Manuscript submission

Please provide in a cover letter the background, innovative and scientific value of the work presented in the manuscript, and authors’ publications related to this work. The detailed contact information of the first author and corresponding author is re-quired. (Please promptly inform the editorial office of any change of contacting emails and addresses.) The authors may

recommend 3–8 qualified reviewers and/or request the exclusion of specific reviewers. An informative cover letter is considered helpful for editors and reviewers to make evaluation of the sub-mitted manuscript.

Duplicate submission is forbidden and unethical. In such cases, the journal will inform the institution of the authors and the relevant journal(s).

Poor English expression of a submitted manuscript may lead to rejection.

Ethical responsibilities of authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of science and the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publica-tion Ethics (COPE), the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal and ultimately the entire scientific endeavor. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which includes:

1.The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.

2.The manuscript has not been published previously (part-ly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. (Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (“self-plagiarism”).)

3.A single study is not split up into several parts to in-crease the quantity of submissions and submitted to var-ious journals or to one journal over time (e.g., “sala-mi-publishing”).

4.No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support the conclusions. Upon request au-thors should be prepared to submit relevant documenta-tion or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of, e.g., raw data, samples, and records.

5.No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the authors’ own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given, in-cluding material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased. Quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions need to be secured for material that is copyrighted.

Important note: The journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

6.Consent to submit, including each version of the paper and any change in authorship, has been received from all co-authors and responsible authorities at the institute/ organization where the work has been carried out before the work is submitted or re-submitted for publication. In addition, authorship changes or the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript. Requests to add or delete authors at the revision stage or after publication is a serious matter, and may be considered only after receipt of a written approval from all authors and detailed explanation about the role/deletion of the new/deleted author. The decision whether to accept the change rests with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.

7.Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and there-fore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.