Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose any financial or personal conflicts of interest that could influence the interpretation of their findings. This includes employment relationships, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimonies, patents, grants, or any other funding sources. Such disclosures should be made as early as possible in the publication process.

Corrections and Retractions

If an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, they must promptly inform the journal editor or publisher and cooperate in retracting or correcting the article. If the editor or publisher is notified by a third party of a potential error, the author is responsible for either correcting the issue or providing evidence supporting the original publication’s accuracy.

Changes in Authorship

Any modifications to the author list after submission require agreement from all authors, including those being added or removed. Requests for changes must be submitted to the editorial office with written consent from all affected parties.

Deceased Authors

If an author passes away before publication, their name should still be included in the author list. Additionally, their contribution will be recognized in the acknowledgment section with a statement such as: "We acknowledge [Author's Name], who contributed significantly to this research but unfortunately passed away before publication. Their contributions are recognized and honored in this work."

Affiliation Changes

If an author's institutional affiliation changes during the research process, they may list either their affiliation at the time of the research or their current affiliation, or both. Any changes can be clarified in the acknowledgment section.

• Citation

  Authors are responsible for identifying and documenting relevant citations to support their work.

  Unethical practice in creating manuscript citations is a breach of our Act with Integrity policy [Journals =Editorial policies Books =Book Publishing Policies] and may result in the manuscript being rejected for publication or retracted post-publication. This may also be reported to authors’ institutions. Unethical practice includes:

  • Citation manipulation (e.g. excessive self-citation, gratuitous and unnecessary citation of content published in the journal/book series to which the manuscript has been submitted).
  • Unreliable citations (e.g. irrelevant citations, non-existent/hallucinated references generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool, improper citations to retracted works).

  Any attempts by peer-reviewers, editors or other parties to encourage unethical practices (including but not limited to requests for irrelevant or unnecessary citations) should be reported by authors to the publisher. 

  When preparing a manuscript, authors should: 

  • Use a citation to support any statement in the manuscript that relies on external sources of information (i.e. not the authors' own new ideas or findings or general knowledge).
  • Have read all cited sources and ensured that they are accurate and relevant to the statement made in the manuscript.
  • Cite the original work and not a derivation of the work (except where necessary) e.g. review article that cites an original work.
  • Aim to include citations from a diverse range of sources, and should avoid citing research from a single source e.g. from their peers, their institution, works solely from one country, etc.
  • Avoid using excessive number of citations to support one point (except where necessary).
  • Cite sources that have undergone peer review where possible.
  • Avoid citing advertisements or advertorial material (e.g. promotional and marketing materials) where possible.
  • Carefully review citations following any use of AI in manuscript preparation, including use of AI for copy-editing and translation, as the AI tool may make changes to the citation text. Use of AI to generate citations can result in non-existent/hallucinated citations.
  • Include the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of the citation’s source where possible

Contributor Statement

A contributor statement is required for all submitted manuscripts. This statement should specify:

• Author contributors (who meet the full authorship criteria)
• Non-author contributors (who provided material or advisory input but do not qualify as authors)
• Group author collaborators, if applicable
• Contributions that do not justify authorship should be clearly stated. Examples include, provided scientific guidance, critically reviewed the research proposal, or collected data