1. Before Submission

Before you submit to Rural and Regional Development, please go through the following information carefully.

1.1. Submission Checklist

Please:

• read the Aims & Scope to check if your manuscript is suitable for this journal;
• use the Microsoft Word template to prepare your manuscript; If you prefer to prepare references with bibliography software, download the EndNote Style;
• make sure that issues about research and publication ethics, conflicts of interest, author contributions, data and materials availability, and funding have been clarified appropriately;
• ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript;
• all manuscripts must be submitted online through SCIEPublish manuscript platform.

1.2. Open Access, License and Copyright

Rural and Regional Development is a peer-reviewed, fully open access journal. All articles published with open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy, and distribute as defined by Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Copyright is retained by authors.

1.3. Article Charge Processing (APC)

There is no article processing charge (APC) for authors publishing in Rural and Regional Development before 31 December 2024. There are no additional charges based on color, length, figures, or other items.

2. Submission Preparation

2.1. Types of Article

Manuscripts submitted to Rural and Regional Development should neither be published previously nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are as follows:

• Original Research Article (5000-10000 words): Original research manuscript reports scientifically sound experiments and provides a substantial amount of new information with enough related tables and/or figures and a clear structure to contain Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusions.
• Review paper (5000-15000 words): Review should provide a complete and balanced overview on the latest progress in a given area of research.
• Communication (2000-5000 words): Communication is a short research article usually claiming certain results, which present original and significant material for rapid dissemination.
• Case Report (2000-5000 words): Case report usually describes an unusual or novel occurrence and as such, remain one of the cornerstones of medical progress and provide many new ideas in medicine.

Other article types often invited by Editors are also considered, such as Editorial, Perspective, Commentary, Opinion, Letter to Editor, and so on. Details can be found at For Authors.

2.2. Article Structure

2.2.1. Title Page

Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.

Author names and affiliations. Please clearly indicate the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author and check that all names are accurately spelled. You can add your name between parentheses in your own script behind the English transliteration. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author. 

Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. This responsibility includes answering any future queries about Methodology and Materials. Ensure that the e-mail address is given and that contact details are kept up to date by the corresponding author. 

Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a "Present address" (or "Permanent address") may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes. 

Publication history. The submission date, revised date, and accepted date will be included in this part. 

Abstract. A concise and structured abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the main methods or treatments applied, the principal results and major conclusions. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article and it must not contain results that are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided. Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself. A single paragraph of about 200 words maximum. 

Graphical abstract. The graphical abstract is optional, but it draws more attention to the online article. The graphical abstract should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership. Graphical abstract should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum of 374 × 990 pixels (h × w) and high resolution of 300 dpi. Preferred file types: TIFF, PNG or MS Office files.

Keywords. provide a maximum of 8 keywords, avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts. 

Copyright. Authors retain copyright of their works through Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license that clearly states how readers can copy, distribute, and use their attributed research, free of charge. A declaration "©The Author(s) Year." will be added to each article.

2.2.2. Main text

Introduction. State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. 

Material and Methods. Provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Methods that are already published should be summarized, and indicated by a reference. If quoting directly from a previously published method, use quotation marks and also cite the source. Any modifications to existing methods should also be described. 

Results. Results should be clear and concise. Each Figure, Table, Scheme and supplementary information with a short and concise caption should be inserted into the main text close to their first citation and must be numbered following their number of appearance (Figure 1, Scheme I, Table 1, etc.). 

Discussion. This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature. 

Conclusions. The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.

2.2.3. Back Matter

Supplementary. This refers to the supporting information, such as additional images, data, audios or videos. They should be cited in the main text in numeric order (e.g., Figure S1, Figure S2, Table S1, Table S2, Video S1, etc.). The style of supplementary figures or tables should be the same requirements as figures or tables in main text. Videos and audios should be prepared in English, and limited to a size of 500 MB. It will be named as Figure S1: title; Table S1: title; Video S1: title, etc.

Appendices. If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc. 

Acknowledgments. The acknowledgement section can be used to thank anyone important in the publication of the work who does not qualify for authorship. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments). 

Author Contributions. For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used "Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; Methodology, X.X.; Software, X.X.; Validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; Formal Analysis, X.X.; Investigation, X.X.; Resources, X.X.; Data Curation, X.X.; Writing – Original Draft Preparation, X.X.; Writing – Review & Editing, X.X.; Visualization, X.X.; Supervision, X.X.; Project Administration, X.X.; Funding Acquisition, Y.Y.”, please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation.  

