Publication Policies

AI-generated Content in Publications

The proliferation and increasing sophistication of AI-assisted language tools (such as ChatGPT) have opened new avenues for research, but the ethics and best practices for their use are still evolving. These tools may generate useful information and content but are also prone to errors and inconsistencies. AI-generated content can be used within SPE publications under the following conditions:

  • AI language tools may not be listed as an author. The AI tool cannot sign publishing agreements or transfers of copyright.
  • Any AI-generated content that is used within a manuscript should be thoroughly vetted, fact checked, and disclosed.
  • If AI language tools are used within a manuscript, their use should be clearly explained within the methodology or acknowledgement section of the paper. If AI-generated content is included within a manuscript without an explanation, this can be grounds for rejection of the work at the discretion of SPE and may result in a code of conduct review.
  • The authors of the manuscript will be held responsible for any errors, inconsistencies, incorrect references, plagiarism, or misleading content included from the AI tool.

Policy Review

This policy will be reviewed periodically to ensure that it remains relevant and effective in the face of changing technologies and emerging concerns. Changes to the policy will be communicated in a timely and transparent manner.

Copyright

We require transfer of copyright for all our publications, including conference proceedings. This allows us to distribute publications throughout the world by print and electronic means, to create translations and reuse them in reprint collections.

Transfer of Copyright

  • No paper can be presented at an SPE conference unless a signed copy transferring copyright is received by SPE before the manuscript due date.
  • If you are employed and prepared this paper within the scope of your employment, the original copyright to the paper belongs to your employer.
    • If you sign the form, we assume you are authorized to do so by your employer and that your employer has consented to the transfer of copyright, to the representation and warranty of publication rights, and to all other terms and conditions of the form.
    • If such authorization and consent has not been given you, an authorized representative of your employer should sign this form in the space provided for the Author.
  • Always use the form provided in the author kit for the conference as wording may vary for some jointly sponsored meetings.
  • No modifications or substitutions will be accepted and we do not accept a license to distribute in place of full transfer of copyright.

Author-retained Rights

Transfer of copyright does not affect the underlying intellectual property or concepts, which remain with the author or the employer. Authors and their employers retain certain rights for reuse of the material.

Downloads

  • We require that authors provide a temporary transfer of copyright to facilitate the peer review process.
  • If the paper is accepted for publication, a permanent transfer of copyright will be required.
  • The author must agree not to submit the paper for review or publication elsewhere while under review by SPE.
  • If the paper is not accepted for publication, full copyright will revert to the original owner, for papers that did not originate at an SPE conference.

Plagiarism

We expect authors to credit all sources used in their writings and not to represent work of others as their own. Authors found to have plagiarized the work of another are subject to having their paper removed from the conference program and from OnePetro. Future submissions from authors found to have plagiarized will be scrutinized carefully. In the case of students found to be plagiarizing the work of others, SPE may inform the student’s university.

For more information, check out the Plagiarism FAQ page.

  • You can avoid plagiarizing others by using appropriate citation.
  • Direct quotes should be indicated as such with the use of quotation marks, or for somewhat longer passages, indented as a block quote. However, in an original paper, direct quotation should be minimized.
  • It is accepted practice that authors learn from and build on the work of others in their own work, but you should always use your own words to show that you understood the ideas.

Just because you are the author doesn’t mean that you can repeat long sections of your prior work in a new work. If you are writing a new paper, the content should be new, not a repeat of what you wrote in a prior paper.

No one will be concerned about the verbatim reuse of a few sentences or even a full paragraph, but you should not repeat full sections of a prior work. Just as you would summarize and cite the work of another author, you should summarize and cite your own prior work, then focus on what is new that led you to write the current paper.

Permissions

Copyright allows us to perform a valuable service for our industry. SPE copyrights save you from needing to locate the authors to request permission; SPE can provide permission. To defray our costs, fees apply to certain types of use, especially those that are commercial in nature. SPE uses Copyright Clearance Center’s licensing solution for reuse permissions. This allows you to immediately determine the fees and to complete the transaction online.

For more information, check out the Permissions FAQ page.

If you presented a paper at an SPE conference, you may request a one-time return of rights to publish your paper in a non-SPE magazine or journal.

  • Requesting return of rights means that you are forfeiting the right to have your paper reviewed and considered for publication in an SPE journal. If your paper has been submitted for peer review, it will be withdrawn. Note: Requests for return of one-time journal publication rights will not be granted for papers submitted to SPE for peer review unless the paper is declined for publication or it is at least 6 months after the submission date.

