Journal Policies

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA

Each author (and any co-authors) must meet all of the following criteria:

They have substantially contributed to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
They have participated in drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content;
They have approved of the submitted version of the manuscript;

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work and authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.

PEER REVIEW POLICY

Authors of manuscripts and reviewers of the same manuscript must not be close colleagues, family members, work on the same research project, or otherwise have a close collaboration.

Reviewers should only accept to assess manuscripts that fall within their own subject area.

Reviewers should respond to invitations without delay and submit completed reviews within a reasonable time.

Reviewers' comments must not be influenced by the author's nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or commercial interests.

Reviewers' comments must not contain hostile or provocative language and must not include personal attacks, slander or other derogatory comments.

POLICY FOR OPEN DATA

As research funders' and universities' demands for open research data become increasingly common, some authors may be required to make their collected empirical material open and available to everyone.

In cases where this applies to the journal's authors, the journal's editors encourage making the data available according to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

In that case, the material made available must be linked to within the submitted manuscript under a special heading. Research data should then be made public when the article is published. Empirical material obtained from other researchers must be referenced in the same way as other scientific sources. For further questions about guidelines for handling open data and guidelines about how data should be handled and published, please contact your university.

ARCHIVING POLICY

Beginning when the journal joins Publicera, its current and future content is made available via Publicera and stored long-term on a secure and central server at the National Library of Sweden (KB).

The journal's owner and KB aim for the journal's archive to be transferred and made available via Publicera, and thus the archive will also be stored long-term on a secure and central server at KB. In the event that the journal ceases publishing, the journal's content on Publicera will remain archived at KB.

POLICY FOR SELF-ARCHIVING

Article authors have the right to self-archive the submitted ("preprint") version of the manuscript and the published version without any embargo period.

Submitted manuscripts and published versions of articles can, for example, be archived on:
• the author's personal website
• the author's company website and/or institutional repository or archive
• non-profit preprint servers or subject-based archives

POLICY FOR THE USE OF ORCID

The journal's editors strongly recommend that authors who submit manuscripts register an "Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier" or ORCiD.

This registration provides a unique and stable digital author identity that ensures that the article is attributed to the correct person and improves the searchability of all the author's publications. This helps to ensure that the author receives recognition for their work. As a person's ORCiD remains the same as long as the account exists, any name changes, change of employment, department affiliation or research field do not affect the searchability of previous publications. This facilitates correspondence between research colleagues.

The journal's editors encourage all authors to include ORCiD along with other author information when the manuscript is registered in the system. If the article is accepted, this will be published with the article.

POLICY FOR PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF ARTICLES

The journal's editors allow authors to make available earlier drafts of manuscripts/articles on the condition that authors agree to the following:

Authors retain all rights to any previously published version and are permitted to submit their updated manuscript to the journal.

Authors accept that the journal's editors cannot guarantee full anonymity in the review process, even if the author anonymizes his manuscript when earlier versions of the manuscript are made available.

If the manuscript is published in the journal, the author is expected to cross-link, with DOI link, the different versions of the manuscript/article.

POLICY FOR CHANGES AND CORRECTIONS

The conditions of publication with persistent identifiers such as DOIs include that the object published is final and not changed without readers being clearly informing of this.

Articles published in the journal cannot therefore be changed without a) an erratum or b) a change notice being published and linked to the original article.

If a factual error in an article is discovered, this should be reported to the editor-in-chief, who decides on possible actions and possible corrections.

The journal encourages post-publication discussion through letters to the editor or on an externally moderated site for review and discussion of post-publication research, such as PubPeer.

COMPLAINTS AND APPEALS POLICY

In the case of formal complaints, disputes, or appeals, authors should contact the editor-in-chief, who is responsible for ensuring that a fair, deliberative, and thorough investigation is conducted.

POLICY FOR ETHICAL OVERSIGHT

The journal follows the ethical guidelines and best practices set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All cases of ethical misconduct will be handled in accordance with COPE's recommendations and guidelines.