I. Topic Requirements
The topic should be forward-looking, the research should be novel, the viewpoints should be instructive, and the technology should be practical. If the authors have not received a notice of acceptance, revision, or rejection 45 days after submission, please contact the editorial office.
This journal undertakes plagiarism test on all submissions using CNKI and wanfang testing system. Manuscripts that do not pass the detection will be rejected.
This journal does not charge any fees. It pays author remuneration and peer reviewer fees.
II. Manuscript Requirements
The manuscript should be submitted in Word, WPS, or similar formats. The total word count, including figures, tables, and references, should generally be 5000 ~ 8000 Chinese Characters.
(1) Title
The title should reflect the most important specific content of the paper, be prominent, appropriate, and concise, generally no more than 20 Chinese characters. If the title exceeds this length, a subtitle can be considered.
The title should be accurate, easy to index, and readable, highlighting the technical focus and innovations of the paper, and attracting the attention of readers.
(2) Abstract
The abstract is a concise and accurate summary of the important content of the paper, designed to outline the essence of the research. The abstract should be an independent, concise, and self-evident paragraph of 350–500 Chinese characters, including all key technical information and highly summarizing the research. Manuscripts with abstracts shorter than 350 Chinese characters may be rejected. The minimum standard for the abstract wordcount must be met, but the upper limit can be exceeded if necessary.
The abstract should be structured as follows:
l Objective: Why the research is conducted, what problem it aims to solve, its significance, or any breakthroughs or innovations.
l Method: The research methods and tools, including data and achievements that are used in the research.
l Results (or Findings): The results or findings obtained through experiments or research, new discoveries or advances.
l Conclusion: The conclusions, implications, directions, or suggestions derived from the results. It should provide references, guidance, or recommendations. (Results and conclusions can be combined).
The objective should be clearly stated in one sentence. Description of background information and general knowledge should be sparing. The focus should be on the process, methods, and results, with details of specific data and quantified results. Key technical information must be complete both for qualitative and quantitative data. The results should be compared with previous researches to highlight the paper's contributions, innovations, and uniqueness. The novelty and value of the paper should be emphasized, such as new theories, technologies, fields, advances, insights, suggestions, evaluations, solutions, processes, products, or tools. The conclusions should be derived from the paper and organized logically.
The abstract should be written from a third-party perspective and avoid using first-person pronouns like "we," "authors," "this paper," or "the writer". Avoid evaluative language but to objectively present the data and its application effects.
The abstract must be translated into English.
(3) Keywords
Keywords are the indexing items for the paper and should reflect the essential concepts, key technologies, and applications. Authors should select 6–8 keywords based on the key content and technical information of the paper. Keywords should also be translated into English.
(4) Authors Information
The authors information should include:Name, gender, year of birth, academic title, highest degree or educational background; current position or occupation, full correspondence address, phone number (for editorial use, to be deleted after publication), E-mail, etc.
(5) Funding
If the research is supported by any funding, please indicate the relevant fund project information.
(6) Main body Text
The paper should have a clear argument, rigorous logic, reliable data, and detailed content, providing thorough analysis, data, and figures/tables. Figures and tables should be clear and well-designed, with complete legends. The use of units and measurements in the text should comply with national standards. Formulas should be consecutively numbered, and all symbols in formulas must be annotated.
(7) References
References are scientific basis for evaluating the authenticity and breadth of a paper and reflect the research starting point, innovation, depth, and scope of the study.
For papers submitted to this journal, at least 25 references are required. Chinese references must include English translations (authors should use the official English title of the source, not their own translation). English references may be presented independently and not translated into Chinese. The reference formatting should follow GB/T 7714—2015.
III. Editorial Policy
(1) Review Process
The journal adopts double-blind review system. All manuscripts are subject to three rounds of reviews, namely the preliminary review, external review and final review. After submission, the editorial office will conduct a preliminary review of the manuscript and reject the manuscripts which are insufficient in originality, having serious scientific or technical mistakes, lacking valuable information, or not in the scope of the journal. Manuscripts which have passed the preliminary review will be anonymously sent to two or more peer reviewers or external review. Authors must respond to reviewers' every comment and submit the revised version in time. This process would be repeated until reviewers and editors are satisfied with the manuscript. The Editor-in-Chief decides the acceptance of manuscripts.
