Submissions

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

• The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
• The initial submission must be in PDF format. The use of LaTeX is not mandatory, provided that the specific guidelines for each submission type are followed. For the final version, the file must be submitted in an editable format (LaTeX, DOCX, DOC, or RTF).
• All authors are correctly identified in the metadata registered into the submission system.
• URLs for references have been provided where available.
• The manuscript follows the style and bibliographic requirements described in the Author Guidelines, available on the About the Journal page.
• The manuscript follows the style and bibliographic requirements described in the Author Guidelines, available on the About the Journal page.
• The manuscript has been prepared to ensure blind peer review, meaning that no information identifying the authors (names, institutions, acknowledgments, or funding sources) is included in the text.
• All sources of funding, institutional support, and potential conflicts of interest have been properly disclosed.
• When applicable, studies involving humans or animals have been approved by an Ethics Committee, and the approval number is stated in the manuscript. If the study does not require ethics approval, this must be explicitly stated in the text (e.g., “This study did not involve humans or animals and therefore did not require Ethics Committee approval.”).
• All figures, tables, and images are numbered, captioned, and placed appropriately within the text.
• Units of measurement follow the International System (SI).
• The manuscript has been proofread for clarity, grammar, and spelling.
• Authors must submit a Cover Letter addressed to the Editor, including the title and type of the manuscript, its relevance, originality, and suitability to the scope of the journal, a description of the authors’ contributions, preferably using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), as well as, when applicable, a declaration of conflicts of interest and suggestions of potential reviewers.
• Whenever possible, authors consent to the availability of data, code, or supplementary materials, in accordance with the journal’s open data policy.