Introduction 

Editorial Policy

In order to make sure that the contributions submitted are in relevance to the style and principle of the journal, authors are obliged to read the “Author Guidelines” before submission.

All contributions submitted to Modern Transportation are contingent on a rigorous peer review. Aspects such as admissible English language, originality, novelty related to this journal are considered anterior to the peer review process.

All contributions submitted to Modern Transportation will not be made available to anyone except our individuals who take part in the publishing process of this manuscript.

Works that has been published or in consideration for publication in other journals are not accepted. If the data of the manuscript are presented in other platforms, authors should notify us. A submission checklist is needed to fill up to ensure the fulfillment of these criteria.

Misconduct Policy

We treat all potential academic misconduct seriously. If our editor suspects that the content of a submission may constitute academic misconduct in research, publication, or professional conduct, we may discuss it with the USP Ethics Committee, while withholding key identifying information.

Plagiarism

USP does not approve any form of plagiarism used in submitted manuscripts, and plagiarized articles are not allowed in any publication by USP. Before submitting a manuscript, authors should ensure that they have written an original work. As a part of our commitment to protect the integrity of scholarly publications, we take the necessary steps in all aspects of publishing ethics. All manuscripts submitted to USP journals will be checked for plagiarism via Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) by our Managing Editor before being passed to the Editor-in-Chief. Overlapping and similar texts in the manuscripts submitted will be investigated promptly and may be considered as plagiarism. Any manuscripts found to be plagiarized will be rejected.

Fabrication and falsification

Any acts of fabricating or falsifying, including fabricating data, deceptively reporting research results, concealing conflicting data, deliberately concealing or distorting data, if found to exist at any stage during the evaluation of a manuscript, even though it may have been officially published, will result in direct rejection or retraction by the Publisher.

Duplicate submission

USP does not accept a duplicate submission. Papers must be original and have not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

Code of Publishing Ethics

USP follows the Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) Core Practice and Ethical Oversight Policies. USP makes all reasonable efforts to investigate publication misconduct, including fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. If misconduct is suspected, journal editors will act in accordance with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing as stipulated by the COPE, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

All submissions to USP journals are subject to rigorous review. The editors, authors, or readers can forward their concerns to the journal if they find out that the description in a published article may constitute academic fraud, research misconduct, or publication malpractice. The concerns or complaints on the possible allegations submitted to the journal will be dealt with promptly and appropriately according to the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart on complaints. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the Publisher at editor.office@usp-pl.com.

Authorship

Any person who made a significant contribution in the preparation of a submission should be listed. All authors share responsibility and accountability for the results of the published research, and those who participated in certain aspects should be listed or acknowledged as contributors to their study. Authors should reveal the identity of the people who help with the writing and the source of funding for such help. Authors appointed as the corresponding author(s) will handle all correspondence about the article and sign the publishing agreement on behalf of all other authors. Corresponding author(s) are responsible for ensuring that all the authors’ contact details are correct and that all authors agree on the order that their names will appear in the article. All authors also need to make sure that their affiliations are correct, as explained in more detail below.

Changes to Authorship

Before submitting a manuscript, authors should carefully review the author list and the order.
Changes to the names of authors on the list of authors, such as additions, deletions, etc., can only be made before the manuscript is approved for publication. The corresponding author shall give the editorial office a formal confirmation certificate of consent to the change from all authors (current authors and those to be added or removed), which should include the reasons for the change.
No changes in authorship are permitted without the consent of the editorial board.

Article Process Charges (APCs)

The Gold Open Access format is used for all journal publications. Article Processing Charges (APCs) are charged to authors. Fees will come from the authors’ institution or other research funding agencies. All articles published in our journals are open access and freely available online. The Publisher does not require readers to purchase a subscription of any kind to view the online version of its publications. Our belief is to create a better academic environment with our authors and readers.

Waiver and Discount Policy

USP offers APC waivers and discounts to reduce the financial burden on authors or institutions from low-income countries. For information about our waiver and discount policy for authors in financial need, please contact editor.office@usp-pl.com. The Publisher reserves the right to approve or reject an application.

