Ethics Policy

Light：Advanced Manufacturing (LAM) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, research integrity, transparency, fairness, and scholarly communication. The journal’s editorial and publication practices are guided by internationally recognized principles, including those of the  Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), together with other relevant professional and disciplinary standards.

These policies address authorship and contributorship, originality and duplicate publication, plagiarism and research misconduct, competing interests, research ethics, confidentiality, pre-publicity, citation, post-publication corrections and retractions, appeals, complaints, and related matters. Authors, reviewers, editors, and all other parties involved in the publication process are expected to uphold these principles.

Editorial Principles and Independence

Editorial decisions are based on the scientific quality, originality, significance, methodological rigor, clarity, and relevance of a manuscript to the scope of Light: Advanced Manufacturing. Decisions must not be influenced by an author’s nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, seniority, political or religious beliefs, commercial relationships, or other considerations unrelated to the scholarly merits of the work.

The Publisher supports the editorial independence of the journal. Commercial, financial, institutional, advertising, sponsorship, or other external interests must not improperly influence editorial evaluation or publication decisions.

Editors are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts are handled fairly and objectively. Where independent expert review is appropriate, reviewer recommendations inform the editorial assessment, while the final decision rests with the responsible editor. Detailed reviewer procedures are provided separately in the journal’s Reviewer Guidance.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship is both a form of scholarly credit and a statement of responsibility. Individuals listed as authors should have made meaningful contributions to the work and should be able to take appropriate responsibility for their own contributions and for the integrity of the work as a whole.

Authors of manuscripts submitted to Light: Advanced Manufacturing are expected to meet the following requirements:

• Each author should have made a substantive contribution to the work, such as conceptualization, experimental design, data acquisition, analysis, software development, methodology, interpretation, drafting, revision, or another significant scholarly contribution.

• All authors must agree to the submission of the manuscript, any revised version submitted to the journal, the order of authors, and the author contribution statement.

• Each author is responsible for the accuracy and integrity of their own contribution and should cooperate in resolving questions concerning any part of the work for which responsibility needs to be established.

• Any change to the author list after submission, including a change in author order or the addition or removal of an author, requires a clear explanation and the written agreement of all authors, including any author being added or removed.

The corresponding author is responsible for communication between the journal and all co-authors before and after publication. The corresponding author must ensure that all authors are aware of the submission and editorial correspondence and is responsible for providing, on behalf of all authors, the required declarations concerning submission agreement, originality, and competing interests.

At submission, the corresponding author must ensure that appropriate permission has been obtained for any cited unpublished material that requires consent and must clearly identify previously published content reused in the manuscript, including figures. Where permission from the original author, copyright holder, or publisher is required, documentation must be available to the journal.

Following acceptance, the corresponding author is responsible for checking the accuracy of the proofs, including author names, affiliations, addresses, and other bibliographic information. After publication, the corresponding author serves as the primary contact for questions about the article, must keep co-authors appropriately informed, and should notify the journal promptly if any error requiring correction is identified.

Consortia authorship

Where a consortium or collaborative group is presented as an author, the authorship arrangement must be transparent. If consortium members are to be recognized as individual authors, the members must be clearly identified in the article and must satisfy the journal’s authorship requirements.

Author Contribution Statements

Light: Advanced Manufacturing promotes transparency through author contribution statements. Manuscripts should include a statement describing the contribution of each author. The journal permits up to three corresponding authors and up to three co-authors to be identified as having contributed equally or jointly supervised the work, where justified. Equal contribution or joint supervision should be explained clearly in the contribution statement.

Authors are encouraged to use the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) framework, where appropriate, to describe contributions such as Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing, Visualization, Supervision, Project Administration, and Funding Acquisition.

Author Identification

To support transparency and unambiguous attribution of scholarly work, Light: Advanced Manufacturing encourages all authors of published articles to provide their Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID) iD.

Contributorship

Contributorship recognizes individuals who have made valuable contributions to a research project or manuscript but do not meet the criteria for authorship. Such contributions may include data collection, technical assistance, analysis, drafting specific sections, critical feedback, administrative support, or other meaningful contributions.

• Individuals who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should normally be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section rather than listed as authors.

• Contributors should be informed of how their contributions will be acknowledged and, where appropriate, should have an opportunity to confirm that the description is accurate.

