I. Open Access Statement

Surface Technology is currently an open access journal. All articles published since 2012 are freely accessible and permanently available for readers to read and download free of charge from the official website (www.surface-techj.com).

In accordance with the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License, readers are free to copy, distribute, and use the open access articles from this journal (i.e., articles published since 2012). However, without consent from both original authors and the journal, any published articles and their derivatives shall not be used for commercial purposes.

However, articles published in 2011 and earlier are non-open access and therefore not freely available through the official website. Readers interested in these publications may access them via academic databases such as CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure).

II. Licensing Policy

Surface Technology applies the Creative Commons’ "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0" International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), allowing third-party users to copy and redistribute the open access articles published in the journal (i.e., articles published from 2012) in any medium or format under the terms of this license.

When reproducing or distributing articles from the journal, third-party users must provide appropriate authorship, link to the license, and indicate if any modifications have been made to the original work; use reasonable attribution methods without suggesting journal endorsement; refrain from commercial use of articles; and avoid distributing modified materials if the articles are remixed, transformed, or built upon. For more detailed information on this license, please visit:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

III. Copyright Policy

All authors must sign a "Copyright Transfer Agreement", granting the publisher Surface Technology Editorial Department the worldwide royalty-free rights to reproduce, distribute, disseminate, translate, and compile the articles (in all language versions). Following publication, the authors will retain all proprietary rights except for copyright.

IV. Archiving

The authors may archive all versions of their articles in any institutional or knowledge repository of their choice. The repository metadata must include complete and standard bibliographic details of journal publication and indicate the published version as the recommended source for citation.

In addition, both print and electronic versions of each issue will be permanently archived by the Editorial Department.