For further information on APCs, authors should consult the journal to which they wish to submit their manuscript.

Indexing & Archiving

1. Authors are encouraged to archive the final version of their published article in institutional repositories (such as those listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories).

2. The National Library Board of Singapore will archive all articles published in USP journals, and all the publications will be digitally preserved by the PKP Preservation Network for the long term.

3. The final PDF version published can be acquired on the website by authors.

Disclaimer

Before submitting a manuscript, authors should understand USP’s publishing policies and strictly abide by the relevant laws, regulations, and ethics. Authors are responsible for all contents in their article(s) including the accuracy of the content, statements, citing data, and so on. Facts and opinions in articles published by USP are personal statements of the respective authors.

The journals and the Publisher disclaim any liability for any errors or consequences arising from the use of information contained in the journals. The journals and the Publisher disclaim all responsibility for any injury to a person or property of any person caused by any idea or product mentioned in the articles or in advertisements to which it refers.

In addition, peer reviewers, once they accept the invitation to review, must maintain an objective attitude and be responsible for a fair review of the article. They must be aware of the review policy and proactively disclose any potential conflicts of interest. As for editors, they must avoid the evaluation process of manuscripts that they are involved in as one of the authors and take the initiative to disclose potential interest disputes.

Preprint Policy

Prior to formal submission to a journal, USP permits and promotes early publication on accredited industry preprint servers for evaluation by other scientists. A cover letter that accompanies a manuscript submission must include information about any accession numbers and any preprint sites. USP prohibits all in-process or peer-reviewed revisions from being posted on preprint servers. A manuscript whose corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g., in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

Once a manuscript has been accepted by a USP journal, authors should link all preprints to the final online publication in the journal.

Advertising Policy

USP will consider advertising opportunities as a means to provide value to our readers. Advertisements must comply with local policies without inducement or deception. All advertisements are subject to approval by the Publisher.  All advertising and sponsorships are without prejudice to editorial decisions. For more inquiries, please send an email to editor.office@usp-pl.com.

Units of Measurement

Copyright and License

All articles published by this journal are under the Open Access model, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY) starting from 2024. Under this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, and authors grant USP a license to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the article. Researchers could share and cite the work with the correct original source.

Correction, Retraction, and Withdrawal

Correction

Some mistakes or omissions are inevitable and do not affect the findings and the scientific integrity of the paper. If authors detect any errors in the published article, please contact the journal editor as soon as possible. Under this consideration, the corresponding author will be responsible for sharing the details of the errors with the journal. A corrigendum will be linked to the article corrected under the approval and guidance of the editor.

On rare occasions, the Publisher may correct some minor errors made during the production of an article. If these cases occur, the journal will post an Erratum to correct the errors, and the Erratum will be linked to the article corrected.

Retraction

A published article may be retracted if its integrity is seriously compromised by errors in the conduct, analysis, and/or reporting of the research. If the research violates publication or research ethics, it may also result in the article being retracted. The original version of a retracted article will be marked as retracted. A retraction typically includes a declaration of the reason and initiating party. The PDF content of the article is still available to readers. All links related to the publication online will be pointed to the Retraction. Once a retraction decision is made, all the authors and their institutes will be notified.

Withdrawal

Authors may request a withdrawal of an article. But withdrawal of an article, especially one that has been processed to be under peer review or in progress before being published, is strongly discouraged and only used when there are academic misconducts, ethical violations in the research and publication, or an earlier/incorrect version of the article alleged during the publication process. In this case, a panel will organize an investigation in which the authors are required to cooperate. If the allegations are proven to be true, the internal record of this article will be marked for withdrawal, and the journal will retain a copy of the withdrawn work in the submission archive.

If the authors themselves decide to withdraw their paper (before the publication), they must write to the editors of the journal at editor.office@usp-pl.com, stating the reason(s) for withdrawal soundly and clearly. Once the withdrawal is approved, the submission will be removed from the production system but archived in the submission system. A notification email will be sent to all authors. The Publisher will track the authors’ requests and limit a maximum of three withdrawal requests across the journals in USP.

