1.      Open Access：Distributed Energy flipped to an open access journal in 2026. Since the first issue of 2026, once published, all articles are immediately and permanently available for readers to read and download free of charge. Articles published from the 1st issue of 2016 to 2025 are turned to open access works, which can be read and downloaded free of charge on this website. 

2.      OA Licensing: Distributed Energy is an open access journal and adopts the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. This allows third-party users to copy and distribute the open access papers of the journal in any medium or format. When copying and distributing papers from the journal, third-party users must provide appropriate attribution, include a link to the license, and indicate whether any modifications have been made to the original paper. Attribution should be done in a reasonable manner, but should not imply endorsement by the journal. The papers from the journal cannot be used for commercial purposes. If the papers are remixed, transformed, or built upon, the modified material cannot be distributed. The full details of the license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.zh.

3.   Copyright Ownership: All authors are required to sign a "Copyright Transfer Agreement," voluntarily transferring part of the copyrights of the paper to the Editorial Department of Distributed Energy. The authors agree that the Editorial Department of Distributed Energy shall enjoy the right of use and the right of first publication of the paper. The specific rights include, but are not limited to, the rights of reproduction, distribution, performance, broadcasting, information network dissemination, adaptation, translation, and compilation on a global scale, as well as the right to sublicense the aforementioned rights. The authors agree that the paper may be published, disseminated, and utilized in various forms across all types of media, platforms, and terminals for promotional and communicative purposes, and consent to the priority digital publication of the manuscript prior to its print publication. The authors agree to the journal's Open Access policy, allowing users to copy and disseminate the journal's articles under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Except for the circumstances specified in the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, the authors may not independently exercise the transferred rights. However, the authors reserve the right to cite or translate parts of the paper in their subsequent works, or to compile it into their non-journal anthologies.

4.      Archive：The soft and hard copies of each issue are archived in the editorial department. In order to ensure data security, all information has also been backed up in the editorial department. Hard and soft copies of each issue of the journal are kept in the editorial department for archiving. In addition, other relevant materials are also kept by the editorial department, such as supplementary information and forms provided by the authors. The journal's articles can also be downloaded in full text from databases including CNKI, Wanfang and Weipu. If the journal and the website were closed, archived data could be retrieved through those full-text databases.

5.      Data Sharing: The authors are encouraged to publish or share their research data whenever appropriate. Data sharing is helpful for experiment replication and data reuse. The data for sharing may include original data, observation records, experimental results, etc. The journal also encourages the sharing of software, code, models, algorithms, protocols, methods and other useful materials. The authors can upload the materials above to an accessible third-party repository and make a proper citation or add a link at the end of the article.