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.

• The submission has not been previously published, nor it is submitted before to another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
• Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
• The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
• The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
• I confirm that the manuscript has been submitted solely to this journal and is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere, with exception that articles are permitted to be submitted to preprint servers.
• I confirm that all authors of this submission have understood the journal's licensing policy. Further information about the journal's license agreement(s) and Terms of Use can be found in the journal's Author Guidelines.
• I confirm that all the research meets the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of the study country.
• I have prepared my paper and files in accordance with the journal's style and format requirements, which are described in the Author Guidelines.
• I confirm that each of the co-authors acknowledges their participation in conducting the research leading to this manuscript and has agreed to its submission to be considered for publication.
• This manuscript and the data it contains are unpublished and original.
• This manuscript is devoid of any plagiarism with respect to ideas, data, words, graphic materials or other forms of communication (it should be less than 10%).
• Yes, all co-authors have reviewed this journal’s licensing options and, on behalf of all co-authors, I confirm that all co-authors have the full power, authority and capability (i) to agree to the terms of one of the licenses offered by this journal and (ii) to grant the rights set forth in such license for the publication of this submission.
• CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement, Grant numbers and/or funding information, Declaration of Competing Interest and Acknowledgments are added to the manuscript.
• Figures added are at least 300 pixels per inch (ppi) for colour or halftone figures and 1200 ppi if line art.
• The manuscript format should match the specifications outlined on the website.