A USD200 fee is charged for the withdrawal of a paper, and it should be noted that the paid Article Processing Charge will not be refunded if a paper is withdrawn for academic misconduct and ethical violation.

Publication Frequency

Conflict of Interest

USP believes that in order to make the best decision on a manuscript submission, a journal’s Editor-in-Chief should be aware of any conflicts of interest that may exist for the authors.

A conflict of interest occurs when a professional judgment about a primary interest (such as patient welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by secondary interests (such as financial gain or personal relationships). Conflicts of interest are not inherently unethical, but they should be recognized and publicly disclosed.

Examples of conflicts of interest include committee membership, consultancy, employment, expert demonstration funding (including pending), contract research, lectures or other educational activities, retained speakership, patents (including planned, pending, and issued), provision of equipment or other items, royalties, stock/options/other forms of ownership, other expenses not covered by the terms of the declared conflicts of interest (COIs), and other expenses that (may) arise impact on personal or professional relationships.

If there are no conflicts of interest, the author(s) also need to declare it, for example: “The author(s) declare no conflicts of interest.”

Before an article can be considered and accepted for publication, we must receive a declaration of conflict of interest from all authors.

Research Data and reproducibility

Universe Scientific Publishing requires that the data provided or used by authors must be correct and scientific to ensure that the results of the research we obtain are scientifically credible. The data availability policy references FORCE11 to ensure greater transparency and availability of articles published in Universe Scientific Publishing journals.

Availability of data/materials

Journals encourage authors to submit all original datasets to the editorial office along with the submission step of the manuscript, and for cited or used datasets, please provide the source of the data and a link to it with a permanent identifier. It should be noted that all datasets must be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (exceptions are allowed if the data cannot be made public for legal or ethical reasons) so that other researchers can find and use the data. It is advisable to specify all relevant information about the data at the time of manuscript submission so that peer review can identify and monitor the scientific validity of this work.

Data Citation

The journal encourages authors to provide citation sources for all data used in the article, including but not limited to data generated in the work, datasets analyzed in correlation studies. These citations should be listed in the references in a format such as:

• Author Name. Data title. Repository name (version), year. Permanent identifier.

Data Repository

The journal encourages authors to store their data permanently, so if the data repository you are storing in is inaccessible, please reposit the data to another repository. If changes are made to the data, authors must notify the editorial office in a timely manner to update the information and ensure that the dataset is accessible and monitored for 5 years after publication.

The Publisher recommends that authors store their datasets on subject community datastores, and authors can find the appropriate community datastores in re3data.org and fairsharing.org. The data repository needs to fulfill the following basic conditions at the same time:

1) permanent data storage;

2) provide numerical identifiers (e.g. doi) for the datasets;

3) free access to the dataset.

Authors also should select the generalized dataset repositories, for example:

• Open Science Framework
• Dryad Digital Repository
• Figshare
• Harvard Dataverse
• Zenodo
• Science Data Bank

Privacy Statement

1. Personal information

USP values authors’ privacy. The personal information that USP collects and the ways in which USP uses the information are described in this privacy policy section. USP has the right to collect and utilize personal data required for the processing and publishing of submitted articles. Names, affiliations, and contact information, such as a mailing address, email address, phone number, and fax number, may be included in this data.

Activities that may involve the use of personal information include administering, personalizing, enabling access to services, processing manuscripts, publishing articles, communicating with authors, sending statements and invoices, collecting payments, and sending marketing communications.

2. Third-party links

Links to third-party publications and/or websites are provided for informational reasons only and it does not represent an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell any services or products of any type. USP is not responsible for the accuracy, legality, or content of the external site or subsequent links. Third parties are responsible for the content on their own websites. Authors are recommended to read and analyze the privacy and security policies of the site they are visiting. For responses to content-related questions, please contact the external site.

3. Contact USP

For any inquiries concerning USP’s privacy policy or how USP handles authors’ personal data, please contact editor.office@usp-pl.com.