• Contributors are expected to observe relevant ethical standards, including appropriate disclosure of competing interests and responsible conduct of research.

If authorship or contributorship disputes arise, Light: Advanced Manufacturing editors are not normally in a position to investigate or adjudicate disputes that require access to institutional records or evidence. Where authors cannot resolve such matters themselves, the issue should be referred to the appropriate institutional authority.

Duplicate Publication and Preprints

Material submitted to Light: Advanced Manufacturing must be original and must not have been published in substantially the same form or be under consideration by another journal at the same time. If any part of the submission has appeared, or is expected to appear, elsewhere, the relevant details must be disclosed in the cover letter or at submission so that the editors can assess whether the overlap is acceptable.

Light: Advanced Manufacturing permits manuscripts to be posted on recognized preprint servers before formal journal submission. Authors should disclose relevant preprints during submission. The existence of a preprint does not by itself constitute prior publication.

When previously published figures, tables, text, or other copyrighted material are reused, authors are responsible for obtaining any permissions required by the rights holder and for providing appropriate attribution. If authors are uncertain whether prior dissemination or overlap is acceptable, they are encouraged to consult the Editorial Office or handling editor.

Plagiarism, Fabrication, Falsification, and Research Misconduct

Plagiarism includes the use or reproduction of another person’s text, ideas, images, data, results, methods, or other intellectual property without appropriate attribution. Proper citation is required not only for direct quotation but also when paraphrasing, summarizing, or otherwise drawing substantially on previously published work, including an author’s own prior publications.

Light: Advanced Manufacturing may use appropriate similarity-checking services, including Crossref Similarity Check/iThenticate or comparable tools, to identify textual overlap. Similarity reports are interpreted by editors in context rather than by a fixed numerical threshold. If plagiarism is identified after publication, the journal may issue a correction, retraction, or other notice depending on the seriousness of the case and its effect on the integrity of the article.

Fabrication and falsification are serious forms of research misconduct. They include inventing data or results, manipulating research materials, equipment, processes, images, or data in a way that misrepresents the research record, omitting material information so as to create a misleading impression, or reporting results known to be unreliable. Peer-review manipulation, falsification of authorship or affiliations, and deliberate misrepresentation of methods or findings are also unacceptable.

Where concerns about research or publication misconduct arise, the journal may request original data, source files, laboratory records, code, ethical approval documents, or other relevant evidence. When appropriate, the journal may contact authors’ institutions, funders, regulatory bodies, other journals, or research-integrity officers in accordance with applicable publication-ethics guidance.

Discussion of Unpublished Work

Manuscripts should give appropriate credit when discussing or relying on unpublished data or other non-public material, and authors must obtain any permissions that are required. Where data are used under a license or other access agreement, authors must comply with the relevant terms. Reviewers who become aware of possible misuse of unpublished material should alert the editor.

Discussion of Published Work

When referring to the published work of others, authors must acknowledge relevant intellectual contributions and technical developments accurately and provide appropriate citations.

Image Integrity

Images are part of the research record and must accurately represent the underlying observations. Image processing is acceptable when it is applied consistently and does not alter the scientific meaning of the data. Adjustments to brightness, contrast, color balance, or other display parameters must not selectively enhance, remove, obscure, move, or introduce features in a misleading manner.

Authors must not:

• Selectively manipulate individual regions of an image in a way that changes the interpretation of the data;

• Duplicate images or image regions to represent different samples, experiments, or conditions;

• Combine images from different experiments without clearly indicating the arrangement and explaining it in the figure legend or methods;

• Remove relevant features, artifacts, or background information without scientific justification;

• Use image enhancement, reconstruction, denoising, artificial intelligence, or other computational processing in a manner that materially misrepresents the underlying data.

Light: Advanced Manufacturing may request original, unprocessed image data where necessary to evaluate integrity.

Data, Code, and Materials Availability

Light: Advanced Manufacturing supports transparency, reproducibility, and the ability of researchers to verify and build upon published findings. Authors should make the data, code, algorithms, models, calibration information, experimental parameters, protocols, and other materials necessary to understand and reproduce the principal findings available whenever reasonably possible.

Research Articles should include an appropriate Data Availability statement. Where custom software, computational algorithms, or trained models are central to the conclusions, authors are strongly encouraged to provide the relevant source code, executable implementation, model, or sufficient methodological detail through a suitable repository or other accessible mechanism.

