the person or group. If in doubt, ask the person or group;
  • Make a distinction between biological sex and socially constructed gender. Use self-identified pronouns and gender-neutral terms (e.g., "chairperson" instead of "chairman");
  • Use "impairment" for medical conditions and "disability" for societal barriers. Avoid discriminatory language and offensive terms (derogatory labelling, depersonalising, stereotyping and emphasising the disability) in relation to the portrayal of people with disabilities (e.g. use ‘a person diagnosed with cancer’ rather than ‘a cancer victim’)

Consult also additional resources from C4DISC (Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications): https://c4disc.org/toolkits-for-equity/

Authorship

Authors must make sure that only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgements section. 

As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship that have been developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). In order to be named on the author list one must have:

  • made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • contributed to the drafting the work, or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • provided final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved; AND
  • agreed to be named on the author list, and approved of the full author list.

Each author’s contribution must be detailed using the CRediT taxonomy.

The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted only if a justifiable explanation is provided to the editorial team and publisher. Attempts to introduce 'ghost', 'gift' or ‘honorary’ authorship will be treated as cases of misconduct.

Acknowledgment of sources

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.

When citing or making claims based on data, authors should provide the reference to data in the same way as they cite publications. We recommend the format proposed by the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following:

  • Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
  • Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected.
In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction policy.

Conflict of interest

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, the following standard statement should be added: ‘No conflict of interest was disclosed’.

Conflict of interest may be of non-financial or financial nature. Examples of the conflict of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • individuals receiving funding, salary or other forms of payment from an organization, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings;
  • individuals or their funding organization or employer holding (or applying for) related patents;
  • official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication;
  • political, religious, or ideological competing interests.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical or field trials or other research studies, should declare these as competing interests on submission. The relationship of each author to such an organization should be explained in the ‘Conflict of interest’ section. Publications in the journal must not contain content advertising any commercial products.

Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Editorial Policy of the Science of Sintering.

ORCID

Science of Sintering asks that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). ORCID numbers for all authors and co-authors should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.

ORCID registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work. 

Funding information

If a paper is a result of the funded project, authors are required to specify funding sources according to their contracts with the funder. 


REVIEWERS’ RESPONSIBILITIES
Reviewers are required to provide written, competent and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript.

The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

Reviewers should alert the Editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the Editor to a parallel submission of the same paper to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.

Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay.

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

PEER REVIEW
The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assists the Editor-in-Chief in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author it may also assist the author in improving the paper. The journal applies singe-blind peer review: the authors are revealed to the reviewers, but the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors. Each manuscript is normally reviewed by at least two reviewers.

Normally, the review process should not take longer than three weeks.

The choice of reviewers is at the Editors-in-Chief's discretion. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.

All of the reviewers of a paper act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor-in-Chief shall make the final decision. During the review process Editor may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The Editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviewers or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

 

POST-PUBLICATION DISCUSSIONS

Science of Sintering encourages post-publication debate either through letters to the editor, or on an external moderated site, such as PubPeer.

 

USE OF LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS AND GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) TOOLS

Science of Sintering conforms to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on chat bots, ChatGPT and scholarly manuscripts and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools.

AI bots such as ChatGPT cannot be listed as authors on your submission.

Authors must clearly indicate the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI for data or code generation, data collection, cleaning, analysis, or interpretation, (which tool was used and for what purpose), preferably in the methods or acknowledgements sections. Photography, videos or illustrations created wholly or partly using generative AI are not considered acceptable. The use of non-generative machine learning tools to manipulate, combine or enhance existing images or figures should be disclosed in the relevant caption upon submission to allow a case-by-case review. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical. The use of AI-based tools for copyediting and spell checking does not need to be declared.

AI outputs should not be cited as primary sources for backing up specific claims. .

Editors and Reviewers must ensure the confidentiality of the editorial work and the peer review process. Editors must not share information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports with any tools based on large language models and generative AI. Reviewers must not use any tools based on large language models and generative AI to generate review reports. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical and undermines transparency in editorial work and peer review. The editorial and review processes are confidential, and using AI tools on the manuscript makes it public, violating the confidentiality principle, disclosing confidential information in public, and compromising transparency.

 

PROCEDURES FOR DEALING WITH COMPLAINTS AND APPEALS

Anyone may inform the editors and/or Editorial Staff at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information/evidence to start an investigation.

Investigation

  • Editor-in-Chief will consult with the Editorial Board on decisions regarding the initiation of an investigation.
  • During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as strictly confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in investigating.
  • The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
  • If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.


Minor misconduct
Minor misconduct will be dealt directly with those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:

  • Communicating to authors/reviewers whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred.
  • A warning letter to an author or reviewer regarding fairly minor misconduct.


Major misconduct
The Editor-in-Chief, in consultation with the Editorial Board, and, when appropriate, further consultation with a small group of experts should make any decision regarding the course of action to be taken using the evidence available. The possible outcomes are as follows (these can be used separately or jointly):

  • Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
  • Informing the author's (or reviewer's) head of department or employer of any misconduct by means of a formal letter.
  • The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy (see below).
  • A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
  • Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

When dealing with unethical behaviour, the Editorial Staff will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).


RETRACTION POLICY
It is a general principle of scholarly communication that the editor is solely and independently responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal shall be published. In making this decision the editor is guided by policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. An outcome of this principle is the importance of the scholarly archive as a permanent, historic record of the transactions of scholarship. Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unaltered as far as it is possible. However, very occasionally circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted or even removed. Such actions must not be undertaken lightly and can only occur under exceptional circumstances, such as:

  • Article Withdrawal: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
  • Article Retraction: Legal limitations upon the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication.