Ethics Statement. Interventionary studies involving animals or humans, and other studies that require ethical approval, must list the authority that provided approval and the corresponding ethical approval code in this section. Please add “The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institutional Review Board (or Ethics Committee) of NAME OF INSTITUTE (protocol code XXX and date of approval).” OR “Ethical review and approval were waived for this study, due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans or animals. 

Informed Consent Statement. Any research article describing a study involving humans should contain this statement. Please add “Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.” OR “Patient consent was waived due to REASON (please provide a detailed justification).” OR “Not applicable” for studies not involving humans. 

Data Availability Statement. The statement is required for all original articles which informs readers about the accessibility of research data linked to a paper and outlines the terms under which the data can be obtained.

Funding. All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed. Please add: “This research received no external funding” or “This research was funded by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]” and “The APC was funded by [XXX]” in this section. Check carefully that the details given are accurate and use the standard spelling of funding agency names at https://search.crossref.org/funding, any errors may affect your future funding. 

Declaration of Competing Interest. All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. If there are no interests to declare, please use the sentence: “The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper”.

References. References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including citations in tables and legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. In the text, reference numbers should be placed as [XX]. If there are 6 or less authors in one reference, please list all authors’ names in the Reference part. If there are more than 6 authors for one reference, please use “et al.” following the sixth author’s name.

2.3. Reference Formatting

Reference to a journal publication:
Author 1 AB, Author 2 CD. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name Year, Volume, page range.

Reference to a book:
Author 1 A, Author 2 B. Book Title, 3rd ed.; Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, 2008; pp. 154–196.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Author 1 A, Author 2 B. Title of the chapter. In Book Title, 2nd ed.; Editor 1 A, Editor 2 B, Eds.; Publisher: Publisher Location, Country, 2007; Volume 3, pp. 154–196.

Reference to an unpublished work:
Author 1 AB, Author 2 C. Title of Unpublished Work. Abbreviated Journal Name year, phrase indicating stage of publication (submitted; accepted; in press).

Reference to a patent:
Patent Owner 1; Patent Owner 2; et al. Title of Patent. Patent Number, Date (Day Month Year, the Application granted date).

Reference to a conference report/abstract:
Author 1 AB, Author 2 CD, Author 3 EF. Title of Presentation. In Proceedings of the Name of the Conference, Location of Conference, Country, Date of Conference (Day Month Year).

Reference to a thesis:
Author 1 AB. Title of Thesis. Level of Thesis, Degree-Granting University, Location of University, Country, Date of Completion.

Reference to website information:
Title of Site. Available online: URL (accessed on Day Month Year).
Journal abbreviations can be referred to the List of Title Word Abbreviations.

2.4. Images and Tables Formatting

Figures should be placed near to the first appearance in the main text. The corresponding caption should be placed directly below the figure. All symbols and abbreviations used in the images should be explained in the caption. The acceptable format is JPEG, PNG, or TIFF with a high resolution at least 300 dpi.

Tables should be inserted as editable format, not as images. It also should be near to the first appearance in the main text. The corresponding caption should be placed directly above the table, and footnotes below the table.

2.5. Others

Manuscript files can be in DOC and DOCX formats, and LaTex as well.

Abbreviations should be defined upon first appearance in the title, abstract, main text, heading/subheading and figure/table captions and used consistently thereafter.

General italic words include vs., et al., etc., i.e., in vivo, in vitro; t test, F test, U test; related coefficient as r/R², sample number as n/N, and probability as p/P; names of genes; names of bacteria and biology species in Latin. All italic letters should be consistent in the manuscript.

Units should be abided by the International System of Units, such as h for hours, min for minutes, s for seconds. There is a space between the number and the unit (i.e., 5 mL), except for degree (°), solidus (/), and percent (%).

Numbers should be written as Arabic numerals. More than 4-Digit Numbers should be separated by comma, such as 12,345. Decimal notation should be converted scientific notation, such as 0.0001 for 1 × 10⁻⁴.

3. Authorship

Authorship should only be granted to those who have made substantial contributions to a published study that meet the four requirements outlined below:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
• Final approval of the version to be submitted;
• Agreement 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.