If data, code, or materials cannot be made publicly available because of ethical, privacy, security, legal, commercial, or third-party restrictions, those restrictions should be stated clearly. Authors should explain, where appropriate, how qualified researchers may request access.

Editors and reviewers may request access to underlying data, source code, raw images, or supporting material when reasonably necessary to evaluate the reliability of a submission. Inability to provide essential evidence needed to verify the principal findings may affect editorial consideration.

Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

Light: Advanced Manufacturing recognizes the legitimate and growing use of artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies in research and scholarly communication. Their use must be transparent, responsible, and consistent with confidentiality, authorship, research-integrity, and intellectual-property requirements.

AI as Part of the Research

When AI or machine-learning methods form part of the scientific methodology, authors should report sufficient information to permit appropriate evaluation and, where feasible, reproducibility. Relevant information may include model architecture, training and validation procedures, datasets, preprocessing, performance metrics, software environment, model selection, known limitations, and the availability of code or trained models.

AI-generated or AI-enhanced scientific images, data, or measurements must be clearly identified when generation or enhancement forms part of the research methodology.

AI in Manuscript Preparation

AI tools and large language models cannot be listed as authors because they cannot take responsibility or accountability for the work. Human authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, citations, and scholarly content of all submitted material, including material produced or modified with AI assistance.

Use of generative AI that materially contributes to manuscript drafting, data analysis, image generation, or other substantive aspects of the work should be disclosed in an appropriate manner. Routine tools used solely for spelling, grammar, formatting, or language improvement generally do not require detailed disclosure unless the journal requests otherwise. Authors must independently verify AI-generated factual statements, references, and citations.

AI in Editorial Assessment and Peer Review

Submitted manuscripts and peer-review materials are confidential. Editors and reviewers must not upload manuscripts, figures, supplementary files, or confidential editorial correspondence to external AI systems where confidentiality, intellectual-property protection, and data security cannot be assured. AI tools must not replace independent expert judgment in editorial decision-making or peer review. Additional reviewer-specific requirements are set out in the journal’s Reviewer Guidance.

Competing Interests

Competing interests, sometimes referred to as conflicts of interest, are financial or non-financial relationships, activities, or circumstances that could influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, professional judgment, objectivity, or integrity in research, peer review, editorial handling, or publication.

To support transparency and allow readers to assess potential sources of bias, Light: Advanced Manufacturing requires disclosure of relevant financial and non-financial competing interests. The corresponding author is responsible for providing the authors’ declaration on behalf of all co-authors.

Financial Competing Interests

Financial competing interests may arise from employment, research funding, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, patents or patent applications, grants, commercial partnerships, or other financial relationships or benefits relevant to the research or its publication.

Diversified mutual funds or broadly diversified investment trusts are not normally considered competing financial interests.

Non-financial Competing Interests

Non-financial competing interests may include personal, professional, academic, institutional, or organizational relationships that could affect, or be perceived to affect, objectivity. Examples may include unpaid roles in governmental or non-governmental organizations, advocacy or lobbying groups, advisory roles in commercial organizations, writing or consulting for educational companies, service as an expert witness, close personal relationships, or significant academic competition.

For Authors

Authors must disclose relevant competing interests during submission, with the corresponding author responsible for submitting the declaration on behalf of all authors. All published articles must include a competing-interests statement, regardless of the peer-review model. Authors subject to confidentiality obligations may explain the existence of such restrictions where itemized disclosure is legally or contractually prohibited. Monetary values of financial interests are not required.

For Reviewers

Reviewers should decline or recuse themselves from reviewing a manuscript where a significant competing interest could affect their objectivity. A financial interest does not automatically invalidate a review, but reviewers must disclose relevant financial and non-financial interests so that editors can determine whether the review assignment or recommendation is appropriate.

For Editors

Editors and editorial staff must disclose financial or non-financial interests that could influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, editorial handling. Failure to disclose a material conflict may constitute a breach of editorial standards.

An editor must not handle a manuscript where a significant conflict exists, including, where relevant, being an author of the manuscript, belonging to the same institution as an author, having a recent close research collaboration or close personal relationship with an author, or having a direct financial or professional interest in the outcome.

