Ethics statement

Guidelines for Editors

General Responsibilities

Editors are accountable for all content published in their journal. Editors must be ready to publish corrections and apologies when necessary.
Editors must follow transparent editorial policy. Submission guidelines and requirements for potential contributors to the journal must be published.

Conflict of Interest

Editors require authors, reviewers and editorial board members to disclose potential conflicts of interest.
Editors make decisions to accept or reject submissions based on the quality of the submission and its suitability for the journal. Editors must make sure that commercial considerations do not interfere with their editorial decisions.
Editors must make sure that non-peer-reviewed sections of the journal are clearly marked as such.

Peer-Review Practice

Editors must ensure that all research submissions are peer-reviewed. All articles are externally peer reviewed before a final decision is made about acceptance for publication.  A description of the peer review practice must be published for the benefit of potential contributors to the journal.
Editors are accountable for recruiting qualified reviewers. Editors must strive to obtain highly competent reviewers and discontinue using reviewers who consistently deliver poor quality reviews.
Editors must ensure that reviews are relevant, courteous and timely. Reviewers should judge the quality of the research and not comment on the researcher’s gender, race, beliefs and the like.

Academic Integrity

Editors and reviewers must treat all submissions under review as confidential.
Editors must protect the identity of reviewers and the identity of authors if a double-blind review process is used.
Editors must ensure that all submissions comply with ethical research standards, particularly in research involving human or animal subjects.
Editors must make sure that all submissions comply with academic integrity standards, particularly with respect to plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation and the like. Suspicions of scientific misconduct must be promptly investigated and response from authors suspected of misconduct must be sought.

Guidelines for Authors

General Responsibilities

Authors are accountable for all aspects of their research submitted for publication to a journal. Authors of a multi-author submission have joint responsibility for their research, unless stated otherwise.
Authors must promptly notify editors if they discover any errors in their research. This applies to research that has been submitted, is under review or has been published. Authors must cooperate with editors to rectify any errors.
Authors must comply with submission guidelines and requirements published by the editors. Authors are aware that failure to meet these requirements may result in rejection of their research for publication.

Conflict of Interest

Authors must disclose potential conflicts of interest.
Authors must publish all sources of their research funding, including both financial and non-financial support.
Authors must disclose their relationship to the journal, particularly when editors and reviewers seek publication in a journal that they are affiliated with.

Peer-Review Process

Authors must cooperate with editors at all stages of the publication process. Authors must notify editors if they choose to withdraw their submission at any stage of the peer-review and publication process.
Authors must respond to comments of reviewers in a relevant and timely manner. Authors must carefully check proofs supplied by editors before authorising them.

Academic Integrity

Authors must not seek publication of their research in more than one journal concurrently, unless all parties agree on co-publishing.
Authors are accountable for the soundness and honesty of their research. Authors must use appropriate methods for reporting their research and provide sufficient detail for other researchers to repeat their experiments. Authors must publish the complete results of their research and not withhold findings that are inconsistent with their hypothesis.
Authors must comply with ethical research standards, particularly in research involving human or animal subjects, and must be prepared to provide sufficient proof on request.
Authors must comply with academic integrity standards, particularly with respect to plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation and the like. Authors must appropriately quote and cite all sources used in their research and refrain from including indirect quotations from sources that they have not consulted.
Authors must obtain permission to use any third party images, figures and the like from the respective copyright holders.