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About the Journal

SPACE is a multidisciplinary, open-access journal committed to advancing the frontiers of knowledge in the fields of space science, technology, aerospace engineering, space tourism, material engineering, environmental studies, and associated space policy frameworks. Our mission is to serve as a premier platform for innovative research, sound theories, and practical implementations that span academia, industry, and policy-making communities. We publish high-quality, peer-reviewed articles that explore the transformative impact of advanced space technologies and theories across these diverse sectors.

SPACE is a multidisciplinary, open-access journal committed to advancing the frontiers of knowledge in the fields of space science, technology, aerospace engineering, space tourism, material engineering, environmental studies, and associated space policy frameworks. SPACE serves as a premier platform for innovative research, sound theories, and practical implementations that span academia, industry, and policy-making communities. SPACE publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed articles that explore the transformative impact of advanced space technologies and theories across these diverse sectors. SPACE employs a rigorous peer review process, ensuring that all published research is of the highest quality and integrity. The review process is double-blind, conducted by experts with profound knowledge and experience in relevant fields. Committed to the free dissemination of knowledge, SPACE operates under an open-access model. All published articles are freely accessible on the journal's website immediately upon publication, allowing for the widest possible impact of the work. SPACE releases issues quarterly, with occasional special issues that focus on particular themes of emerging importance or recent advancements in the field. The journal accepts various types of submissions, including original research articles (main content: 6,000 -12,000 words), review articles (main content 5,000 - 9,000 words), case studies (main content: 5,000 - 10,000 words), and opinion pieces (1,500 - 5,000 words), especially those that address interdisciplinary approaches and practical applications.

The journal encourages a broad range of submissions, including original research, review articles, case studies, and reports on practical implementations, aiming to bridge the gap between theory and practice. It seeks to foster a collaborative and inclusive community of scholars, practitioners, and industry leaders who are driving innovation in the realm of space science, technology, aerospace engineering, space tourism, material engineering, environmental studies, and associated space policy frameworks.

Policies

Open Access Policy: SPACE provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. There are no publication charges, and all content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author for non-commercial purposes. Nonetheless, reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein requires credit to the original publication source with a link to both the article and the license. This open access policy is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative's (BOAI) definition of open access.

Copyright to Your Publication

As described in the author agreement, authors retain copyright to their publications. As an open access journal, we disseminate all content under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. 

Self-Archiving Policy: This journal permits and encourages authors to post items submitted to the journal on personal websites or institutional repositories both prior to and after publication, while providing bibliographic details that credit, if applicable, its publication in this journal.

Preservation Policy: Content published in SPACE will be preserved by the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. The Libraries are committed to long-term digital preservation of all materials in UF-supported collaborative projects. Redundant digital archives, adherence to proven standards, and rigorous quality control methods protect digital objects. The UF Digital Collections provide a comprehensive approach to digital preservation, including technical supports, reference services for both online and offline archived files, and support services by providing training and consultation for digitization standards for long-term digital preservation. Content is also preserved in the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) and CLOCKSS.

Content will be preserved indefinitely, unless a specific request for removal of a specific item is directed to the journal managers. If you believe that your copyrighted material has been deposited into this journal without consent, please contact the administrator at RACHELJUICHIFU@UFL.EDU.

Plagiarism Statement: SPACE does not accept articles containing material plagiarized from other publications or authors. For the purposes of this policy, plagiarism is defined as copying of or reliance on work — including text, images and data — by others or yourself without proper attribution. Please be aware that you can plagiarize yourself; you must provide proper attribution in all cases where your previously published material or previously used data or images are included in your manuscript.

Plagiarism detected prior to publication will cause rejection of your manuscript. Plagiarism detected after publication will cause the published article to be amended to state that it contains plagiarized material; in extreme cases of plagiarism, the publication will be removed at the Editors’ discretion, and the reason for removal stated on the journal's website.