When an Co-Editor-in-Chief,  Editorial Board Member, Guest Editor, or other editor submits a manuscript to Light: Advanced Manufacturing, that individual will have no involvement in the peer-review process or editorial decision. The manuscript will be handled independently by another qualified editor without a relevant competing interest and will be subject to the same editorial standards as other submissions.

For the Publisher

The Publisher, Light Publishing Group, supports the editorial independence of Light: Advanced Manufacturing and seeks to ensure that editorial decisions and published content are not compromised by commercial or financial interests. Any relevant arrangements with advertising clients, sponsors, or other commercial partners should be managed transparently so that they do not influence editorial decisions.

Bioethics and Research Ethics

Research involving humans, animals, identifiable biological materials, or other ethically sensitive subjects must comply with applicable institutional, national, and international requirements. Authors are responsible for obtaining all approvals and consents required before the research begins.

Research involving vertebrate animals or cephalopods must receive prior approval from the appropriate Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) or equivalent ethics body where required and must be conducted in accordance with applicable animal-welfare standards and national or international guidelines.

Research involving human participants, identifiable human data, or human biological materials must receive approval from an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent research ethics committee where required. Such research should follow applicable ethical standards, including the principles of the current Declaration of Helsinki when relevant. Authors must provide ethics approval information in the manuscript and, upon request, documentation supporting that approval.

Participants should be appropriately informed and written informed consent should be obtained where required. If verbal consent is used, or if consent is waived or not obtained, the reason and the approval of the responsible ethics committee should be explained. Separate consent for publication should be obtained when identifiable information or images are to be published, where applicable.

The journal reserves the right to request additional ethical documentation or to decline publication if substantial ethical concerns remain unresolved, even where institutional approval has been reported.

Confidentiality and Pre-publicity

Confidentiality

All participants in the editorial and peer-review process, including editors, authors, reviewers, and journal staff, must respect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and related correspondence. The peer-review process is conducted anonymously unless the journal states otherwise in its published peer-review procedures.

Reviewers who wish to consult a colleague or involve another person in a review must first obtain permission from the editor. Any person who contributes to a review must also observe the journal’s confidentiality and competing-interest requirements, and their involvement should be disclosed to the editor.

Editorial correspondence, reviewer reports, unpublished data, and other confidential material must not be published, circulated, or used for personal or professional advantage without appropriate authorization. Light: Advanced Manufacturing reserves the right to contact funders, regulatory bodies, other journals, authors’ institutions, or relevant authorities when necessary to investigate suspected research or publication misconduct.

Pre-publicity

Authors should not discuss or promote the substantive findings of an accepted but unpublished Light: Advanced Manufacturing manuscripts to the media before the journal’s publication date or the expiry of any applicable press embargo. Premature media promotion that compromises an agreed embargo may affect publication.

In the period immediately before publication, typically during the week before publication, the journal may permit communication with journalists under embargo. Where an embargo applies, authors and institutional representatives must make clear that the information must not be made public before the embargo expires. Embargo information will be communicated to authors when relevant.

Presentation of results at scientific meetings is encouraged. Authors should nevertheless observe any applicable press embargo and should avoid media activity that would result in public dissemination of embargoed findings. Conference abstracts may be published in proceedings where appropriate.

Manuscripts may be posted on recognized preprint servers or appropriate collaborative platforms, including recognized repositories, arXiv, wikis, or author websites. Authors should disclose the location of a relevant preprint or public version during submission. Posting a preprint is permitted, but authors should not use the preprint posting to circumvent an applicable journal press embargo.

Citations

Articles must cite relevant literature appropriately and accurately to support scholarly claims and to acknowledge prior intellectual and technical contributions. Citation practices designed primarily to manipulate citation metrics are unacceptable.

Examples of inappropriate citation practices include excessive or unnecessary self-citation, coordinated citation exchanges or collective self-citation, gratuitous citation of articles from the submitting journal, coercive citation requests, and citation of irrelevant publications solely to increase citation counts. Serious or systematic citation manipulation may result in rejection and, where appropriate, may be reported to relevant institutions.

Authors should report to the journal or Publisher any attempt by a reviewer or editor to pressure them into adding citations that are not scientifically relevant or otherwise appropriate.

Special Issues and Guest Editors

All submissions, including Special Issues and manuscripts handled by guest editors, are subject to the same standards of research integrity, peer review, editorial independence, and publication ethics as regular journal content.

