We are strongly committed to promote the highest ethical publication practices and expect all submitting authors to uphold the high standards of publication ethics.

Publication and authorship

Author(s) need to ensure that the submitted article is the work of the submitting author(s) and is not plagiarized, wholly or in part. Author(s) must also make sure that the submitted article is original, is not wholly or in part re-publication of the author’s earlier work, and contains no fraudulent data.

It is also Author(s) responsibility to check that all copyrighted material within the article has permission for publication and that material the author does not personally hold copyright in is not reproduced without permission.

Finally, the Author(s) should ensure that the submitted article has a funding acknowledgment, where relevant. Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled ‘Funding’.

Author’s responsibilities

Author(s) need to ensure that all data in the submitted article are real and authentic. Author(s) must make sure that all authors have significantly contributed to the research submitted in the article, and that all and only the contributors to the article are listed as authors. It is Author(s) responsibility to ensure that no participants are harmed, physically or mentally, during the research which results in the article, and that personal details of the participants, who have not agreed for to be released or where the release of personal details could endanger a participant, are fully anonymized. This applies both to textual citations and to images and any supplementary audio or visual material. Authors should also ensure that all authors provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.

Finally, authors should ensure that every manuscript submitted to the journal has been read and corrected for clarity, grammar, and spelling.

Editorial responsibilities

Editors hold full authority to reject/accept an article; only accept a paper when reasonably certain; promote the publication of correction or retraction when errors are found; preserve the anonymity of reviewers; have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept.

If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, they will declare it to the other Editors. The other Editor will select referees and make all decisions on the paper. This procedure also applies if a paper is submitted by one of the Editors, if a paper is submitted by an author who is at the same institution as one of the Editors if a paper is submitted by an author whose relationship with one of the Editors might create the perception of bias (e.g. in terms of close friendship, co-authorship or conflict/rivalry) and the Editor declares a potential conflict of interest.

Publishing ethics issues

Members of the Editorial Board ensure the monitoring and safeguarding of publishing ethics. This comprises the strict policy on plagiarism and fraudulent data, the strong commitment to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed, and the strict preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.

Whenever it is recognized that a published paper contains a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement, or distorted report, it will be corrected promptly. If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, it will be retracted. The retraction will be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems.