Focus and Scope

Chimica Techno Acta (CTA) is a peer-reviewed, international open access journal publishing original and high-quality articles, reviews, and letters, covering all applied aspects of chemistry and materials science. CTA is dedicated to providing an exclusive platform that generates discussions among researchers, scientists, engineers, and technology developers around advances, current trends and challenges in chemical engineering, characterization and testing of functional materials in terms of their orientation towards industry and large-scale production.

The following aspects are of CTA's particular interest:

1. Design & engineering of new (metal-, ceramic-, organic-based) materials for applied purposes;
2. Deep characterization and testing of functional materials;
3. Lab-to-industry technology transferring for current chemical, metallurgy and energy demands.

Section Policies

Reviews

Review articles in CTA can be of two major types: Focus Reviews and Comprehensive Reviews.

Focus Reviews represent critical and concise personal opinions covering most recent research activities on topics of interest. Focus reviews are restricted to 4,000 words in the article body (without abstract, figure and table captions, and references), five visual elements (figures, schemes and/or tables) and 40–50 references (a half of which should be published within the past 2–3 years). Additional materials can be provided as supplementary data. Focus Reviews should also include an abstract not exceeding 150 words, a keyword list comprising 5–6 words and phrases, 3–5 highlights (short sentences conveying the core findings, about 10–20 words each) and a brief biography (100 words maximum) completed with a photo for each co-author.

Comprehensive Reviews represent a complete, systematic and well-organized analysis of a specific research field. No restrictions are imposed on the length of Comprehensive Reviews; however, such submissions typically include maximum 15 illustrative materials (figures, schemes and/or tables). Additional illustrative materials can be included as supplementary data. Comprehensive Reviews should also include an abstract not exceeding 250 words, a keyword list comprising 5–8 words and phrases and a brief biography (100 words maximum) completed with a photo for each co-author. No restrictions are imposed on the number of references (150 and more); however, the author(s) are requested to provide a list of 10 most significant cited papers.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Articles

Articles are conventional full-length research publications covering a study subject in a thorough and concise manner. No restrictions are imposed on the length of Articles; however, such texts normally include maximum 12 illustrative materials (figures, schemes and/or tables) and 60 references. If required, additional materials can be provided as supplementary data. Articles should also include an abstract not exceeding 250 words and a keyword list consisting of 5–8 words and phrases. Articles typically comprise four sections (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion and, finally, Conclusions). However, the number of such sections can be increased if necessary (e.g., Theoretical Background, Computational Details, Model Validation, etc.).

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Letters

Letters are short communications that present concise reports on important results intended for rapid dissemination. Letters are restricted to 3,000 words in the article body (without abstract, figure and table captions, and references), 4 illustrative materials (figures, schemes and/or tables) and 20 references. Additional representative materials can be provided as supplementary data. Letters should include a brief abstract not exceeding 100 words, 5–6 keywords and 3–5 highlights (short sentences conveying the core findings, about 10–20 words each). Letters present a completed (not fragmented, not “salami”) study, whose results can be used as a basis for further research into the nature of the revealed phenomena.

The checklist below summarizes the specific features of papers accepted for publication in CTA.

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

Each new paper should be submitted via the Online Submission system. The Editorial Board Member will then review the manuscript to ensure that it has been prepared in accordance with the Author Guidelines and that it falls within the scope of CTA. Decisions on whether to send a manuscript for peer review are usually made within one week of submission.

All manuscripts that meet the journal's requirements will be reviewed by at least one external referee, assigned by the editors. At the submission stage (in the 'Comments for the Editor'), authors might suggest referees as well as indicate those who should not review the paper. These are often helpful, although they are not always followed. The CTA journal uses a "single blind peer review" model, when the names of the reviewers are hidden from the authors. The manuscripts prepared in response to a special invitation from the Editorial Board Members (as-called invited papers) are reviewed internally by the Editor(s) of the CTA journal.