Guest Editors must disclose relevant competing interests and must not handle manuscripts for which a significant conflict exists. When a Guest Editor is an author of a submission to a Special Issue they oversee, the manuscript must be assigned to an independent editor with no prior involvement in preparing or soliciting the work.

The journal retains overall responsibility for editorial standards and final publication decisions for all Special Issues.

Corrections and Retractions

Light: Advanced Manufacturing may publish Author Corrections, Retractions, Editorial Expressions of Concern, or other post-publication notices when necessary to maintain the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record. Such notices should be clearly linked to the original article, and the original article should, where appropriate, link back to the notice.

The original article will normally remain publicly accessible as part of the scholarly record. In exceptional circumstances involving legal restrictions, rights infringement, privacy violations, defamation, court or government orders, or an immediate and serious risk to health or safety, removal or restricted access may be considered.

Authors, readers, institutions, or other organizations that identify errors or ethical concerns in a published article are encouraged to contact the Editorial Office. Editors will consider credible reports and may seek independent expert or institutional advice as needed.

Author Corrections

At the discretion of the editor, an Author Correction may be published when an error affects the interpretation, accuracy, presentation, or conclusions of an article but does not invalidate the work as a whole. The Author Correction will identify the article and explain the change, and will be linked to the original publication.

Retractions

Retraction may be required when the findings, interpretation, or conclusions of an article are substantially unreliable because of major error, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, serious ethical violations, manipulation of the peer-review process, or other circumstances that materially compromise the integrity of the work.

Retractions will be handled in accordance with applicable COPE guidance. Retraction notices should clearly identify the retracted article, explain the reason for retraction, and be linked to the original article. The original article will normally remain available but will be clearly marked as retracted.

Editorial Expressions of Concern

An Editorial Expression of Concern may be published when serious questions have been raised about the reliability, interpretation, conclusions, ethics, or integrity of a published article but the available evidence is not yet sufficient for a final decision. This may be appropriate, for example, during a prolonged institutional investigation or when concerns may have an immediate and significant effect on public health or public policy.

An Editorial Expression of Concern may later be followed by an Author Correction, Retraction, or other editorial action but will remain part of the permanent published record.

Removal of Published Content

In exceptional circumstances, Light: Advanced Manufacturing may temporarily or permanently remove an article or other content from its online platform. Grounds may include defamation, infringement of intellectual-property rights, serious privacy violations, unlawfulness, a binding court or government order, or an immediate and serious risk to health or safety. Where feasible, a notice explaining the reason for removal will remain in place.

Appeals and Complaints

Appeal Against a Rejection

Authors who wish to appeal the rejection of a manuscript should contact the Editorial Office in accordance with the instructions provided below. Appeals will be considered, but the process may normally take approximately 1-2 weeks. Only one appeal is permitted for each manuscript.

An appeal should identify the manuscript tracking number and provide a formal, evidence-based explanation of the grounds for reconsideration. Appeals are generally considered when the author can demonstrate a material error in the decision-making process, provide important information or data that could not reasonably have been considered earlier, or present credible evidence of bias or procedural unfairness.

The appeal will be assessed by the appropriate Co-Editor-in-Chief, and the final decision rests with the journal’s responsible editorial authority. Where an appeal is successful, authors may be invited to submit a revised manuscript and response for further editorial assessment or peer review. A successful appeal does not guarantee acceptance.

Complaints

Complaints concerning journal processes, editorial conduct, publication ethics, confidentiality, discrimination, or other aspects of the publication process should be submitted to the Editorial Office with sufficient information to allow the matter to be assessed.

Complaints will initially be reviewed by the appropriate Co-Editor-in-Chief or editorial management. If the Co-Editor-in-Chief responsible for the manuscript is the subject of the complaint, the matter should be referred to another appropriate Co-Editor-in-Chief or to the journal’s editorial and publishing management team.

Process-related complaints will be reviewed and responded to, and relevant feedback may be used to improve journal procedures. Complaints involving ethical or scientific-integrity concerns will be assessed in accordance with applicable publication-ethics guidance, including COPE guidance where appropriate. The journal may seek advice from independent experts, institutions, or research-integrity bodies in complex cases.

If a complainant remains dissatisfied after the initial response, the matter may be escalated to the journal’s editorial and publishing management team for further review.