(2) Internal Submission
Submissions by Editorial Board Members (EBMs)/editors must adhere to the journal's review and editorial procedures, ensuring independence from the involved individuals and their research groups. They cannot participate in reviews of manuscripts whose authors they have conflicts of interest with.
(3) Correction and Retraction
After publishing, if there appears to be an unintended scientific mistake in the article which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusion, the editorial office will publish corrections in the journal as soon as possible, and detailing the changes made to the original article. If severe scientific errors are found in published articles, or the article is suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the editorial office will issue a statement to inform readers of the risks, initiate an investigation and announce the final result, or even retract article with a retraction statement if necessary.
(4) Special Issue
The above manuscript review process also applies to submissions for special issues. If applicable, manuscripts submitted to special issues undergo the same review and editing process as regular issue manuscripts, and the Editor-in-Chief will decide whether the manuscript will be accepted for publication. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the entire content of the journal, including special issues. When organizing a special issue, the editorial office will invite authoritative experts in the field to serve as the Guest Editor for the special issue. The responsibilities of the Guest Editor include proposing the theme of the special issue, soliciting manuscripts, organizing peer reviews, and resolving any issues that arise during the publication of the special issue. The work of the Guest Editor is supervised by the Editor-in-Chief to ensure the fairness of the manuscript review process.
(5) Appeal and Discussion
If authors have objections against the review comments, they can file an appeal in writing, quoting the manuscript serial number and stating detailed reasons for the appeal, and the appeal letter must be stamped by the author's institution for validation. The editorial office will decide whether to accept the appeal as appropriate. We warmly welcome authors and readers to participate in discussions on our published articles. Comments can be sent to the editorial office, who will handle them promptly and provide feedback as necessary. Furthermore, the journal actively encourages readers and authors to engage in mutual supervision and offer feedback on pertinent information, aiming to cultivate a vibrant and positive academic environment. Appeal and post-publication discussions shall be sent to trqktykf@gaskk.com.
IV. Copyright Policy
(1) Open Access Statement
Natural Gas Exploration and Development is an open access journal, which flipped to open access mode from the first issue of 2024. Once an article is published, readers can immediately and permanently read and download it for free via the journal's official website. Articles published from 2022 to 2023 have been changed to open access and can be downloaded for free from the journal's website. Articles published in 2021 and before are not open access and their copyrights belong to the Editorial Office of Natural Gas Exploration and Development. Some abstracts of articles published 2008-2021 are available on this website.
(2) Licensing Policy
The allowed third-party reuse of all open access articles published in the journal is defined by the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows users to copy and redistribute the articles of the journal in any medium or format, provided they adhere to the following terms:Third-party users must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes to the articles were made. Users may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the journal endorses the use. Users may not use the articles for commercial purposes. If users re-mix, transform, or build upon the articles, they may not distribute the modified articles. The full details of the license are available at:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
(3) Copyright Transfer
The authors agree to transfer the copyright of the paper to the Editorial Office of Natural Gas Exploration and Development for the copyright protection period, including but not limited to the rights of reproduction, distribution, compilation, translation, and online dissemination, and consents to the paper being indexed by domestic and international abstracts or databases. The authors agree with the open access policy of the journal. The editorial office agrees that the authors may continue to use the paper in the following circumstances: ① Application for a patent; ② Academic reports and presentations; ③ Non-commercial academic exchanges; ④ Situations permitted by the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, and other activities authorized by the editorial office; ⑤ Citing (or translating) parts of the paper or compiling it in the authors' subsequent works, provided that the publication details (year, volume, and issue) of Natural Gas Exploration and Development are indicated.
(4) Online Accessibility & Repository
In addition to open access articles on the official journal website, the journal's full text articles are also stored in the databases of CNKI, Wanfang Data, Chaoxing and Weipu, etc. Readers can also access the above-mentioned databases and platforms to obtain the articles published by the journal.
In addition, authors may deposit all versions of their articles in an institutional or other repository of the authors' choice. However, it is necessary to indicate the articles' publication information in the metadata in the institutional or other repository and use that as a recommended way of citation.