Author Guidelines

Before submitting a paper, authors must ensure that they have followed the step-by-step guidelines for submitting a manuscript to our online submission system. Please download the latest Template. 

Article Types

USP journals accept and publish the following types of manuscripts: Article, Review, Book Review, Editorial, etc. Authors are requested to carefully confirm whether their manuscript is of the accepted manuscript type before submitting and to select the correct manuscript type when submitting it.

Manuscript Format

The manuscript should be in MS Word format. This journal publishes English articles. Both British and American English are accepted but cannot be mixed in the manuscript. Usage of non-English words should be kept to a minimum. If authors have concerns about the level of English in their manuscript, please ensure that it is proofread before submission by a native English speaker or a scientific editing service.

Cover Letter

All submissions are encouraged to include a cover letter as a separate file (varying from journal to journal). A cover letter should explain the main research content of the manuscript (note: it should not be the same content as the Abstract), the research significance, the research highlights of the article, and why it is in line with the current submission journal, so that the editors can have a general understanding of the manuscript in advance. The cover letter is confidential and will be read only by the editors.

Title

The title should be concise and clear and should be able to give readers an overall view of the paper’s significance. Titles with jargons, abbreviations, and punctuation should be avoided. It is recommended that a title does not exceed 50 words.

Authors Information

• The names of all authors, along with their affiliations, should be spelled out rather than set in initials.
• Authors should be listed according to the extent of their contribution, with the major contributor listed first. USP journals allow co-authorship.
• At least one author should be designated as the corresponding author, who will be responsible for all subsequent notifications and confirmations. The corresponding author should be identified with an asterisk “*”.
• Affiliations should contain the following core information: Department, Institution/University, City, Postal Code, State, and Country. If there are more than two affiliations, please mark them numerically.
• For contact information, the email address of at least one corresponding author must be included. Please note that all authors must see and approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting it. The email address should be one with an organization suffix whenever possible.
• If possible, email addresses of co-authors can also be provided.
• If the corresponding author has an ORCID, it can also be provided.

Abstract and Keywords

Articles must include an abstract containing a maximum of 250 words. An abstract enables a reader to quickly get the essence of the article in order to decide whether to read the full article. Structured or unstructured abstracts are both acceptable.

Please give 3–8 keywords after the abstract; please avoid using the same words as those already used in the title.

Text

There is no word limit for various manuscript types, but it is recommended that the word count of all types of manuscripts should not exceed 7,000 words. We will also consider publishing outstanding manuscripts that exceed this word count.

Section Headings

Please number the section headings (e.g., 1., 2., 3., 4., etc.) in boldface. Likewise, use boldface to identify the subheadings too, but please distinguish them from major headings by using numbers (e.g., 1.1., 1.2., 2.1., 2.2., etc.). Further subsections of subheadings should be differentiated with the numbers 1.1.1., 1.1.2., 2.1.1., 2.1.2., etc.

Introduction

The introduction should provide a background that gives a broad readership an overall outlook of the field and the research performed. It addresses an issue and emphasizes its relevance in the context of the research. The introduction can conclude with a brief explanation of the work’s goal and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.

Materials and Methods

This section describes the overall experimental design and methodologies used. The goal is to give enough information for other scientists to completely duplicate the findings. It is also essential for improved comprehension of the results collected. Detailed protocols and procedures for new approaches must be supplied for future duplication of the experiments.

Results

This section focuses on the results of the experiments performed.

Discussion

This section should provide the significance of the results and identify the impact of the research in a broader context. It should not be redundant or similar to the content of the Results section.

Conclusion

Please use the Conclusion section for interpretation only, and do not summarize information already presented in the text or abstract.

Author Contributions

For research articles with more than one author, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. Please use the author’s initials to complete this statement. Authorship must be confined to those who made significant contributions to the reported work.

Please visit CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) for specific explanations of contributor roles listed in the example.