Each manuscript (with the exception of the Editorial) submitted to the CTA journal, along with any accompanying files, such as a graphical abstract and supplementary materials (if applicable), will undergo the standard peer review process. This process typically takes approximately one month (invitations, acceptance of invitations and preparation of review report(s)), but may be extended due to workload. Upon receipt of the review report(s), the following decisions may be made:

• Accept submission:

The decision is usually made after one or several peer review round(s). The accepted manuscript is forwarded to the production team to prepare the final version of the manuscript for publication on the CTA website. Authors have the opportunity to make final minor changes during the proofreading stage. The final version of the manuscript is published in a current (or special) issue; since 2025, the journal follows a transparent peer-review policy. This means that for accepted manuscripts, all reviewers' comments as well as authors' responses will be published online as a supplement.

• Revisions required:

This decision is formulated based on the comments of the reviewer(s). Authors should provide (i) a separate "response to reviewer(s)" letter, which outlines each change made as raised in the reviewer comments, and (ii) an appropriate rebuttal to each reviewer comment, which is not addressed in the revised version of the manuscript.  The revision should be completed within 2 weeks. Authors should contact the Editorial Office, if they need more time to prepare the revised manuscript.

• Technical revision: 

This decision may be made prior to the peer review process in case of technical issues. Authors will be asked to resolve these issues within 1 week.

• Reject:

The paper suffers from serious scientific flaws, and/or has weak novelty, significance, and impact signs. This decision may be made either after a preliminary review by the Editorial Office or after collecting the comments from reviewer(s). The rejected manuscript may be resubmitted, if all principal comments and remarks are fully addressed.

A rejection decision may also be made when either no reviewer(s) accept(s) the invitation or accept(s) but fails to submit a reviewer report within the required timeframe. Although the Editorial Board Members will always initiate additional rounds of reviewers' invitations, no comments from experts can be eventually received. In this case, a handling editor will make the rejection decision in order to save more time for the authors, allowing them to get a more favourable response elsewhere.

The Editors have the final decision on acceptance of the manuscript for publication. Authors have the right to appeal to the editors against any decision taken on their manuscript at any stage by sending a rebuttal letter to the Editor Office via the journal's website. Such a letter should explain clearly why authors disagree with the decision on their manuscript, and should include a detailed response to any editor's and reviewers’ comments.

Open Access Policy

Open access means immediate, worldwide, unrestricted access to the full text of all published articles, ensuring far greater distribution of an author's work than the traditional subscription-based publishing model. In accordance with the original Budapest Open Access Initiative declaration, by "open access" to the full texts of the articles we mean their free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, is to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. As stated in the Copyright Notice, authors who publish in Chimica Techno Acta retain the copyright of their work, which is released under a Creative Commons Attribution License enabling the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of an article, provided that the original work is properly cited.

Publication Fees

In contrast to the majority of Open Access journals, the Chimica Techno Acta journal requires no APC (see Journal Sponsorship).

Editorial Policies

The following Code of Ethics of the Editorial Board of Chimica Techno Acta ("Journal") is composed on the basis of internationally recognized standards of ethics, such as those recommended by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) in its Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

General duties and responsibilities of editors

• Editors are accountable for everything published in the Journal;
• Editors take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material they publish;
• Editors ensure that all published articles have been reviewed by suitably qualified referees and that the peer review is fair, unbiased and timely;
• Editors maintain the integrity of the academic record;
• Editors strive to constantly improve their journal;
• Editors preclude business and commercial needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
• Editors publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed;
• Editorial decisions are not affected by the origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors.

Relations with authors

• Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication are based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the scope of the journal;
• Editors do not reverse decisions to accept submissions and do not overturn decisions of other editors unless serious problems are identified with the submission;
• Editors abide by established in the Journal peer review practices, which are described in details on the Journal's web site;
• Editors publish guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them, and provide technical support when requested;
• Authors have a right to appeal against any editorial decisions.
• Authors have the opportunity to withdraw their manuscript if they wish at any peer review stage. However, a detailed justification for this decision should be provided to the editor.

Relations with reviewers

• Editors provide guidance to reviewers on everything that is expected of them;
• Editors require reviewers to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission;
• Editors require reviewers to handle submitted material in confidence;
• Editors encourage reviewers to comment on ethical questions and possible cases of academic dishonesty;
• Editors monitor the performance of peer reviewers and take steps to ensure this is of high standard, ceasing to use reviewers who consistently produce discourteous, low quality or late reviews.

Relations with editorial board members

• Editors provide new editorial board members with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and keep existing members updated on new policies and developments;
• Editors identify suitably qualified editorial board members who can actively contribute to the development and good management of the journal;
• Articles submitted by the journal employees or members of the Editorial Board are evaluated on a general basis being given no advantages over the other authors' manuscripts.

Relations with journal owners and publishers

• The owner and publisher of the Journal is Ural Federal University;
• Ural Federal University as well as the other agencies outside of the journal itself do not interfere with the editorial decisions on which articles to publish.

Dealing with academic dishonesty

Academic dishonesty in any way is NOT tolerated by the Journal. Some examples of such misconducts along with the good practices that must be used by the authors are presented below.

• Improper Authorship: Authorship must be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the research presented. 
• Citation Manipulation: Manuscripts submitted for publication must not contain citations that are solely intended to inflate the number of citations to a specific author's works or to articles published in a particular journal.;
• Plagiarism and Duplicate Submission: The Journal is committed to publishing only original papers. Therefore, submitted manuscripts must not have been published previously or be under review elsewhere. Furthermore, the results or words of others must be appropriately cited or quoted. It should be noted that the republication of preprints that were previously posted on recognized platforms in the chemical and materials science fields is permitted. Examples of such platforms include https://www.preprints.org, https://chemrxiv.org and etc.;
• Redundant Publications: It is imperative that the research be presented in a unified manner, without undue fragmentation into multiple papers;
• Data Fabrication and Falsification: Manuscripts submitted for publication must not contain any fabricated or intentionally falsified experimental or theoretical results, including those obtained by the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies. If the authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, they are required to notify the contact editor in order to initiate the retraction or correction of the paper;
• Intellectual property infringement: Submitted manuscripts must not violate intellectual property rights or conventions;
• Undisclosure of Conflicts of Interest: Any possible Conflicts of Interests must be properly disclosed.

In the initial stage of the process, editors will request a response from the individual(s) suspected of academic dishonesty. This response will then be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board Members. Should the response be deemed unsatisfactory, the editors reserve the right to impose one or more of the following sanctions:

• Immediate rejection of the manuscript under consideration;
• Immediate rejection of any other manuscript submitted to the Journal by the authors of the infringing paper;
• Making a public statement about the discovery of the academic dishonesty facts.

Note that the latter will be reserved only for the most severe cases of the academic dishonesty.

Conflicts of Interests

A conflict of interest (COI) is defined as a divergence between an individual's private interest (competing interest) and his/her ability to act as an unbiased author, editor, or reviewer. The most obvious COIs include:

• Financial ties - when authors receive funding from an organization with an interest in the particular outcome of the work;
• Affiliation - when an author is an employee or a member of an organization with an interest in the particular outcome of the work.

Everyone has some type of COI. The presence of COI itself is not inherently unethical. However, COI may be regarded as problematic when it could be reasonably anticipated to impede one's capacity to conduct impartial research or evaluation. In the absence of certainty, it is advisable to proactively disclose potential COIs. The established guidelines for disclosing COIs, as outlined in Chimica Techno Acta, are presented below.

Authors
Authors are required to disclose interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. The disclosure of such interests ensures a complete and transparent process, thereby enabling readers to make their own judgements about potential bias.

Reviewers
Reviewers should not be involved in the peer review process if they fulfil any of the following conditions:

• Reviewer is a co-author of the current submission;
• Reviewer has collaborate(ed) with any author within the last 5 years;
• Reviewer has a financial (or other competing) interest;
• Reviewer feels unable to be completely objective in their judgements.

Editorial Board Members
It is the responsibility of Editorial Board Members (EBMs) to declare any COIs. In the event that a COI exists, the EBM shall be excluded from the peer review process. In addition, they shall be excluded from handling manuscripts in the following cases:

• EBM is a co-author of the current submission;
• EBM has a financial (or other related) interest.

If EBM is an author of a submitted manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief will be assigned to manage the peer review process. If the Editor-in-Chief is an author of a submitted manuscript, the manuscript will be handled by one of the EBMs. EBMs are welcome to submit papers to the CTA journal. These submissions will not be given any priority over other manuscripts, and EBM status will not affect editorial consideration.

Authorship and Contributorship

The following authorship points should be considered upon forming the authors' list for a submitted manuscript:

• Authorship should be limited to only those who have made significant contributions to the conception, design, research, interpretation, and writing of the reported study.
• The lead (or corresponding) author confirms that all contributing co-authors and no uninvolved persons are included in the authors' list.
• Others who participated in specific aspects of the research should be recognized in the Acknowledgments section.
• The lead (or corresponding) author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission.
• The lead (or corresponding) author should finally confirm that all requests from CTA at submission, revision, and post-publication stages will be properly and timely answered.
• AI and AI-assisted tools cannot be included in the manuscript's authorship, see the next section.

Any changes in authorship (inclusion or exclusion of co-author(s) and authorship order) along with the reasons for such action must be explicitly communicated to the Handling Editor if such changes are made in relation to the originally submitted manuscript. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to notify the Handling Editor of any changes to the authorship of the manuscript prior to its final acceptance for publication. If there are no authorship similarities between the original and accepted manuscript versions, while the Handling Editor has not been notified, the journal will investigate this matter in accordance with the COPE recommendations, which may result in the retraction of the paper. 

We follow the widely recognized CRediT taxonomy (https://credit.niso.org) to highlight the unique contribution role of each co-author: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. The template file has a field for presenting this information.

Generative AI Applications

• Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies may be used in academic writing to improve the readability and language of the manuscript, including English grammar, syntax, and spelling. In this case, no declaration is required to be stated from the author(s)' side. 
• In other cases, authors must declare the use of generative AI technologies (including ChatGPT tools) in the ‘Additional information’ section of the used template when submitting the manuscript. A possible statement is as follows: 'During the preparation of this paper, we used [name of tool/service] for [reason]. After using this tool/service, we reviewed and edited the content as necessary and take full responsibility for the content of the published article.' This means that the use of AI technologies must be accompanied by human oversight and control. Authors should thoroughly review and edit the output, as AI-generated text can often be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors are solely responsible and accountable for the content of their work.
• If the manuscript includes images generated or modified by Generative AI or AI-assisted tools, authors must disclose this information in the 'Additional Information' section, providing a detailed description of when and how the tools were used. Furthermore, the authors must confirm that they have obtained all necessary rights for the use of such materials.
• The authorship of the manuscript must be attributed solely to humans. AI and AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as author(s) or co-author(s) due to their inability to meet the criteria for authorship: they cannot take responsibility for the work, provide consent for publication, manage copyright, or be involved in issues related to conflicts of interest.

Data Sharing Policy

The CTA Journal supports not only Open Access publishing, but also the open exchange of data produced between researchers and readers. In this regard, origin research information (raw data, processed data, statistics, algorithms or protocols) can be shared by its deposition in a recognized public or private (for example, university) repository. If this is not possible, authors are encouraged to provide a specific rationale in the Data Availability Statement section of the template file, allowing the necessary materials can be made available to interested researchers upon request if no any prohibition. In cases when data cannot be shared due to ethical, legal, or privacy considerations, this should also be stated.

Due to the wide variety of possible situations, we encourage authors to provide specific reasons in the Data Availability Statement section. The following statements can be used.

 Data available to be shared

• The data that support the findings of this study are available in [repository name] at [DOI/URL].
• The data that supports the findings of this study are available in the supplementary material of this article.
• The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

 Data not available to be shared

• The raw/processed data required to reproduce the above findings cannot be shared at this time due to [legal/privacy/ethical] restrictions. [Detailed reasons].
• The raw/processed data required to reproduce the above findings cannot be shared at this time as the data also forms part of an ongoing study.
• Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study (this option is often used for review articles).
• Research data are not shared.

About the Publishing House

• Electrochemical Materials and Technologies, elmattech.ru
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• R-Economy (indexed in Scopus), journals.urfu.ru/index.php/r-economy

Address: Ural University Press, Turgeneva str. 4, office 106, Ekaterinburg 620000, Russia. Contact person: Deputy Director Alexey Podchinenov, Tel.: +7(343)371-54-48, e-mail: a.v.podchinenov@urfu.ru.
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