To request this permission, locate the paper in OnePetro and follow the “Rights & Permission” link. No fees apply. If the paper is still in SPE peer review after 6 months and such a request is received, the paper will be withdrawn from SPE peer review.

Authors or their employer may distribute up to 50 printed copies of their SPE paper for educational or professional activities without notification to SPE. This permission can be used multiple times (such as to distribute copies from an employer’s trade show booth or for use in a training course that the author is conducting).

If more than 50 copies are desired, locate the paper in OnePetro and follow the “Rights & Permission” link.

Requests from third parties to distribute copies for training courses or as papers in a collection may be granted upon payment of a fee. To request permission, locate the paper in OnePetro and follow the “Rights & Permission” link.

Storage or distribution of SPE copyrighted material by any individual or organization on a generally accessible internet site is almost never allowed, and only with prior written permission from SPE. SPE does not support the creation of databases or storage locations for SPE papers by non-SPE entities.

  • Authors or their employers may place a pdf of papers they have written on a company intranet site. Papers may not be posted on any type of generally accessible internet site.
  • SPE papers downloaded from OnePetro can be posted to limited access workspaces to be shared among project teams or a joint industry project (JIP) if the number of people with access to the site does not exceed 50 and the papers are posted for the duration of the project only.

SPE will consider requests for use on a customer extranet or other limited access site on a case-by-case basis, but fees will apply. To request additional permission, contact permissions@spe.org.

We will grant permission to reproduce tables or figures provided that these elements are original to the paper. SPE cannot grant permission for material the author republished from another source (with permission). You will need to contact the original source for permission. For material from Journal of Petroleum Technology (JPT), The Way Ahead (TWA), or Oil and Gas Facilities (OGF) we may require additional time to research whether SPE holds copyright to the figures or tables.

Each table or figure used in another publication shall reference the source SPE paper or periodical in the references. For tables and figures from an SPE conference or journal paper, locate the paper in OnePetro and follow the “Rights & Permission” link. For material from JPT, TWA, or OGF send an email request to permissions@spe.org.

  • You may make up to five photocopies of a single article, or up to 15 pages from a book, to share with colleagues for a one-time use. This cannot be used repeatedly to copy longer works in their entirety.
  • You may provide a link from your website to material on SPE.org, OnePetro.org, JPT Online.org, energy4me.org, or any other SPE website as long as it is in a manner that does NOT imply SPE endorsement and does NOT include the SPE, JPT, OnePetro, or energy4me logo. 
  • Without SPE permission, you may post or publish an abstract of any SPE-copyrighted paper as long as it does not exceed 300 words in length, make up more than 10 percent of the text, and does not include any figures, graphics, or questions. Proper acknowledgement of SPE and copyright year must be included.

  • An author, or the author’s employer, may distribute a paper within their company by paper or electronic form, such as via an intranet, without prior approval from SPE.

Conference Paper Policies

SPE meetings have a "No Paper, No Podium" policy. If an abstract is accepted to a conference, the author will be required to submit a manuscript by the deadline date. If a manuscript is not submitted, the paper will be withdrawn from the program and the author will not be allowed to present at the conference. All presented manuscripts will become an official record in SPE's permanent technical paper archive, OnePetro, which is available online.

The failure of SPE conference/symposium authors to have at least one author or designated individual participate in-person or virtually at the time of the live presentation to present and/or answer questions will result in the paper being permanently withdrawn from the SPE technical paper archive in OnePetro. If the event does not require live presentations, this policy does not apply.

Authors will be allowed to submit abstracts to only one conference at a time. An abstract must be declined by a program committee prior to being submitted to another conference for consideration. In the event it is detected that an abstract has been submitted to more than one conference, all versions/copies of that abstract will be removed from consideration.

Any paper previously presented at an SPE conference and published in OnePetro may not be re-submitted for publication at another SPE conference. The author may present the subject matter at subsequent conferences at the invitation of the program committee, but the paper will not be included in the subsequent conference proceedings.

To best serve attendees, SPE makes its Proceedings available on the first day of the conference. To ensure that these Proceedings provide a quality version of each paper, authors are asked to review their manuscript carefully for errors and get all required company approval(s) prior to uploading a manuscript.

Serious Problems with Your Proceedings Paper after Uploading

If, for legal or other reasons, it is imperative that a paper NOT appear in the Proceedings, the author must contact the SPE Conference Program Lead immediately and provide a detailed explanation of why the paper must be withdrawn. The paper will be pulled, as requested.

Correction Requests

If an author has a correction that needs to be made to a submitted manuscript, the corresponding author should submit the correction information via the Manuscript Correction Request Form (SPE Login required).

