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 is original, has not been previously published, and is not currently under consideration by another journal. Any exception has been explained in the Comments to the Editor.
• The manuscript has been submitted in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx), and all supplementary files have been uploaded separately where applicable.
• The manuscript complies with the journal’s formatting requirements. Tables and figures are numbered, titled, cited in the text, and placed at the appropriate points in the manuscript.
• The manuscript complies with the stylistic and bibliographic requirements specified in the Author Guidelines, and DOI links have been provided for references wherever available.
• The manuscript has been anonymised for double-blind peer review. The authors’ names, affiliations, acknowledgements, and other identifying information have been removed from the manuscript file and its document properties.
• All listed authors have approved the submission, meet the journal’s authorship criteria, and agree with the stated order of authorship. Author contributions will be disclosed where required.
• Where applicable, the research received approval from the relevant ethics committee or institutional review board, and the approval details are provided in the manuscript. If approval was not required, this has been stated and justified.
• All potential conflicts of interest and sources of financial or institutional support have been fully disclosed in the manuscript.
• Any use of generative artificial intelligence or AI-assisted technologies in preparing the manuscript has been disclosed transparently. No AI tool has been listed as an author, and the authors accept full responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the submitted work.
• The manuscript protects participants’ privacy and personal data. Necessary permissions have been obtained for copyrighted or third-party material, and a data availability statement has been included where applicable.