Guidelines for Authors

Petroleum Technology Development Journal

                                                                   Guidelines for Authors

Petroleum Technology Development Journal, previously published as Petroleum Training Journal, is a biannual publication dedicated to research in petroleum technology and to promoting understanding of training, learning, and technology development in the petroleum sector. It provides an international forum for discussion and debate, stressing the critical importance of training, learning, and technology development to the sector.

The journal covers all aspects of petroleum technology development in the upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors of the industry. It also examines and discusses other petroleum industry challenges and matters, including host communities, corporate social responsibility, environmental issues, and government or national petroleum (oil and gas) policies with petroleum technology development orientation.

Editorial Policy and Submission Guidelines for Authors

The journal welcomes articles, case studies, notes, comments and book reviews, subject to the guidelines below.

1.       Articles should illuminate petroleum technology development issues and challenges, including those faced by governments, companies, host communities and other stakeholders in the petroleum sector. Submissions should place these issues within their wider training, learning, technology development and human capital development context. The journal particularly welcomes articles and case studies based on practical industry experience, as well as contributions from academics, consultants and practitioners presenting research on technology development, training, learning, human capital development, and exploration and production.

2.       Submissions should address issues within the following professional disciplines in the petroleum industry value chain:

Core disciplines: subsurface engineering, surface engineering, and health,    safety and environment (HSE)

a)   Geosciences: hydrocarbon systems, geophysics, operations geology, reservoir systems, and geomatics engineering/geospatial technology.

b)   Petroleum engineering: reservoir engineering, petrophysics, and production technology.

c)   General engineering: mechanical, electrical, civil, instrumentation, automation and control, project management, cost engineering, subsea/metocean, pipelines and piping, materials and corrosion, and process engineering.

d)   Production engineering: process operations, including crude petroleum refining, natural gas processing, and petrochemicals.

e)   Maintenance: mechanical, electrical, civil, instrumentation, automation and control, production programming, and quality control.

f)    Health, safety and environment: occupational health, safety and environmental management.

Support disciplines: people, finance, customers, and services

a)   Human resources — attraction, recruitment and manpower planning, career and performance management, learning and development, compensation and benefits, industrial and employee relations, and organisational development.

b)   Information technology — information systems and telecommunications.

c)   Public affairs — government relations, public relations, media relations, community relations, and communications.

d)   Commercial — strategy and planning, competitive intelligence, mergers and acquisitions, petroleum economics, and marketing.

e)   Legal — transfer and acquisition of technology, ownership, leases, exploration and production, arbitration and alternative dispute resolution, contracting, tax, and legislation.

3.     Articles and case studies should not exceed 10,000 words. The Editorial Board may exceptionally consider longer submissions where the nature of the topic warrants it. All articles and case studies should include a word count, including footnotes, in the separate author and submission information supplied through the submission portal.

4.     The Editorial Board also welcomes shorter notes and comments of up to 4,000 words on matters of interest to the journal’s readers that do not require full-length article treatment.

5.     The Editorial Board will not consider articles that have been published elsewhere or are under consideration elsewhere. Authors must confirm that their submissions have not been published and are not under consideration by another publication.

6.     Manuscripts will undergo anonymous peer review. To preserve anonymity, author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, contact details and other identifying information must not appear in the manuscript file. Author information, including names, affiliations, brief biographical details, postal and email addresses for editorial correspondence, and any contact details the author consents to have published, should be supplied separately as requested on the submission portal.

7.     Authors should provide a brief headnote or abstract of not more than 200 words describing the contents of the article.

8.     Authors may be asked to revise their manuscripts before final acceptance. Plagiarised material must not be submitted.

9.     All material for the journal must be in English. In special circumstances, articles written in another language will be considered for translation and publication. Such articles, when submitted to the Editorial Board, must be accompanied by a synopsis in English.

10.     Copyright and open access policy: Authors retain moral rights in their work and grant the journal the right of first publication, together with a non-exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, archive and make the published version available in print and electronic formats. Unless otherwise agreed in writing, published articles may be made available on the journal’s website or other approved platforms for scholarly, educational and non-commercial use, with proper acknowledgement of the author(s) and the journal. This policy does not imply the use of a specific open access licence unless the journal expressly states one. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce third-party material, including tables, figures, photographs, maps, charts, extracts and data, and for providing appropriate acknowledgements.

11.     Citation and reference style: Authors should use a consistent footnote-based citation style. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript using Arabic numerals. Full bibliographic details should be provided at first citation, with a shortened form used for later references. References should include, where applicable, the author’s name, title of article or book, journal or publisher, year of publication, volume and issue number, page range, and the relevant page cited. Legal materials, legislation, cases, standards, policies, reports, online sources and industry documents should be cited with sufficient detail to enable readers to locate the source. The journal’s citation format for published articles is: (2024) Vol. 14 No. 2 PTDJ 25, where 25 is the relevant page number.

12.  All material should be clearly typed, double-spaced, prepared in Microsoft Word using A4 page format, and submitted through the journal website at https://www.ptdjournal.com/login?next=%2Fsubmissions%2Fnew

The following declarations must accompany every submission, where applicable, and should be supplied through the submission portal rather than included in the anonymised manuscript file:

13.  Use of AI: Authors must disclose any use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in preparing a manuscript, including writing assistance, editing, translation, data analysis, image generation, or preparation of graphical elements. The disclosure should identify the AI tool used and briefly describe how it was used. AI tools must not be listed as authors, and authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and ethical compliance of all submitted material.

14.  Conflict of interest: Authors must provide a conflict of interest statement with each submission. The statement should declare any financial or non-financial relationships, activities, affiliations, employment, consultancies, sponsorships, personal relationships, academic interests or other circumstances that could be perceived to influence the work. Where there are no relevant interests to declare, authors should state: “The author(s) declare no conflict of interest.”

15.  Funding statement: Authors must provide a funding statement identifying all sources of financial or material support for the research and specifying, where applicable, the grant number, funding body, supported author(s), and activities supported. If the work received no specific funding, authors should state: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.” Funding statements are distinct from conflict of interest statements, and both must be supplied where applicable.

16.  Ethics and research integrity statement: Authors must include an ethics statement with each submission confirming that the work was conducted in accordance with applicable ethical standards, laws, institutional requirements, and professional codes of conduct. Where the research involves human participants, communities, confidential information, proprietary data, environmental data, fieldwork, or organisational case studies, authors must state that appropriate permissions, approvals, consent, confidentiality protections, and safeguards were obtained or observed. Where formal ethical approval was not required, authors should state this clearly and provide a brief explanation. Authors remain responsible for ensuring that submitted work respects research integrity, privacy, confidentiality, safety, environmental responsibility, and the rights and interests of all persons and organisations involved.

Author Submission Checklist

a)   Manuscript file prepared without author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, contact details or other identifying information for anonymous review.

b)   Author information, including names, affiliations, biographical details, correspondence addresses and any permitted published contact details, supplied separately through the submission portal.

c)   Abstract or headnote of not more than 200 words.

d)   Word count, including footnotes, supplied with the author and submission information.

e)   Confirmation that the submission has not been published and is not under consideration elsewhere.

f)    AI-use disclosure, conflict of interest statement, funding statement, and ethics and research integrity statement supplied where applicable.

g)   Copyright permissions, open access requirements, and citation and reference style checked before submission.

h)   Manuscript clearly typed, double-spaced, prepared in Microsoft Word using A4 page format, and submitted through the journal website at https://www.ptdjournal.com/login?next=%2Fsubmissions%2Fnew