Publication Ethics

Authorship and contributions

Authorship should reflect a substantive contribution to the work, critical drafting or revision, approval of the final version, and accountability for its integrity. Contributors who do not meet all authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission.

The corresponding author should confirm that every author has approved the submitted work and disclose each person's contribution. Requests to add or remove an author after submission require an explanation and agreement from the affected authors.

Human and animal research

Studies involving people should identify the appropriate ethics review body and approval or documented exemption, and describe informed consent where applicable. Identifiable patient information or images require appropriate written consent for publication; routine study consent alone does not replace publication consent.

Animal research should state the applicable institutional approval and the standards of care followed. Authors must protect participant privacy and explain any waiver or exception.

Originality and reliable reporting

Authors should submit original work, disclose related submissions and prior dissemination, cite sources accurately, and describe methods, results and limitations without fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or image manipulation. Clinical trials should be registered in an appropriate public registry before the first participant is enrolled; authors should provide the registration identifier.

Use of AI-assisted tools in preparing text, figures, analysis or other study materials must be described where it affected the work. Such tools cannot be named as authors; human authors remain responsible for accuracy, citations, originality and privacy.

Funding and competing interests

Authors should identify funding sources, the funder's role, and financial or nonfinancial relationships that readers might reasonably consider relevant. Editors and reviewers should disclose conflicts and recuse themselves when impartial evaluation is not possible.

Confidentiality during review

Submitted manuscripts and reviews must be treated as confidential. Reviewers should not share files, use unpublished ideas, or upload manuscript material to third-party AI services without the journal's permission and adequate protection of confidentiality.

See the proposed peer-review process for editorial screening, reviewer selection and decisions.

Concerns, corrections and retractions

Concerns about published or submitted work should be assessed fairly and documented. Authors should have an opportunity to respond; the journal may seek information from a relevant institution when necessary. When the scholarly record needs repair, the appropriate outcome may be a correction, an expression of concern or a retraction, each linked to the affected article.

The verified editorial contact address and detailed reporting channel will appear before submissions open. For now, see contact status.