Submissions

Authorship: According to the COPE and ICMJE recommendations, those who meet the following criteria should be identified as authors:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Adherence to guidelines: The authors should strictly adhere to the manuscript preparation guidelines as described here, be aware of the peer review process described here, open access books licenses, copyrights, and permissions policies as stated here.

Permission and copyright: Where relevant, it is the responsibility of the authors to obtain permission from copyright holders, and to ensure that the use of images, data, and illustrations in the chapters do not violate copyright laws. It is mandatory that the authors include the following statement is their chapters:

To the best of my/our knowledge, the materials included in this article do not violate copyright laws. All sources have been appropriately acknowledged and/or referenced. Where relevant, appropriate permissions have been obtained from the original copyright holder(s).

Copyright violation: If a copyright violation in any of the published articles is brought to the attention of the publisher, the publisher will notify the author for correspondence and/or all authors of the article. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to settle issues with the copyright holder. The publisher cannot be held responsible for such copyright violations.

Research and data integrity: The authors are responsible for ensuring the research was conducted in an ethical manner, data were collected and analyzed by employing appropriate scientific methods and interpreted accurately. 

Acknowledgements: Where relevant, the authors should acknowledge their colleagues and sources of funding that made their research possible.

Conflict of interest: It is mandatory that the authors declare any conflicts of interest that are pertinent to their article(s). More information on conflict of interest is given here. If there is no conflict of interest, the authors should include the following statement:

“The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to research, authorship and/or publication of this article".