1. Open access statement
AOOPS provides immediate, free and unrestricted online access to all content. Any user may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full texts of published items without prior permission, provided the original authors and the source are credited.
2. Copyright and licence
Authors retain copyright. By publishing with AOOPS, authors grant AOOPS a non-exclusive, perpetual right to archive, distribute and preserve the work, and agree to publish it under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. This does not prevent authors from reusing or republishing their own work.
3. Author fees
There are no author fees. No submission fee, no manuscript handling fee, no editorial processing charge, no article processing charge, no page charge and no colour charge is levied at any stage. No fee is planned. This applies to every section, including Commentary & Humour.
4. Review model
AOOPS operates publish-then-review. We state this explicitly because readers and authors are entitled to know what review a paper has actually received.
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Awaiting review | Passed editorial screening for scope, completeness and integrity. Not independently refereed. |
| Reviewed | At least one independent review has been received and is published with the article. |
Editorial screening checks fit with scope, completeness of the manuscript and its metadata, and basic research integrity. It is not peer review and confers no endorsement of the findings. Decisions are made on scholarly grounds alone and are never influenced by an author's institution, nationality, career stage or ability to pay — which is moot in any case, since there is nothing to pay.
5. Publication ethics
- Authorship. Everyone listed must have contributed substantively and approved the submitted version. Gift, ghost and honorary authorship are not acceptable.
- Originality. The work must be the authors' own, not plagiarised, and not under consideration elsewhere.
- Conflicts of interest must be declared.
- Ethics approval. Research involving human participants or animals must state the approving committee and reference number.
- Misconduct allegations are handled following COPE guidance.
6. Use of generative AI
- Substantive use of generative AI must be disclosed; routine language correction need not be.
- AI tools cannot be listed as authors.
- Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy of text, references and results.
- Reviewers and editors must not use AI tools to produce assessments, because of confidentiality and accuracy risks.
7. Data and reproducibility
Where a result depends on data, code or computation, authors are expected to make these available or to state clearly why they cannot. A repository link is sufficient. We will not reject a paper merely because its data cannot be shared, but the reason must be stated in the paper.
8. Corrections, retractions and withdrawals
- Correction. Minor errors are corrected by publishing a new version with a change note; the earlier version remains available.
- Retraction. Used where findings are unreliable because of error or misconduct. The notice is permanently linked to the article.
- Withdrawal. Used only for legal or ethical reasons such as copyright infringement, plagiarism, or risk to research participants.
Nothing is silently deleted. Every change to the scholarly record is recorded where a reader can find it.
9. Archiving and preservation
Every published item is deposited in a long-term archive that issues a DOI, so the content remains retrievable even if this website ceases to operate.
10. Commentary & Humour
Items in the Commentary & Humour section are not research. They are not peer reviewed and are excluded from scholarly indexing. They carry no scientific claim and must not be cited as evidence.
11. Complaints and appeals
Complaints about published content or editorial handling should be sent to
editor@aoops.org
with the subject AOOPS complaint. We aim to acknowledge within 7
days and to decide within 30 days. Appeals against an editorial decision may
be made once, in writing, within 60 days.
12. Publisher and contact
Publisher: Annals of Open Public Science
Editor-in-Chief: Zhuolei Wang
Email: editor@aoops.org
Policy version 1.0 · 2026. Changes are noted here with a date, so readers can see what applied to a paper when it was published.