About the Journal

What is JOAS?

Journal of Open Aviation Science is an open-access peer-reviewed journal, which was established by researchers for researchers (inspired by the existing OpenSky research network). It promotes high-quality open science, open data, and reproducible scientific research for aviation, as such practice is largely missing in current aviation research. Our primary objectives are:

to promote reproducible research in the aviation sector using open source tools and open data; and
to encourage the reproduction of existing research in the aviation research domain.

In addition to original scientific research, we welcome replicating existing research publications using open-source implementations and open data. Notably, we welcome contributions comparing the performance of reference models with their open-source counterparts.

Each submission is carefully and openly reviewed based on the manuscript's quality and the research's reproducibility. Papers must be submitted with accompanying publically available code, explanations, tests, and data. Code shall be tested to guarantee that anyone can re-use it.

Our Focus and Scope

The current scope of the JOAS covers the following areas within the aviation domain:

Air traffic management
Aircraft surveillance and signal processing
Airline operations and management
Airport operations and management
Artificial intelligence for aviation
Flight trajectory optimization and prediction
Human factors
Meteorology for aviation
Modeling and simulations of airplane and air traffic operations
Noise and mitigations
Policy and economics in air transportation systems
Safety and risk modeling and analyses
Security and privacy for aviation technologies
Sustainability and environmental impact

Article Processing Charges

Publishing in JOAS is completely free, so neither Submission Charges nor Article Processing Charges are required from the authors. The resources needed to run the journal are covered by the institutions where the (associate) editors are employed, mostly in the form of time invested.

Article types

You can submit the following types of articles:

Research articles: General aviation research articles with open data and open code.
Research articles focusing on open data: Research articles focusing on a significant open dataset in the aviation domain, including processes and applications.
Research articles focusing on open software: Research articles focusing on open-source tools for aviation studies.
Re-Science articles: Research articles focusing on reproducing results from previous aviation-related research, sharing open code and data.
Conference proceedings: Only accepted abstracts of collaborating conferences are invited to submit a paper to this section.

All the above article types follow the same review process (defined in the following section).

Requirements for each article type can be found on the submission page.

Review Policy

The journal follows an open peer review (view peer review terminologies). The journal is committed to a transparent review process that adheres to the COPE policy. Editors and reviewers are encouraged to join COPE individually and agree to declare any conflict of interest.

The Editors-in-Chief and the editorial board may contribute to the published content, but a rigorous review workflow is implemented to ensure the integrity and quality of the review process. If one of the Editors-in-Chief or an editorial board member is listed as a (co)author, they will not be involved in the review process. When an editor-in-chief is a (co)author, selecting the editor who will handle the paper falls on the (co)editor-in-chief or another editor to maintain a fair and unbiased review process.

Review Process

All article types in JOAS follow the same review process. JOAS uses an open peer-review process, and we are committed to the following:

publish peer-reviewed content
allow online open review before publication
open discussions between authors, editors, and reviewers
allow post-publication comments
share both author and reviewer identities at publication

Open Access Policy

JOAS is an open-access journal licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This means that all content is available without paywalls. Anyone is free to share (copy, distribute, and transmit the work) and to remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions:

The original authors must be given credit.
For any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are
Any of these conditions can be waived if the copyright holders give permission.
Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.

Research Data

TU Delft OPEN Publishing strongly supports that the data underlying the journals are archived in a recognised research data repository in line with the TU Delft Research Data Framework Policy and will support data citation. Please visit this page for more information on policies.

Research Software

TU Delft OPEN Publishing strongly encourages the adoption of the TU Delft Research Software Policy. This policy facilitates best practices on management and sharing of research software and facilitates proper recognition of the contribution of TU Delft researchers to software.

Copyright Policy

Authors retain their copyrights.
if you are using published images, text or other materials, please be aware of copyright regulations. The TU Delft Copyright Helpdesk can provide further information and answer your copyright questions.
In case of (alleged or proven) copyright breaches or scientific misconduct (e.g. fabricating data), JOAS will follow the developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries. It permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

Authors can deposit a Submitted version, an Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript), and a Published version (Version of record) of their work in an institutional or any other repository they choose.

Authors are explicitly free to copy and redistribute the work they have submitted in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the work they have submitted to JOAS for any purpose.

TU Delft OPEN Publishing is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research. We work in partnership with organizations and maintain our digital archive.

Publication Ethics

Editors, authors, and publisher adopt the guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Research Data

Research Software

Plagiarism Policy

All papers are checked for plagiarism by the assigned editor and reviewers, and a software-based plagiarism check can be performed additionally. In case of suspected plagiarism, the authors will have 2 weeks to provide an explanation.

Reproducing a part of a published content or images is allowed if the original source and authors are respectively referred to and are given proper credit.

Publication ethics

Editors, authors and publisher adopt the guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the fair data principles. The journal adheres to the COPE Core Practices and the principles of transparency as described in the Declaration on transparent editorial policies for academic journals.

Code of conduct

Check TU Delft OPEN Publishing code of conduct and integrity policy.

Similarity check

A similarity check is part of the TU Delft OPEN Publishing standard publication procedure. Authors submitting their article to the JOAS should expect their work to go through a similarity analysis at any stage of the workflow. All articles submitted are checked with iThenticate software. The editor and publisher carefully analyse the reports. In case of suspected plagiarism, the authors will have two weeks to provide an explanation.

