Submission guidelines

Language Editing Services

The journal's language is English. British English or American English spelling and terminology may be used, but either one should be followed consistently throughout the article.

Authors whose native language is not English are required to seek the assistance of language services or of a colleague who is a native English speaker and is familiar with the field of work before the submission.

Editing services for non-native English speakers

The following organizations provide language services to non-native speakers of English.

・Edanz Group Ltd

http://edanzediting.com/ (English and Japanese Website)

・Medical English Service

http://www.med-english.com/ (Japanese Website only)

・Diacritech Language Editing Services http://www.languageedit.com/ (English Website only)

・Write Science Right

http://www.writescienceright.com/ （English and Japanese Website）

・Genedits

http://www.genedits.com/ (English Website only）

・International Science Editing http://www.internationalscienceediting.com/jindex.html (English and Japanese Website）

The form of manuscripts should adhere precisely to the following specifications.

Editorial Policies

"Diabetology International", the official journal of the Japan Diabetes Society, publishes original research articles about experimental research and clinical studies in diabetes and related areas. The journal also presents editorials, reviews, commentaries, reports of expert committees, and case reports on any aspect of diabetes. All manuscripts are peer-reviewed to assure that high-quality information in the field of diabetes is made available to readers. Diabetology International welcomes submissions from researchers, clinicians, and health professionals throughout the world who are interested in research, treatment, and care of patients with diabetes.

Review Process

Manuscripts are reviewed with due respect for the author's confidentiality. At the same time, reviewers also have rights to confidentiality, which are respected by the editors. The journal follows a single-blind review procedure, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous. Single-blind peer review is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Manuscript Submission

Authors should submit their manuscripts online. Electronic submission substantially reduces the editorial processing and reviewing time and shortens overall publication time. Please go directly to the site https://www.editorialmanager.com/dint/ and upload all your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen. Please use the Help option to see the most recently updated system requirements.

Authors wishing to submit review articles need to send their manuscript to di_jds@kyorin.co.jp before online submission. Editor-in-Chief confirms whether the manuscripts are appropriate for the journal. Only authors with Editor-in-Chief’s permission can submit their review articles.

Author accounts

Authors entering the journal’s Editorial Manager site can either create a new account or use an existing one. When you have an existing account, use it for all your submissions; you can track their status on the same page.

If you have forgotten your username and password, please click the link “Send Username/Password” and enter your e-mail address. You will then receive an automatically generated e-mail with your username and password. Alternatively, please create a new account and then follow the instructions given on the screen.

Getting started

Once you have logged into your account, Editorial Manager will lead you through the submission process in an orderly, step-by-step process. If you cannot finish your submission in one visit, you can save a draft and re-enter the process later at the same point for that manuscript.

While submitting your electronic manuscript, you will be required to enter data about your manuscript. These include full title, author names and affiliations, and other information, as listed below under Manuscript preparation. Support for special characters is available.

Uploading files

Main Documents: Main documents of articles should be uploaded as Microsoft Word documents.

Tables: Use the table functions of your word-processing program, not spreadsheets, to create tables. Tables should be inserted into the main document.

Figures: Common graphic files such as GIF, JPEG, EPS, and TIFF are supported. Please upload figures that are satisfactory for the review process and for printing according to Artwork guidelines described in the end of this instruction.

After the components of the article have been uploaded in this manner, the system will convert the files to PDF format. You can view the result of the conversion with Adobe Acrobat Reader. You will also be notified by e-mail that your submission was successful.

At any point during this process, there are Help buttons available to see frequently asked questions.

Keeping track

After submission, you may return and monitor the progress of your submission through the review process.

Legal Requirements

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; 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.

Certification Form

A Certification Form, available at the download below, must be signed by all authors and submitted to the journal’s editorial office via Editorial Manager. A scanned file (PDF, TIFF, or JPEG) of the original signed Certification Form should be uploaded at the same time you submit your manuscript via Editorial Manager.

IMPORTANT: Upon receipt of a Certification Form, manuscripts are officially recognized as submissions.

Certification form (Download pdf, 35 kB)

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.