All those who meet these criteria should be identified as co-authors. Co-authors must specify their contributions in the section “Authors Contributions” of their manuscripts. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria (like being only involved in the acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group, general administrative support, writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, proofreading, etc.) should be acknowledged in the section “Acknowledgements” in the manuscript rather than being listed as co-authors. 

If a large multiple-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be co-authors before the work starts and confirm co-authors before submission. All researchers in the group named as co-authors must meet all four criteria for authorship.

The corresponding author (as least one member), usually a senior and experienced member of the submitted group or team), is responsible for:

• communication with editors about submission, peer review, revision, proofreading, etc.;
• ensuring all data and contents of the manuscript with co-authors' agreement;
• confirming all co-authors to agree all matters comply with the policies of the journal;
• being available for any post-publication queries.

SCIEPublish encourages all co-authors to provide ORCID IDs to improve transparency and unambiguous attribution of scholarly contributions.

In accordance with COPE guidance, AI and AI-assisted technologies/tools should not be listed as an author of a paper. 
 
Changes to Authorship
Changes to the authorship, such as the addition, deletion, or sequence re-arrangement of co-authors, must be approved by every co-author and inform the editor of the change and co-authors' approval. After acceptance of a manuscript, those above changes to authorship are not permitted. 
 
Author name changes
If an author requests to change their name after publication, the Editorial Office will consider such requirements under reasonable circumstances. The Editorial Office will strictly follow the COPE guidelines (How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers) to handle it and respect the author's request, but at the same time ensure that the published articles have transparent and reliable records.
 
Deceased authors
For cases in which a co-author dies during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and the co-authors feel it is appropriate to include the author, co-authors should obtain approval from a (legal) representative which could be a direct relative.

4. Research and Publication Ethics

4.1. Research Involving Human Subjects

All studies involving human subjects must be in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. The author should ensure that the manuscript contains a statement that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) have approved them. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed. Manuscripts with suspected ethical problems will be investigated according to Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines. 

If the work involves the case details or other personal information/images of patients and any other individuals, appropriate consents and permissions must be obtained. Written consents must be retained by the author and copies of the consents or evidence that such consents have been obtained must be provided.

4.2. Research Involving Animals

All experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. The author should ensure that the manuscript must contains a statement that the experimental research on animals of the study has been approved by the relevant ethical committee and that the whole research process complies with ethical guidelines. 

If a study is granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, the name of the ethics committee granting the exemption and the reason(s) for the exemption should be detailed. Editors will take account of animal welfare issues and reserve the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research.

4.3. Research Involving Cell Lines

Authors must indicate the origin of any cell lines they used so that the research can be replicated. For established cell lines, the provenance should be stated and references must also be given to either a published paper or to a commercial source. If the study includes de novo cell lines unpublished previously, appropriate approval from an institutional review board or equivalent ethical committee, and written informed consent from human origin, should be obtained. Such statements should be listed on the “Ethics Statement” section in the manuscript. 

Further information is available from the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC). Rural and Regional Development recommends that authors may refer to the NCBI database for misidentification and contamination of human cell lines.

4.4. Research Involving Plants

All experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild), including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. Field studies should be conducted in accordance with local legislation, and the manuscript should include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions and/or licenses. The journal recommends that authors comply with the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. 

For each submitted manuscript, supporting genetic information and origin must be provided for plants that were used. For research manuscripts involving rare and non-model plants (other than, e.g., Arabidopsis thaliana, Nicotiana benthamiana, Oriza sativa, or many other typical model plants), voucher specimens must be deposited in a public herbarium or other public collections providing access to deposited materials.

4.5. Publication Ethics Statement

Rural and Regional Development fully follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines of Committee. 

The Editors enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to guarantee to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The Editors take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with zero tolerance policy. 

Authors who want to publish their papers in Rural and Regional Development must abide to the following:

• The author(s) must disclose any possibility of a conflict of interest in the paper prior to submission.
• The authors should declare that there is no academic misconduct in their manuscript in the cover letter.
• Authors should accurately present their research findings as well as an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
• Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the manuscript so that other researchers can replicate the work.
• Authors may be requested to provide the raw data relevant to the paper for editorial review.
• Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal is unacceptable.
• Exact translations of previously published work are not tolerated (for example, an English translation of a paper that is already published in another language will not be accepted).
• If you include already published figures or images, please get the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY 4.0 license.
• Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are not acceptable.

Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are unacceptable:

• Plagiarism involves the inclusion of large sections of unaltered or minimally altered text from an existing source without appropriate and unambiguous attribution, and/or an attempt to misattribute original authorship regarding ideas or results, and copying text, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving credit to the source. If plagiarism is detected during the peer-review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we may publish a Correction or retract the paper.
• As for reusing the text that is copied from another source, it must be marked quotation and the source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous studies, these studies must be cited explicitly.
• Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results so that the findings are not accurately represented in the research record.
• Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image. Irregular manipulation includes: introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image; grouping of images that should be presented separately, or modifying the contrast, brightness, or color balance to obscure, eliminate, or enhance some information. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the editorial process, we will reject the manuscript. If it is identified and confirmed after publication, we may publish a Retraction or retract the paper.

Rural and Regional Development reserves the right to contact the authors' institution(s) to investigate possible research or publication misconduct if the Editors find conclusive evidence of misconduct before or after publication. 

SCIEPublish has a partnership with Similarity Check’s CrossCheck, which is the most trusted plagiarism checker. It is used to detect instances of overlapping and similar text of submissions to avoid plagiarism to the greatest extent possible. If plagiarism is detected during editorial process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, an investigation will take place and action taken in accordance with COPE Guidelines.

5. Editorial Process

The whole processing of the manuscript can be referred as below: 
 


Editor/Academic Editor Check
After the submission steps completed, the submission will go through similarity check by editors. Then the Academic Editors will check if the manuscript meets the general criteria for publication, typically within ~3 working days. If yes, it will be sent to reviewers. Otherwise, it will be rejected and returned to the authors.
 
Peer Review
The check-passed manuscript is sent to reviewers, who are requested to complete their review within 10 working days. Typically, two or three review reports are required for each manuscript in peer review. In these review reports, reviewers are expected to provide with a recommended decision together with specific suggestions and comments.
 
All contributions will be initially assessed by the editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Academic Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of articles. The Academic Editor's decision is final. 

Academic Editors are not involved in decisions about papers that they have written themselves or have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the academic editor has an interest. Any such submission is subject to all of the journal's usual procedures, with peer review handled independently of the relevant editor and their research groups.
 
Academic Editor Decision
The Academic Editor will make an overall editorial decision within 3 working days after carefully evaluate the recommendations of all the reviewers. 

• Author Revision: The manuscript is sent to authors for Minor Revision/ Major Revision based on reviewers' comments;
• Additional Reviewers Added: Further review needed;
• Accept: The manuscript can be accepted in its current form;
• Reject: The manuscript has serious flaws, and/or is lack of novelty or significant contribution;
• Reject and Encourage Resubmission: The authors are encouraged to re-submit after conducting additional experiments and modifications.

Author Revision
Based on the review reports and the decision by Academic Editor, the decision (Minor Revision/ Major Revision) will be provided to the authors. 

• Minor Revision: The paper can be accepted after addressing all the revisions provided by the reviewers (about 7 working days).
• Major Revision: It depends on the revised version whether the manuscript could be accepted or not. Usually, the revised version will be re-evaluated by the preivous reviewer(s) (about 14 working days).

Production and Publication
Once accepted, the manuscript will go through the production procedure including copy-editing, English editing, proofreading, final corrections, conversion. Finally publish on the website.

6. Editors and Journal Staff as Authors

Editorial Office staff do not interfere with editorial decisions to ensure editorial independence. 

For submissions from Editorial Office staff or Editors (Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editor or Editorial Board members), other journal editors handle them independently. Submissions authored by Editors/Editorial Office staff will be assigned to at least two independent outside reviewers. Decisions will be made by other Editorial Board members who do not have conflicts of interest with the author. Editorial Office staff are not involved in the processing of their own work submitted to Rural and Regional Development.

7. Suggested/Excluded Reviewers

Authors are encouraged to suggest suitable reviewers and/or exclude certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are not associated with the study in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. Please note that the Editorial Office may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process. When requesting to the exclusion of reviewers, authors should explain or justify concerns—this information will be helpful for Editorial Office to decide whether to respect these requests provided that they do not interfere with the objective and thorough assessment of an article.