1 World Geology flipped to an open access journal since the 1st issue of 2024. Since then, all articles once published are immediately and permanently available for readers to read and download free of charge. Articles published from 2019 to 2023 have been converted open access, and readers can freely access and download them from our website. Articles published between 1982 and 2019 are not open access. Full-text downloads of some articles are available for free on our website. The copyright of these articles is held by the journal’s editorial office.
2 All articles published by this journal have been digitally archived. The hard and soft copies of each journal issue have been kept in the editorial office for archiving. In order to ensure data security, all information and. relevant materials are also kept by the editorial office, such as supplementary information and forms provided by the authors. In addition to archiving on the journal's official website, the full texts of the journal's articles are also stored in the databases of CNKI, Wanfang Data etc. Readers can access the above-mentioned databases and platforms to obtain the articles published by the journal.
3 It is allowed for authors to deposit all versions of their articles in an institutional or other repository of the authors' choice. However, it is necessary to indicate the articles' publishing information in the metadata in the institutional or other repository and use that as a recommended way of citation.
4 For all open access articles published by this journal, permitted authors and third-party reuse of the articles is defined by the following user license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows reusers to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms below are followed: reusers must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. Reusers may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the use. Reusers may not use the material for commercial purposes. If reusers remix, transform, or build upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material. The full details of the license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
5 Authors are required to sign the Copyright Transfer Agreement at the time of submission. All authors agree that once the work submitted to this journal is accepted for publication, the authors will transfer the copyright of the work including but not limited to the rights of compilation, distribution, reproduction for both the print and electronic versions (including online first publication) and the rights of online dissemination, to the editorial office of World Geology. The authors can continue to use the article under the following situations: ① applying for patents; ② Academic presentations and lectures; ③ Non-commercial academic exchanges; ④ Other activities under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, or authorized and permitted by the editorial office.