Funding

In this section, authors should declare any financial support that might be considered as a source of competing interest in regard to their submitted manuscript. Grants, royalties, and consulting fees are common forms of financial support.

Acknowledgments

Authors may acknowledge any assistance supplied that is not covered under the Author Contributions or Funding section. An example of this could be non-financial support. It might take several forms, including donations from non-authors, writing assistance, administrative support, externally supplied equipment/biological sources, etc.

Conflict of Interest

All authors must state any activities that may be considered a source of conflict of interest in regard to their submitted work. Such activities might include personal, financial, or professional contacts and events, and so on. Authors with nothing to declare are suggested to include the statement “No conflict of interest was reported by all authors” in this section.

Appendix

This section is optional and includes any information (e.g., advanced technical details) that is excluded from the main text but is nonetheless necessary for readers to comprehend the manuscript. This section is not intended for supplementary data, figures, or tables. Authors are advised to refer to the guideline on “Supplementary Materials” for such submissions.

Figures

Figures can be placed in the text according to the MS Word template we provide. If the figure file is too large (for example, more than 10 MB), it can also be submitted as a separate file. Figures can be graphs, photographs, charts, scanned images, or schematic diagrams. Figures should minimize excessive cosmetic features (e.g., 3D graphs) and be simply processed. Figures should also be presented on a white background. Please remember to include all labels in the figures (e.g., axes, etc.) and number the figures in boldface (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) where they are mentioned in the relevant paragraph, as well as in the caption (below the figure). If a figure has more than one panel, please identify each panel with a lowercase letter in parenthesis (e.g., (a), (b), (c), etc.).

Authors are strongly encouraged to compress their figures to an optimal size that does not compromise legibility or resolution. TIFF or JPEG are the preferred file formats for any separately submitted figure(s).

Tables

Tables should be created using the MS Word table function. The table caption should be placed above the table. The caption, footnotes, or legends should be concise. Tables should be placed near the paragraph where they are first mentioned in the main text.

Equations

For listing equations within the main text, please use Arabic numerals in parenthesis (e.g., Equation (1), Equation (2), Equations (3) and (4), etc.).

Supplementary Materials

This section is optional and includes all data, figures, or tables that are excluded from the manuscript. These materials are pertinent to the manuscript but are not necessary for a reader to understand the main content of the manuscript. All supplementary information should be submitted as a separate file. Please name such file as “Supplementary Materials”. Videos are also acceptable.

In-text citations

Reference citations in the text should be numbered consecutively in square brackets. Some examples are as follows:

1. It will lead to the distortion and out-of-band spectrum expansion of the VDB transmitter, resulting in the interference of the adjacent channel [1].
2. The memoryless power amplifier model means that the output signal is only related to the current input signal and has nothing to do with the historical input [4,5].
3. The table contains the advantages and disadvantages of the various hydrogen production methods and their development time [12,15,17–20].

References

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list. Personal communications and unpublished works should be excluded from this section.

References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. The authors referenced are listed by their surname, followed by their first and middle initials. All references should also appear as an in-text citation. The following patterns are suggested to be included according to the diverse types of references: Author(s), title of publication, source name (journal, book, website, etc.), year of publication, (place of publication), page range, and DOI link (if applicable). When the referred material has more than five authors, please list only the first three authors and abbreviate the remaining authors to “et al.” (which means “and others”).

Please follow the specific reference format requirements in the template and modify the references into the correct format before submitting the manuscript.

Copyright Notice

All articles published by this journal are under the Open Access model, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY) starting from 2024. Under this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, and authors grant USP a license to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the article. Researchers could share and cite the work with the correct original source.

Privacy Statement

1. Personal information

USP values authors’ privacy. The personal information that USP collects and the ways in which USP uses the information are described in this privacy policy section. USP has the right to collect and utilize personal data required for the processing and publishing of submitted articles. Names, affiliations, and contact information, such as a mailing address, email address, phone number, and fax number, may be included in this data.

Activities that may involve the use of personal information include administering, personalizing, enabling access to services, processing manuscripts, publishing articles, communicating with authors, sending statements and invoices, collecting payments, and sending marketing communications.