SPACE does not consider the following situations to be plagiarism when proper attribution is made:

  • Translations into English of a previously published paper not in English;
  • Publication of all or part of a revised thesis or dissertation;
  • Publication of a paper previously made public as a conference presentation, white paper, technical report, or preprint

SPACE follows workflows developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to deal with cases of plagiarism.

Use of Third-Party Copyrighted Materials: When submitting your manuscript, please be mindful of copyright laws in the United States and (if outside the U.S.) your home country. SPACE respects the intellectual property of scholars, students, and publishers, and we ask that you secure appropriate permissions or evaluate whether your incorporation of images, figures, charts, quotations, and other materials falls within the scope of fair use/fair dealing.

If you are incorporating published materials that you have previously authored, be aware that in many cases your publisher may now own the copyright and you may need to seek permission to reprint your own work.

The University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries provides resources on copyright and fair use, with an emphasis on U.S. Copyright Law: https://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/copyright

Correction, Retraction, and Removal of Articles

Correction. Despite the best of efforts, errors occur and their timely and effective remedy are considered the mark of responsible authors and editors.  SPACE will publish a correction if the scholarly record is seriously affected (e.g., if accuracy/intended meaning, scientific reproducibility, author reputation, or journal reputation is judged to be compromised). Corrections that do not affect the contribution in a material way or significantly alter the reader's understanding of the contribution, such as misspellings or grammatical errors, will not be published. When a correction is published, it will link to and from the work. The correction will be added to the original work so that readers will receive the original work and the correction. All corrections will be as concise as possible.

Retraction. SPACE reserves the right to retract items, with a retraction defined as a public disavowal, not an erasure or removal. Retractions will occur if the editors and editorial board finds that the main conclusion of the work is undermined or if subsequent information about the work comes to light of which the authors or the editors were not aware at the time of publication. Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, inaccurate claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data will also result in retraction of the work.

Removal. Some circumstances may necessitate removal of a work from SPACE. This will occur when the article is judged by the editors and editorial board to be defamatory, if it infringes on legal rights, or if there is a reasonable expectation that it will be subject to a court order. The bibliographic information about the work will be retained online, but the work will no longer be available through SPACE. A note will be added to indicate that the item was removed for legal reasons.

Data-Sharing Policy: Authors of research papers submitted for publication in SPACE are encouraged to make the data underlying their articles available online whenever possible. For the purposes of this policy, the term "data" is understood broadly and refers to both quantitative and qualitative research outputs, spanning observations and analysis of social settings (producing numbers, texts, images, multimedia or other content) to numbers attained through instrumental and other raw data gathering efforts, quantitative analysis, text mining, or citation analysis, as well as protocols, methods, and code used to generate any specific finding reported in the paper. The SPACE editorial board prefers that the data be submitted as supplemental files accompanying the article or be archived in a secure repository that provides a persistent identifier, assures long-term access, and provides sufficient documentation and metadata to support re-use by other investigators. Acceptable solutions include institutional repositories; repositories specifically focused on data curation, or domain specific repositories. If there is no relevant public repository available, and the data cannot easily be included in a supplement, authors should describe how the data are being curated and made available or, in the case where they cannot be made available (e.g., IRB restrictions), why that is so. In any case, a citation to the dataset should be made in the article itself in accordance with the data citation principles of the FORCE11 "Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles", including an ORCID for the researcher(s) associated with the data. Finally, we recommend that whenever possible authors explicitly define the terms of re-use by assigning a license to their data, choosing, for instance, among Creative Commons or Open Data Commons licenses.

The SPACE data policy does not require data publication and citation at this time due to still-emergent standards for data peer review; the lack of sufficiently robust and distributed infrastructure to support the variety of disciplinary research occurring in our field; uncertainty whether SPACE should provide a third mode of data publication in the form of “data papers” or “data descriptors”; and insufficient preparation and notification to SPACE contributors to ensure datasets are properly curated with the aim of publication. Authors unable to share their data must provide a written explanation of this circumstance in their cover letter at the time of submission.