Article Withdrawal
Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors, may be “Withdrawn” from Science of Sintering. Withdrawn means that the article content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the Science of Sintering Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal with a link to the current policy document.

Article Retraction
The retraction of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this best practice is adopted for article retraction by Science of Sintering:

  • In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
  • In the electronic version of the original article a link is made to the retraction note and it is clearly stated that the article is retracted.
  • The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the.pdf indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be necessary to remove an article from the online database. This will only occur where the article is clearly defamatory, or infringes others’ legal rights, or where the article is, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk. In these circumstances, while the metadata (Title and Authors) will be retained, the text will be replaced with a note indicating the article has been removed for legal reasons.

 

RESEARCH DATA, CODE, PROTOCOL SHARING, AND PREREGISTRATION

Research data sharing

Science of Sintering encourages authors to share research data that are required for confirming the results published in the manuscript and/or enhance the published manuscript under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. We encourage authors to share supporting software applications, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound or video clips, large appendices, data tables and other relevant items that cannot be included in the article. 

The preferred mechanism for sharing research data is via data repositories. Authors may deposit relevant data in a FAIR-compliant repository – institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose (e.g. Zenodo). If you need assistance in finding a FAIR compliant repository, check these links: https://repositoryfinder.datacite.org/ and https://www.re3data.org/. Authors should also provide via the repository any information needed to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results / their study and analysis of the research data. This includes details of any software, instruments and other tools used to process the results. Where possible, the tools and instruments themselves should also be provided. A DOI will be assigned to each research data file, enabling the research data to be cited the same way as publications. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data. 

Exceptions: We recognize that open sharing of data may not always be feasible. Exceptions to open access to research data underlying publications include the following: obligation to protect results, confidentiality obligations, security obligations, the obligation to protect personal data and other legitimate constraints. Where open access is not provided to the data needed to validate the conclusions of a publication that reports original results, authors should make metadata available explaining the research and access rules to the data.  

Ethical and security considerations

If data access is restricted for ethical or security reasons, the manuscript must include:

  • a description of the restrictions on the data;
  • what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about the data sharing; and
  • all necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

Data protection issues

Where human data cannot be effectively de-identified, data must not be shared in order to protect participant privacy unless the individuals have given explicit written consent that their identifiable data can be made publicly available.

In instances where the data cannot be made available, the manuscript must include:

  • an explanation of the data protection concern;
  • any intermediary data that can be de-identified without compromising anonymity;
  • what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about data sharing; and
  • where applicable, all necessary information required for a reader or peer reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

Link to research data from a Data Availability Statement within the submitted paper, which will be made public upon publication. A ‘Data Availability Statement’ should be added to the submission, prior to the reference list, providing the details of the data availability, including the DOI linking to it. If the data is restricted in any way and/or is not being made available within the journal publication, a statement from the author should be provided to explain why.

Consider the following when depositing data related to a publication:

  • Check whether a repository where the data is deposited has a sustainability model.
  • The data must be deposited under an open license that permits unrestricted access (e.g., CC0, CC-BY). More restrictive licenses should only be used if there is a valid reason (e.g., legal).
  • The deposited data must include a version that is in an open, non-proprietary format.
  • The deposited data must have been labeled in such a way that a third party can make sense of it (e.g., sensible column headers, descriptions in a readme text file). 
  • Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate Ethics Committee. The identity of the research subject should be anonymized whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian). 

Code sharing

Authors are encouraged to share any code used in their work, especially author-generated code. If commercial software was used, its name and version should be provided. This information can be included in the Methods section. 

When feasible, code should be deposited in a public repository with a persistent identifier and version control. Open-source licensing is recommended. Deposited code should include:

  • Installation and usage instructions
  • Operating system details
  • Programming language and data format information
  • Software dependencies (version, toolboxes, modules)
  • Documentation for reproducibility, including purpose explanations
  • Actual or sample data with log files or equivalent documentation

For studies using custom code or mathematical algorithms essential to the conclusions, a Code Availability Statement must be included. This statement should specify code description, access details, repository identifier, and any access restrictions. It should be provided as a separate section following the Data Availability Statement.

Experimental protocols sharing

Authors are encouraged to share step-by-step research protocols to facilitate replication and further research. These can be uploaded to a protocol-sharing platform of choice or a repository. If such protocols are available, please provide a DOI or other citation details with submission.

Preregistration

Science of Sintering supports study pre-registration (including clinical trials) and pre-registration of analysis plans in public repositories. Authors should indicate at submission whether any part of their study was preregistered. If so, they must include an active link to the preregistration in the Methods section and specify the preregistration date. Any deviations from the preregistered protocol should be disclosed, along with the reasons for those changes.


OPEN ACCESS POLICY
Science of Sintering is an Open Access Journal. All articles can be downloaded free of charge and used in accordance with the Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International license.

Science of Sintering not charge any fees at submission, reviewing, and production stages.

Self-archiving Policy

Science of Sintering endorses self-archiving of the final published version (Publisher's version/PDF) of the article, not just peer-reviewed final drafts. Author's Pre-print, Author's Post-print (accepted version) and Publisher's version/PDF may be used on author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.) and departmental website, or deposited in an institutional repository and subject-based repositories, such as PubMed Central, Europe PMC or arXiv, any time after publication. Publisher copyright and source must be acknowledged for deposit of Author's Post-print (accepted version) or Publisher's version/PDF and a link must be made to article's DOI.

COPYRIGHT POLICY

Authors retain copyright of the published article and have the right to use the article in the ways permitted to third parties under the Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International license. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and a link must be made to the article's DOI. Science of Sintering is published by association for ETRAN Society

This license allows to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided and it is indicated if changes were made.

DISLAIMER

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.