2. Third-party links

Links to third-party publications and/or websites are provided for informational reasons only and it does not represent an offer or solicitation to purchase or sell any services or products of any type. USP is not responsible for the accuracy, legality, or content of the external site or subsequent links. Third parties are responsible for the content on their own websites. Authors are recommended to read and analyze the privacy and security policies of the site they are visiting. For responses to content-related questions, please contact the external site.

3. Contact USP

For any inquiries concerning USP’s privacy policy or how USP handles authors’ personal data, please contact editor.office@usp-pl.com.

Focus and Scope

Modern Transportation is a scientific and technical professional periodical for international publication. It is a comprehensive academic journal focusing on civil engineering (road and bridge) engineering and transportation engineering. It publishes articles and developments with high academic and technical aspects in the field of transportation. 

The purpose of the publication is to promote the advancement of transportation science and technology, strive to always stand at the forefront of the development of modern transportation technology, base on comprehensive transportation technology, and highlight the academic progress and development of highway engineering, water transportation engineering, transportation engineering, transportation planning and management practices, etc. Dissemination of scientific and technological information, scientific research achievements and practical experience, continuously improve the management level and business level of scientific and technical personnel and workers in the transportation sector, promote scientific research to better serve economic development, and promote the development of transportation industry.

Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to journals of Universe Scientific Publishing undergo a stringent double-blind peer review process, which aims to uphold the high quality of papers published in USP journals and ensure truthful and accurate reporting of the research work.

• Upon submission, articles are reviewed by each journal’s Managing Editor, who checks for originality using Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate). Only original works complying with the editorial policy and procedural guidelines are passed to the Editor-in-Chief for initial review.
• The Editor-in-Chief (EIC) carefully evaluates each manuscript to determine if its topic and content are suitable for consideration.
• Qualified manuscripts are then assigned by the EIC to a senior editor according to his or her respective areas of expertise.
• The senior editor invites external reviewers who are suitably qualified to assess the paper.
• Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript’s originality, methodology, contribution to the literature, presentation of results and support for the conclusion, and appropriate referencing of previous relevant studies.
• Post-evaluation by the reviewers, the manuscript is sent to the EIC, who makes one of the following recommendations: Accept, Accept with Minor Revisions, Re-review after Major Revisions, or Reject.
• If the EIC proposes to accept with no changes required by the authors, the manuscript will be handed over to the production team.
• If the EIC proposes to accept with minor revisions, authors have up to 7 days to revise and resubmit the manuscript.
• If the EIC proposes to re-review after major revisions, authors have up to 14 days to edit and resubmit the manuscript.
• If the EIC proposes to reject, the manuscript will be rejected outright and the author will be notified of the decision.

Appeal

Authors of rejected submissions may make an appeal in writing to editor.office@usp-pl.com, in which specific reasons for the appeal and a detailed response to the reviewers’ suggestions are included.

Decisions made on appeals by the EIC are final and no further considerations will be made.

Open Access Policy

Open Access (OA) makes scholarly research permanently accessible online without restrictions, which can benefit all stakeholders in the scholarly publishing process, including researchers, funders, students, librarians, scholarly societies, publishers, and the public.

• Dissemination

The freely available online work can be accessed and shared by anyone in the world. Researchers can even access OA literature outside university without encountering paywalls. Authors can benefit from the public availability of their research to others, which may increase the visibility and usage of their work. Many funding agencies encourage OA since the potential for increased visibility and discoverability promises a greater return on investment.

• Cooperative Partners

New connections may be made and new partners may become possible, if researchers other than those you normally work with share access to your research. Thus, paving the way for spin-offs and new research opportunities.

• Public Access and Engagement

OA means more opportunities for the community at large and potentially more public participation in research which can help research-dependent professionals outside of academia including health workers, faculty, and lawyers benefit from access to the latest discoveries.

• Social Benefits

By publishing open access, a virtuous cycle of scholarly resources can foster social knowledge sharing and innovative creativity.

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