1. Open Access Statement

Starting from the 1st issue in 2023, Coal Geology & Exploration has transitioned to a fully open-access journal. All articles are available immediately and permanently on the journal's official website for free access to all readers. Readers may use, copy, and distribute these articles under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Articles from 2022 and earlier are not open access and their copyright belongs to Editorial Office of Coal Geology & Exploration. However, the journal provides free access to the full text of articles from 1973 to 2022 for readers to read and download free of charge.

2. Licensing Policy

For open-access articles published by the journal, permitted third-party reuse is defined by the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license allows users to copy and distribute the articles in any medium or format as long as the license terms below are followed:

Users must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes to the articles were made. Users may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the journal endorses the use. Users may not use the articles for commercial purposes. If users re-mix, transform, or build upon the articles, they may not distribute the modified articles. The full details of the license are available at:

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

3. Copyright Policy

All authors publishing articles in this journal must sign the "Copyright Transfer Agreement," transferring the article's copyright to Editorial Office of Coal Geology & Exploration. After publication, authors may use their articles according to the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

If an article is not ultimately published by the journal, the aforementioned agreement becomes null and void automatically, and the copyright remains with the author.

4. Archiving Policy of the Journal

All articles have been digitally archived and backed up in the editorial office. In the event of suspension of publication, readers can access past articles from CNKI, Wanfang Data, etc.

5. Authors' Self-Archiving

The journal allows authors to store all versions of their articles in an institutional or other knowledge repository of the authors' choice, subject to the specification of journal publication information in the article metadata of the stored institutional or other knowledge repository, and as a recommended citation.