Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.
Permissions
Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.
Online Submission
Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” on the right and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.
Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files. Failing to submit these source files might cause unnecessary delays in the review and production process.
Editorial procedure
Single-blind peer review
This journal follows a single-blind reviewing procedure. The benefit of single-blind peer review is that it is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.
Submitted manuscripts will generally be assigned to a Handling Editor. If determined to be suitable for peer review, they are assessed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. Based on the Handling Editor's recommendation on the basis of the reviews, the Editor-in-Chief will convey a decision; where necessary, he will consult with members of the Editorial Board.
Editorial members shall not be involved in processing their own academic work. Submissions authored by editorial members will be assigned to at least two independent outside reviewers. Decisions will be made by other Editorial Board Members who do not have a conflict of interest with the author. Journal staff are not involved in the processing of their own work submitted to the journal.
Title Page
Please make sure your title page contains the following information.
Title
The title should be concise and informative.
Author information
The name(s) of the author(s)
The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author
If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)
If address information is provided with the affiliation(s) it will also be published.
For authors that are (temporarily) unaffiliated we will only capture their city and country of residence, not their e-mail address unless specifically requested.
Abstract
Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.
For life science journals only (when applicable)
Trial registration number and date of registration
Trial registration number, date of registration followed by “retrospectively registered”
Keywords
Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.
Declarations
All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations'.
If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.
To be used for all articles, including articles with biological applications