The journal also checks for AI-generated content. Articles will be rejected unless using AI-generated tools is part of the work.

Use of AI

The use of AI technologies in writing/summarising is gaining popularity and is expanding. When used responsibly and appropriately in research, it can facilitate innovation. However, authors/editors remain fully responsible and accountable for the quality and content of their manuscripts. With this in mind and with reference to the COPE Position Statement of 13 February 2023, authors are required not to list AI tools as a co-author because these tools cannot take responsibility for the submitted work, and they need to be transparent in disclosing in the materials and methods of the manuscript how the AI tool was used and which tool was used (such as ChatGPT and other generative (language-based) AI tools for generation of images, etc.) in the writing of their manuscripts. If applicable, disclosure needs to take place at the bottom of the References section, in the Acknowledgements section, and separately in the cover letter submitted before the review process. This policy is subject to review based on new developments to include the COPE Position Statement.

Complaints

Complaints such as misconduct, authorship dispute or suspected conflict of interest should be brought to the attention of the publisher (publishing-lib@tudelft.nl) or the editorial board.

Author appeals

If an author wishes to appeal an editorial decision, the author may contact the Editors-in-Chief of the journal. Their appeal decisions are final. This means that discussing or negotiating the final decision will be without effect and can be ignored.

Conflict of Interest

All COIs will be handled as follows by the journal in first instance then the publisher:

Disclosure: Anyone (editors, reviewers, authors and any other relevant parties) involved in the publishing process should disclose any potential conflicts of interest they may have

Evaluation: After disclosing the potential COI, it needs to be examined to determine how important it is and its possible impact on the publication process.
Management: An identified COI requires appropriate steps. Those steps may include stepping back from certain duties or decisions, removal from the publication process, or take other actions to reduce the conflict.
Transparency: Any identified conflicts of interest should be transparently disclosed to relevant parties, including readers, authors, and reviewers.
COI can be mentioned after the section Acknowledgment of the publication

Publication notices and changes

Any changes made to the published content will be accompanied by a post-publication notice which will be permanently linked to the original content.

Publication notices include errors introduced by the journal (erratum), an author error (corrigendum), adding a (small) document to a published work to provide additional information (addendum), and retraction.

The Editors-in-Chief and the publisher handle publication notices through the following steps:

Reviewing the proposed changes to the published content to determine if they are necessary and appropriate.
Preparing a post-publication notice that accurately reflects the changes made to the content.
Linking the post-publication notice to the original content in a clear and prominent manner.
Distributing the updated content and the post-publication notice to relevant parties, including subscribers, indexers, and other databases.
Monitoring the impact of the changes on the academic record and making any necessary further updates or corrections.

Authorship

All co-authors must agree to submit the work to the journal. For authors dispute see the “Complaints and Appeals” section.

How to add extra authors before publication:

All co-authors must agree to add new (co)authors to the publication
Agreement must be collected and sent to the editor with an explanation

Special Issues / Guest Editors

JOAS adopts Special Issues, with are published as individual volumns. For example. proceedings from aviaiton conferences maybe published in Special Issues. An agreement must be established with the Editors-in-Chief in advance.

All papers in the Sepcial Issues are peer reviewed under with same proceedure as other journal papers. JOAS editors will take part in all Special Issue papers to ensure the quality of the peer review.

Guest Editor(s) for Special Issutes are allowed. JOAS requires an agreement between the Guest Editor(s) and the Editors-in-Chief, where the Guest Editor(s)’s role is clearly defined. Guest Editors are subject to the same rules as journal editors and adhere to TU Delft OPEN Publishing policies. They are aided by a more experienced Editor from the board that will ensure the quality and uniformity of the publishing process.

Editorial Board Expansion

Should the need arise, the Editorial Board may expand to align with the journal's growth. Priority will be given to JOAS reviewers with significant contributions to paper reviews..

Metadata

JOAS grants you the right to publish the metadata of the series, its issues and articles under the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).

Indexing

JOAS with ISSN 2773-1626 is indexed by CrossRef, Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources (ROAD), Sherpa Romeo, The Keepers, Google Scholar and WorldCat.

Archiving

This journal utilises the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries. It permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Authors can deposit a Submitted version, an Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript) and a Published version (Version of record) of their work in an institutional or any other repository they choose.

TU Delft OPEN Publishing is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research. We work in partnership with organisations and maintain our digital archive.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in our published content are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of opinions of TU Delft OPEN Publishing.

The responsibility of the content provided is exclusively of the author(s) concerned. TU Delft OPEN Publishing, Journal of Open Aviation Science , the editors and reviewers are not responsible for errors in the contents or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in it.

The opinions expressed in the publications of Journal of Open Aviation Science do not necessarily represent the views of TU Delft OPEN Publishing and the editors.

We follow an open access publishing principle, in which author(s) are the sole owners of the copyright of the content published, for any omissions, copyright violation author(s) of the concerned article are only responsible. Our responsibility is limited only to removal of the concerned article from the journal once the query is raised.

ISSN (e-ISSN)

2773-1626

Publisher

TU Delft OPEN Publishing