  1. A USD 100 fee will be charged for the processing of the update.
  2. Please note that revisions submitted through this form will take up to 15 business days to process and update on OnePetro.
  3. Please note that any corrections will only apply to the version of the manuscript on OnePetro.

SPE Journal Policies

SPE does not permit the submission of a manuscript which is based on same data, ideas, methods and conclusions which has either been published or is simultaneously under review by another journal. For manuscripts that are in-review, only the abstract of the paper may be submitted to a preprint server.

Manuscripts previously declined for publication by a peer-reviewed journal may be submitted to SPE Journal if the prior review process has been completed and an official decline decision has been rendered. 

Authors should only submit original work that has not been previously published in a refereed journal. Previously published explicitly does not include oral or poster presentations, conference proceedings or student theses/dissertations. 

Preliminary, high-level, or synopsized publications in SPE Magazines also do not constitute dual publication if an author submits a manuscript on the same research to SPE Journal

To initiate a discussion, a comment can be submitted to any paper that has been published in a current SPE peer-reviewed journal within a 1-year timeframe. (This does not apply to papers published in conference proceedings.)

For more information, check out the Journal Discussion page.  

Errors introduced by authors or the publication that affect the validity of a published work can be corrected in the form of a published erratum.

Format corrections, such as replacing a low-resolution image, correcting corrupted figure labeling, and similar minor changes not involving scientific content, can be made at the discretion of SPE, without formal notification. Please send all correction requests to peer@spe.org.

All submissions to peer review must meet SPE’s paper length limit requirements.

Technical papers should be no more than 10,000 words, including the abstract, main text, tables, figure captions, and appendices (but not including the title, affiliations, acknowledgments, nomenclature, or references). In addition, a maximum of 20 figures that are sized half-page or smaller (full-page figures will be counted as two figures) will be allowed. This 20-figure maximum includes appendix figures. We encourage authors to run a word count check before submission to avoid processing delays. Papers that exceed the length limit will be returned by SPE staff with a request to shorten the manuscript before the paper will be submitted for peer review. We also encourage authors to use the Supplementary Materials template (available in Author Resources) for additional data, figures, and tables that support the main paper. Supplements submitted with the paper for review will be later published with the accepted paper.

Review Papers do not have a length limit.

The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) has adopted a hybrid approach to open access publication with Open Access and traditional access-controlled articles. Traditional access-controlled articles will continue to be accepted without processing fees.

As of 1 January 2022, authors submitting to SPE Journal may choose to pay an article publication charge (APC) of US$2,500.00 for Open Access. SPE members receive a US$500.00 discount on the APC (US$2000.00). Authors from low and lower-middle income economies (Group A and B; based on Research4Life’s classifications) will receive a 50% discount (US$1250.00). This cannot be combined with the SPE member discount. Payment is required after acceptance of the article for publication and must be received prior to online publication. Open Access articles will be published under a Creative Commons license term (CC-BY). In order to make clear the separation between scientific editorial decision-making and economic considerations, the option to publish an article under Open Access is offered to corresponding authors after peer-review and acceptance of an article for publication. If you would like your accepted paper to be Open Access, please contact peer@spe.org for information and payment processing.

Author Responsibilities: SPE cannot advise authors on compliance with any requirements placed on them by their funder or employer regarding open access publication. In all cases, the author must verify that their chosen route to publication is in compliance.

Since copyright holders might have policies against commercial reuse, authors that wish to have their article published via the Open Access CC-BY license should check to be sure that any material they use in their article that was not created by them may be published under the CC-BY license. SPE cannot advise on these issues, nor undertake negotiations with rights holders on the author's behalf. Also, authors are still bound by SPE’s Publication Policies; the Creative Commons licenses are not an endorsement for duplicate publication. 

Commercialism Policy

SPE recognizes to maintain the integrity, high quality, and unbiased information in all forms of written and oral presentations at any SPE event including, but not limited to, conferences, symposia, workshops, summits, or forums, overt commercialism is prohibited outside of the commercial exhibit areas.

Items deemed to be commercial in nature will not be allowed or disseminated. This includes, but is not limited to, Conference Proceedings, presentations, OnePetro, Journals, and promotional material.

Use of the following will be carefully scrutinized during evaluation and presentation and could result in being withdrawn from the program:

  • Generic descriptions should replace commercial trade names or trademarked materials
  • Company logos allowed on title and closing slide only
  • Text which is overtly commercial in tone or intent within paper titles, presentation slides, text, tables, figures, animation, audio, and video is prohibited

Repeated violations of this policy may result in the speaker and/or moderator being barred from participating in future SPE event programs.