Ethics Policy

Diabetology International has adopted the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts (URM) established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org/). The editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the below-mentioned requirements. The author will be held responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the below-mentioned requirements.

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record.

As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

COPE

Compliance with Ethical Standards

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals.

Authors should include the following statements (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Compliance with Ethical Standards” when submitting a paper:

• Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

• Research involving Human Participants and/or Animals

• Informed consent

Please note that standards could vary slightly per journal dependent on their peer review policies (i.e. double blind peer review) as well as per journal subject discipline.

Before submitting your article check the Instructions for Authors carefully.

The corresponding author should be prepared to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

Human rights statement and informed consent

For studies with human subjects, include the following statement before the References section:

• All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and/or with the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 and later versions. Informed consent or substitute for it was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

Identifying information of patients of human subjects, including names, initials, addresses, admission dates, hospital numbers, or any other data that might identify patients should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. If any identifying information about patients is included in the article, the following sentence should also be included:

• Additional informed consent was obtained from all patients for which identifying information is included in this article.

Authors also should mention the following items in the text.

• Name of institutional or national ethical committee on human experimentation

• Date of approval

• Approval number

Animal studies

For studies with animals, include the following sentence before the References section:

• All institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

For articles that do not contain studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors, while it is not absolutely necessary, we recommend to include the following sentence, just to make sure that readers are aware that there are no ethical issues with human or animal subjects:

• This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Conflict of Interest Policy

When authors submit a manuscript, they are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias their work. To prevent ambiguity, authors must state explicitly whether potential conflicts do or do not exist. Each author must complete and submit a Conflict of interest form, and the corresponding author should submit all the Conflict of interest forms when submitting a manuscript. This form can be obtained below.

Each author must indicate whether or not they have a financial relationship with any organization that sponsored the research, or is associated with any product or procedure that is mentioned in the article. For each source of funds, both the research funder and the grant number should be given.

Conflict of interest statements should be present on every manuscript before the References section. The statements should list each author separately by name. Sample wording is as follows:

• Conflict of Interest Statement

  Author A serves as a consultant to Z (drug company name).

  Author B’s spouse is chairman of Y.

  Author C received a research grant from X.

  Author D received lecture fees from W.

  Author E holds a patent on V.

  Author F has been reimbursed by U for attending several conferences.

  Author G received honoraria for writing promotional material for T.

  Author H owns stock in S.

  Author I declares that he has no conflict of interest.

  If multiple authors declare no conflict, this can be done in one sentence:

  Author J, Author K, and Author L declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Conflict of Interest statement (Download pdf, 40 kB)

Preprint sharing

For authors who post their manuscripts on a preprint server, please follow the guideline available here: https://www.springer.com/jp/editorial-policies/preprint-sharing. Authors should disclose the details of preprint posting, including the DOI and licensing terms, upon submission of the manuscript in the cover letters.

Title page

The title page should include:

• The name(s) of the author(s)

• A concise and informative title that describes the major contents of the manuscript

• The proposed type of manuscript (review, original article, case report)

• The affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s)

• The e-mail address and telephone number of the corresponding author

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

Length of articles

Editorials: As a general rule, the text should be 1 to 2 printed pages (approx. 800–1,600 words).

Commentaries: Generally, the text should not exceed 3 printed pages (approx. 2,400 words).

Review articles: The text should not exceed 15 printed pages (approx. 12,000 words) including references, figures and tables.

Original articles: The text should not exceed 10 printed pages (approx. 8,000 words) including references, figures and tables.

Case reports: The text should not exceed 4 printed pages (approx. 3,200 words) including references with no more than two figures or tables (i.e., two figures or two tables, or one figure and one table).

Short Communications: The text should not exceed 4 printed pages (approx. 3,200 words) including references, figures and tables.

Text formatting

Manuscripts should be submitted in Microsoft Word files.

• Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.

• Use the automatic page-numbering function to number the pages.

• Do not use field functions.

• Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.

• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.

Headings

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables. Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lowercase letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

Reference citations

Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets. Some examples:

1. Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].

2. This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman [5].

3. This effect has been widely studied [1–3, 7].

Reference list

The list of references should be listed at the end of the articles and only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.

