South China Fisheries Science, a double-blind peer-review academic journal, is committed to maintaining the scholarly publication ethics for all parties involved in the publication processes. South China Fisheries Science’ statements of publishing ethics is based on the Committee of Publication Ethics' (COPE) Code of Conduct. Further guidelines can also be found here: http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines 

The specific requirements are as follows: 

Authors' Responsibilities: 

• Only entirely original papers can be submitted to South China Fisheries Science. All the work or words of others should be cited or quoted appropriately. Plagiarism and fraudulent date papers will not be considered for publication by South China Fisheries Science. 

• Papers should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same research in different languages and the under-review manuscripts to different journals are also unethical behavior, which are unacceptable by South China Fisheries Science. 

• Sign the South China Fisheries Science Copyright agreement that all data in article are real and authentic. 

• Original papers should cite and list the references exactly according to the South China Fisheries Science requirement and  reference style. 

Editors' Responsibilities: 

• The editor has complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article. But this decision should only be based on the paper’s relevance to the journal’s scope and its academic quality, including the reviewers' judgments, the research’s innovation, the experiment’s validity, etc. 

• The editor should adhere to the double-blind review in the peer review process. 

• The editor should maintain the transparency of the academic research and record, and always be willing to publish retractions, rectifications, and erratum when required. 

• The editor should assess manuscripts for their scientific quality and intellectual content, free from any biased decisions based on discrimination of race, gender, geographical origin, or religion of the author(s). 

• The editor should evaluate manuscripts objectively based on their academic merit and free of any commercial or self-interests. 
  

• The editor should not disclose any information regarding submitted manuscripts before publication of the said manuscript. 

• Promoting research rectitude must be preserved. If any suspicious act is observed in the peer review, it should be resolved with diligence. 

• The editor should provide guidance to reviewers on everything that is expected of them including the need to keep submitted material to their journals in confidence while under review. 

• The editor should send reviewers' comments to authors in their entirety unless they contain offensive or libelous remarks. 

• The editor should monitor the performance of peer reviewers and taking steps to ensure this is of high standard, and should develop and maintain a database of suitable reviewers and update this on the basis of reviewer performance. 

• The editor should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept. 

• When errors are found, the editor should promote publication of correction or retraction. 

Reviewers' Responsibilities: 

• Providing a detailed, constructive, and unbiased evaluation in a timely manner on the scientific content of the work. 

• Indicating whether the writing is relevant, concise, and clear and evaluating the originality as well as scientific accuracy. 

• Maintaining the confidentiality of the complete review process. 

• Notifying the editor if the reviewer feels inadequate to review the paper or cannot promptly review the paper, the reviewer should inform the editor and drop out of the peer review process of the paper.

• Notifying the editor about any financial or personal conflict of interest and declining to review the manuscript when a possibility of such a conflict exists. 

• Notifying the editor of any ethical concerns in their evaluation of submitted manuscripts or any considerable similarity between a previously published article and any reviewed manuscript. 

Publisher's Responsibilities: 

• South China Fisheries Science is sponsored by South China Sea Fisheries Research Institure, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences. The requirements of sponsors and publishers for the journal are obeying the academic publishing ethics standard, publishing the accurate, timely, fair and ethical publication of scientific papers. 

• The publishers can not intervene in the decision-making power of editors. 

• When errors are found, publisher should cooperate with the journal editor to promote publication of correction or retraction. 

• Publisher should provide guidelines and help to journal editor for retracting articles with error or ethical concerns. 

• All the published contents of the journal are open accessed.