To avoid conflicts of interest and comply with international academic publishing ethics standards, all payable items of this journal are split into two independent operation systems managed by separate teams:

• Article Processing Charge (APC): Managed uniformly by the journal editorial team, serving as the core basic academic publication cost. APC covers expenses including initial screening, double-blind peer review administration, journal website operation and maintenance, official DOI registration, global academic database indexing, and permanent long-term archiving of published articles. All APC standard pricing, promotional discounts, waiver and refund procedures are handled by the editorial office. APC payment only activates post-acceptance publication procedures and will never affect editorial evaluation and peer review results.
• Two categories of optional post-acceptance commercial value-added services: Priority Production Service and Professional Language Polishing Service. Both services are exclusively operated by the internal dedicated business team of Apex Scholarly Publications LLC, completely separated from the editorial office, associate editors, editorial board members and all peer reviewers. All editorial staff and reviewers have no access to authors’ value-added service order records, payment information and purchase status. Purchasing any of the two value-added services will not change manuscript acceptance outcomes, cannot shorten the pre-acceptance peer review cycle, and shall not be regarded as a prerequisite for formal online publication. All value-added service pricing, delivery standards and refund processes are independently managed by the LLC operation team.

Article Processing Charge (APC)

Standard Article Processing Charge (APC): 275 USD per manuscript

Limited-time Launch Promotional APC: 245 USD per manuscript (fixed 30 USD deduction)

The Limited-time launch preferential policy is set with a fixed valid term. Upon expiration of the preferential period, the journal will uniformly implement the standard APC rate of 275 USD. All price adjustment matters will be formally announced on the journal homepage in advance to safeguard the right to information of all submitting authors.

The journal implements a standardized page limit and over-length charge policy in line with international mainstream academic publishing norms. The standard APC package covers original research manuscripts within 10 formally typeset pages and systematic review manuscripts within 12 formally typeset pages. All page counts are strictly calculated based on the final journal formatted PDF file, including the main text, figures, tables, and formulas. Reference lists, acknowledgments, and supplementary supporting materials are not included in the page count and are free of charge. For any page exceeding the above specified limits, a uniform over-length page fee of 25 US dollars per additional page will be charged.

All graphs, charts, images, and illustrations published in the online official version of the journal are provided in full color free of charge, with no additional color figure fees required of authors.

All standard APC fees and over-length page fees are only invoiced and collected after rigorous double-blind peer review evaluation and official manuscript acceptance. No fees of any kind will be charged during the initial manuscript submission and preliminary review stages.

Optional Value-Added Service 1: Priority Production Service

Fixed Service Fee: 120 USD per manuscript

Service Coverage: Accelerated full post-acceptance administrative procedures including copyediting, professional typesetting, manuscript proof verification, official DOI registration, online release and permanent metadata archiving, only applicable to manuscripts with formal acceptance status.

Terms and Liability Statement: This value-added service only shortens the post-acceptance production cycle, cannot shorten processing cycles for initial screening and peer review, shall not interfere with editorial evaluation outcomes, and does not guarantee manuscript acceptance.

Important Price Rule: The 120 USD Priority Production Service Fee is excluded from all APC waivers and discount schemes; no preferential policy can be applied to this service fee.

Optional Value-Added Service 2: Post-Acceptance Professional Language Polishing Service

This language polishing service is an independent commercial service operated by Apex Scholarly Publications LLC’s internal team, isolated from all editorial personnel. Language editors only optimize English grammar, spelling, sentence fluency, academic terminology consistency and reference formatting, without modifying research data, experimental results, core research arguments and original academic conclusions of manuscripts.

Word count calculation rule: Only main manuscript text (abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion) is counted; references, tables, figures, captions and author information are excluded.

All eligible waivers or discount policies apply to both the standard APC fee and applicable over-length page charges; no waivers or discounts are available for Priority Production Service Fee and all language polishing fees. Two categories of applicants meet preferential eligibility:

1. Corresponding authors affiliated with low-income economies defined by the World Bank: Eligible for a 50% APC waiver;
2. Full-time academic faculty and full-time enrolled students of formal global higher education institutions: Eligible for a 35% APC discount.

Binding Standardized Application Procedures

1. The corresponding author shall submit a written waiver/discount application via the official journal communication email, together with complete supporting identity qualification documents;
2. Full fee settlement shall only be completed upon receipt of a written approval reply for the waiver issued by the editorial office;
3. If full payment is completed in advance and the subsequent waiver application fails review, the outstanding APC balance shall be settled in a single lump sum within the time limit notified by the editorial office;
4. Multiple preferential policies cannot be superimposed; only one waiver scheme may be applied per individual manuscript.

Article Processing Charge (APC) Refund Provisions

All transaction fees incurred by third-party payment channels, exchange losses and bank transfer charges are non-refundable under all circumstances.

Circumstances for Full Refund:

Full refund of paid APC shall be processed upon editorial office verification for duplicate payments, payment system malfunctions, or objective journal operational barriers that render manuscript formal publication unfeasible.

Circumstances for Partial Refund:

If the corresponding author submits a formal written withdrawal application after full APC payment and prior to the commencement of copyediting, typesetting and other production procedures, only 70% of the APC shall be refunded. The remaining 30% covers administrative operation and peer review labour costs already incurred by the journal.

Circumstances for Non-Refund:

• Once the editorial office initiates manuscript typesetting production workflows, or after the manuscript is published online with a permanent DOI identifier assigned.
• If a manuscript is retracted after verification of academic misconduct including plagiarism, data fabrication, concurrent submission, fake peer review.

Full 100% refund:

The polishing team has not started any editing work after author submits formal cancellation application via official email;

Partial proportional refund:

Part of the manuscript editing work has been completed; refund amount is calculated according to the unedited word count proportion;

Non-refundable:

All polishing tasks are fully delivered to the author;

The manuscript is later confirmed to have serious academic misconduct (plagiarism, data fabrication, duplicate submission etc.) after polishing service completion;