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, guarantee that, where applicable, I have the permission of all co-authors to submit this version of the manuscript in accordance with the journal's authorship policy and to act as their representative during the review process and beyond. I also accept distribution under the journal’s CC license, and this has also been approved by any co-authors.
• All authors of the manuscript are qualified to be considered as such, in accordance with the guidelines outlined in the journal's authorship policy, and all have given their consent to be acknowledged in the submitted manuscript. Anyone who has contributed to the work but does not meet the authorship criteria is listed in the "Acknowledgments" section.
• The manuscript has not been previously published in its current submitted version and is not under consideration by another journal. If the manuscript has been published in a previous version, this must be clearly indicated; see the journal’s editorial guidelines. (Feel free to enter an explanation in the box "Comments to the editor" if relevant)
• The submitting author has provided their ORCiD identification number in their author details. Any co-authors have been encouraged to do the same in accordance with the journal's policy.
• All material in the manuscript for which copyright is held by third parties has been properly reproduced, and the necessary permissions have been obtained by the submitting author.
• The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the instructions for authors.
• The manuscript files uploaded for review have been anonymized in accordance with the journal's policy.
• All individuals or groups of individuals who can be identified in a study, or their guardians, have signed informed consent documents, thereby granting permission 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 along with the approval reference number has been included in the submitted manuscript.