Name Change Policy

The LibraryPress@UF is committed to supporting requests for author name changes and/or pronoun changes, with as few barriers as possible. Name changes and/or pronoun changes are available to authors upon request, with no legal documentation required. Upon receiving a name change request, the LibraryPress@UF will update all metadata, published content, and associated records under our control to reflect the requested name change. The LibraryPress@UF will not issue a notice of correction for the name change or notify co-authors or editors.

Authors who wish to update or change their name should contact Kat Nguyen, Publications Editorial Coordinator, at knguyen1@ufl.edu. Requests will be treated with respect and confidentiality and addressed as quickly as possible.

 Copyright Notice (click-through notice upon submission)

By submitting to SPACE, the author(s) agree to the terms of the Author Agreement. All authors retain copyrights associated with their article contributions and agree to make such contributions available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license upon publication.

Author Agreement:

Florida OJ Author Agreement (University of Florida)

This agreement takes effect upon acceptance of the Submission entitled ______________ ("Submission") for publication in SPACE.

  • I hereby grant to the University of Florida (“the University”) the non-exclusive right to retain, reproduce and distribute the Submission in whole or in part, in print and electronic format and in any medium. This agreement does not represent a transfer of copyright to the University.
  • The University may make and keep multiple copies of the work for purposes of security, backup, preservation and access; and may migrate the work to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation and access.
  • I represent and warrant to the University that the work is my original work and that I have the authority as sole author or I have the authority on behalf of my co-authors to grant the rights contained in this agreement. I also represent that the work does not, to the best of my knowledge, infringe or violate any rights of others.
  • I further represent and warrant that I have obtained all necessary rights to permit the University to reproduce and distribute the work, including any third-party material. Alternatively, I represent that my use of any third-party material is allowed because the material is not in copyright or I have performed a fair use analysis and reasonably believe my use is permitted. Any content owned by a third party is clearly identified and acknowledged within the work.
  • I grant these same rights to SPACE. Additionally, I grant the right to both the University and SPACE to enter into agreements with third-party entities and the rights necessary to host, print, index and abstract the Submission.

Open Access and Self-Archiving

SPACE follows an open-access publishing model, meaning that all articles will be publicly accessible on the Internet immediately upon publication. I understand that I may share the submitted manuscript (preprint) of the Submission on the Internet at any point before or after publication, with a citation and link to the final version of record to be added as soon as the issue is available. I may disseminate the final peer-reviewed version at any point after publication.

Creative Commons License

SPACE applies a Creative Commons [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)] to encourage sharing and reuse of content and to maximize the impact of published research. By publishing in SPACE, I agree that the terms of this license will be applied to the Submission. Smathers Libraries (copyright@uflib.ufl.edu) may be able to offer additional information.

By granting this license, I acknowledge that I have read and agreed to the terms of this agreement.

Conflict/Competing of Interest Statement 

Conflict of interest exists when a participant in the peer review and publication process as an author, reviewer, or editor has ties to activities that could inappropriately influence their judgment about the validity of submissions. Therefore, SPACE requires all authors and reviewers to declare any conflicts of interest that may be inherent in their submissions. For example, financial relationships with industry through employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony, either directly or through immediate family, are usually considered to be conflicts of interest. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion. Public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Bias can often be identified and mitigated by careful attention to the methods and conclusions of the work. Financial relationships and their effects are less easily detected than other conflicts of interest. Participants in peer review and publication should disclose their competing interests, and the information should be made available so that others can judge their potential effects for themselves. 

  • Authors: Upon submission, authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and other conflicts of interest that might bias their work, or lack thereof. They should acknowledge in the manuscript all financial support for the work and other financial or personal connections to the work. They should also provide a list of potential reviewers for which there is a likely conflict, so editors are able to avoid inappropriate review requests.  
  • Reviewers: External peer reviewers should disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the submission, and they should disqualify themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if they believe it appropriate. Additionally, reviewers are forbidden from using knowledge of the work, before its publication, to further their own interests.