The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively.

• Journal article

Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci. 1999; 36:234–5.

• Article by DOI

Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. 2000; doi:10.1007/s001090000086

• Book

Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.

• Book chapter

Wyllie AH, Kerr JFR, Currie AR. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne GH, Danielli JF, Jeon KW, editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic; 1980. p. 251–306.

• Online document

Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry; 1999.

http://www.rsc.org/dose/ title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see

http://www.issn.org/2-22661-LTWA-online.php

Tables

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.

• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.

• For each table, please supply a table title. The table title should explain clearly and concisely the components of the table.

• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table title.

• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lowercase letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Figures

Electronic figure submission:

• Supply all figures electronically.

• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.

• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MS Office files are also acceptable.

• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line art:

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.

• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.

• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.

• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.

• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

Halftone art:

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.

• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.

• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination art:

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.

• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Color art:

• Color art is free of charge for both print and online publication.

• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure lettering:

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).

• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).

• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.

• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.

• Do not include titles or legends into your illustrations.

Figure numbering:

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.

• Figures should always be cited in the text in consecutive numerical order.

• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.). If illustrations are supplied with uppercase labeling, lowercase letters will still be used in the figure legends and citations.

• If an appendix appears in your article/chapter and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures, "A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices (Electronic supplementary Material) should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure legends:

• Each figure should have a concise legend describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the legends in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.

• Figure legends begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.

• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the legend.

• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure legend; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.

• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure legend.

Figure placement and size:

• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.

• Figures should be 39 mm, 84 mm, 129 mm, or 174 mm wide and not higher than 234 mm.

• The publisher reserves the right to reduce or enlarge figures.

Permissions: If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Electronic supplementary material

Electronic supplementary material will be published in the online version only. It may consist of

• Information that cannot be printed: animations, video clips, sound recordings

• Information that is more convenient in electronic form: sequences, spectral data, etc.

• Large original data, e.g. additional tables, illustrations, etc.

Submission:

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.

• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.

Audio, video, and animations:

• Always use MPEG-1 (.mpg) format.

Text and presentations:

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.

• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets:

• Spreadsheets should be converted to PDF if no interaction with the data is intended.

• If the readers should be encouraged to make their own calculations, spreadsheets should be submitted as .xls files (MS Excel).

Specialized formats:

• Specialized formats such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting multiple files:

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.

Numbering:

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables (e.g., ". . . as shown in Animation 3").

• Name your files accordingly, e.g., Animation3.mpg.

Legends:

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise legend describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files:

• Electronic supplementary material will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

After Acceptance

During the production phase the following issues need to be clarified and you will receive the article’s proofs.

Copyright transfer

Authors will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the Japan Diabetes Society. This will ensure the widest possible protection and dissemination of information under copyright laws.

Offprints

Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

Color illustrations

Publication of color illustrations is free of charge.

Proofreading

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Online First

The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers. After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include:

• The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The manuscript has not been published previously(partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling(“self-plagiarism”)).
• A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g. “salami publishing”).
• No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions.
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted.

  Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

• Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.

In addition:

• Changes of authorship or in the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.
• Requesting to add or delete authors at revision stage, proof stage, or after publication is a serious matter and may be considered when justifiably warranted. Justification for changes in authorship must be compelling and may be considered only after receipt of written approval from all authors and a convincing, detailed explanation about the role/deletion of the new/deleted author. In case of changes at revision stage, a letter must accompany the revised manuscript. In case of changes after acceptance or publication, the request and documentation must be sent via the Publisher to the Editor-in-Chief. In all cases, further documentation may be required to support your request. The decision on accepting the change rests with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal and may be turned down. Therefore authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, corresponding author, and order of authors at submission.
• Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc.

If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the journal will carry out an investigation following the COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. If misconduct has been established beyond reasonable doubt, this may result in the Editor-in-Chief’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either an erratum will be placed with the article or in severe cases complete retraction of the article will occur. The reason must be given in the published erratum or retraction note.
• The author’s institution may be informed.

Authorship principles

These guidelines describe authorship principles and good authorship practices to which prospective authors should adhere to.

