Submission checklist

You can use this list to carry out a final check of your submission before you send it to the journal for review. Please check the relevant section in this Guide for Authors for more details.

 

Ensure that the following items are present:

One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:

• E-mail address

• Full postal addr ess

All necessary files have been uploaded:

Manuscript:

• Include key words

• All figures (includ e relevant captions)

• All tables (including titles, description , footnotes)

• Ensure all figure and table citations in the text ma tch the files provided

• Indicate clearly if color should be used for any figures in print

Graphical Abstracts / Highlights files (where applicable)

Supplemental files (where applicable)

Further considerations

• Manuscript has been ' spell checked' and 'grammar checked'

• All references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in th e text, and vice versa

• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)

• A competing interests statement is provided, even if the authors have no competing interests to declare

• Journal policies d etailed in this guide have been reviewed

• Referee suggestions and contact details provided, based on journal requirements

Ethics in publishing

The journal and its editorial board fully adhere and comply to the policies and principles of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and this journal is a full member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Declaration of interest

All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Authors must disclose any interests in two places: 1. A summary declaration of interest statement in the title page file (if double-blind) or the manuscript file (if single-blind). If there are no interests to declare then please state this: 'Declarations of interest: none'. This summary statement will be ultimately published if the article is accepted. 2. Detailed disclosures as part of a separate Declaration of Interest form, which forms part of the journal's official records. It is important for potential interests to be declared in both places and that the information matches.

Please click here to download the author agreement form. It is mandatory to submit the author agreement to complete the submission process. Authors are requested to print the form and sign at the appropriate place provided. The scanned copy of this signed form should be uploaded to confirm the agreement.

 

Submission declaration and verification

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint, see 'Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication' section of our ethics policy for more information), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder. To verify originality, your article may be checked by the originality detection service CrossCheck.

 

Contributors

Each author is required to declare his or her individual contribution to the article: all authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so roles for all authors should be described. The statement that all authors have approved the final article should be true and included in the disclosure.

 

Changes to authorship

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.

Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the Editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the Editor will result in a corrigendum.

 

Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete an 'Exclusive License Agreement' (see more information on this). Permitted third party reuse of open access articles is determined by the author's choice of user license.

 

Author rights

As an author you (or your employer or institution) have certain rights to reuse your work. More information.

 

Elsevier supports responsible sharing

Find out how you can share your research pub lished in Elsevier journals.

 

Role of the funding source

You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.

 

Funding body agreements and policies

Elsevier has established a number of agreemen ts with funding bodies which allow authors to comply with their funder's open access policies. Some funding bodies will reimburse the author for the Open Access Publication Fee. Details of existing agreements are available online.

After acceptance, open access pa pers will be published under a noncommercial license. For authors requiring a commercial CC BY license, you can apply after your manuscript is accepted for publication.