Submissions

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

• I, the submitting author, warrant that, where applicable, I have the permission of all co-authors to submit this version of the manuscript according to the journal's criteria for authorship and contributorship and to be their spokesperson during the review process and beyond. I also approve distribution with a CC BY license, and this too has been approved by co-authors.
• All authors of the manuscript are qualified to be considered as such, in accordance with the guidelines set forth in authorship criteria and have given their permission to be listed in the submitted manuscript.
• The manuscript has not previously been published in the current submitted version, nor is it under consideration by another journal. If the manuscript has been published in an earlier version, this should be clearly indicated; see the journal's policy for previous versions of articles. (Feel free to enter an explanation in the box "Comments to the Editor" if relevant.)
• The submitting author has entered their ORCiD identification number in their author data. Any co-authors have been advised to also provide one in accordance with the journal's policy.
• All material presented in the manuscript where copyright is held by third parties has been properly produced and necessary permissions have been obtained by the submitting author.
• The text follows the stylistic and bibliographic requirements specified in the author guidelines.
• The manuscript files uploaded for review are anonymized.
  
  
• All individuals or groups of individuals who can be identified in a study, or their guardians, have signed informed consent documents, thereby giving their consent for the submitted manuscript to be published under a CC license.
• Where applicable, the research has been reviewed by an appropriate ethics committee and the name of the committee and approval reference number included in the submitted manuscript.