Authorship clarified

The Journal and Publisher assume all authors agreed with the content and that all gave explicit consent to submit and that they obtained consent from the responsible authorities at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.

The Publisher does not prescribe the kinds of contributions that warrant authorship. It is recommended that authors adhere to the guidelines for authorship that are applicable in their specific research field. In absence of specific guidelines it is recommended to adhere to the following guidelines*:

All authors whose names appear on the submission

1) made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work;

2) drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content;

3) approved the version to be published; and

4) agree 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.

* Based on/adapted from:

ICMJE, Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors,

Transparency in authors’ contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication, McNutt at all, PNAS February 27, 2018

Disclosures and declarations

All authors are requested to include information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, study-specific approval by the appropriate ethics committee for research involving humans and/or animals, informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals (as appropriate).

The decision whether such information should be included is not only dependent on the scope of the journal, but also the scope of the article. Work submitted for publication may have implications for public health or general welfare and in those cases it is the responsibility of all authors to include the appropriate disclosures and declarations.

Data transparency

All authors are requested to make sure that all data and materials as well as software application or custom code support their published claims and comply with field standards. Please note that journals may have individual policies on (sharing) research data in concordance with disciplinary norms and expectations.

Role of the Corresponding Author

One author is assigned as Corresponding Author and acts on behalf of all co-authors and ensures that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately addressed.

The Corresponding Author is responsible for the following requirements:

• ensuring that all listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission, including the names and order of authors;
• managing all communication between the Journal and all co-authors, before and after publication;*
• providing transparency on re-use of material and mention any unpublished material (for example manuscripts in press) included in the manuscript in a cover letter to the Editor;
• making sure disclosures, declarations and transparency on data statements from all authors are included in the manuscript as appropriate (see above).

* The requirement of managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors during submission and proofing may be delegated to a Contact or Submitting Author. In this case please make sure the Corresponding Author is clearly indicated in the manuscript.

Author contributions

In absence of specific instructions and in research fields where it is possible to describe discrete efforts, the Publisher recommends authors to include contribution statements in the work that specifies the contribution of every author in order to promote transparency. These contributions should be listed at the separate title page.

Examples of such statement(s) are shown below:

• Free text:

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Example: CRediT taxonomy:

• Conceptualization: [full name], …; Methodology: [full name], …; Formal analysis and investigation: [full name], …; Writing - original draft preparation: [full name, …]; Writing - review and editing: [full name], …; Funding acquisition: [full name], …; Resources: [full name], …; Supervision: [full name],….

For review articles where discrete statements are less applicable a statement should be included who had the idea for the article, who performed the literature search and data analysis, and who drafted and/or critically revised the work.

For articles that are based primarily on the student’s dissertation or thesis, it is recommended that the student is usually listed as principal author:

A Graduate Student’s Guide to Determining Authorship Credit and Authorship Order, APA Science Student Council 2006

Affiliation

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may additionally be stated. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article.

Changes to authorship

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

• Please note that author names will be published exactly as they appear on the accepted submission!

Please make sure that the names of all authors are present and correctly spelled, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage are generally not permitted, but in some cases it may be warranted. Reasons for these changes in authorship should be explained. Approval of the change during revision is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. Please note that journals may have individual policies on adding and/or deleting authors during revision stage.

Author identification

Authors are recommended to use their ORCID ID when submitting an article for consideration or acquire an ORCID ID via the submission process.

Deceased or incapacitated authors

For cases in which a co-author dies or is incapacitated during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and the co-authors feel it is appropriate to include the author, co-authors should obtain approval from a (legal) representative which could be a direct relative.

Authorship issues or disputes

In the case of an authorship dispute during peer review or after acceptance and publication, the Journal will not be in a position to investigate or adjudicate. Authors will be asked to resolve the dispute themselves. If they are unable the Journal reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process or in case of a published paper raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.

Confidentiality

Authors should treat all communication with the Journal as confidential which includes correspondence with direct representatives from the Journal such as Editors-in-Chief and/or Handling Editors and reviewers’ reports unless explicit consent has been received to share information.