Ethics Statement

The journal adheres to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/).

Allegations of misconduct
This journal takes any allegations of misconduct seriously. In case the reader believes in an ethical issue with the published manuscript, contancting the editor is neccessary.

Complaints and appeals
The journal’s authorship and contributorship have clear policies about it’s transparency. However, if there is a complaint regarding the journal, editorial board, or Publisher, please do not hesitate to contact the editor.
If the author discovers an important error or an inaccuracy in its publication, its obligation is to quickly inform the editor and to consider, in agreement with the person in charge, the withdrawal of the article or the publication of the information about the error.

Conflicts of interest / Competing interests
All authors must indicate conflicts of interest that may affect their proposed publication. All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘competing interests’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no competing interests”.
Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.
Funding for research projects that made the study possible must be indicated.

Data and reproducibility
• The journal’s data sharing policy strongly encourage that data generated by your research that supports your article be made available as soon as possible, wherever possible.
• We encourage you to make available as much of the underlying data from your article as possible (without compromising participant privacy), but at least the minimum data required to reproduce the results presented in the associated article.
• While data sharing is not mandatory in our journal, we reserve the right to request at any time confidential access to any primary data needed to reproduce the article so that the results reported can be verified.
• The journal encourages authors to cite any publicly available research data in their reference list. References to datasets must include a persistent identifier. We encourages research data to be made available under open licences that permit reuse freely.

Ethical oversight
All journal’s contributions must follow The TRUST Code (Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings)
Research involving human participants, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee.

Intellectual property
Authors must ensure that they have written a completely original study, and if they have used other people’s books or statements, they must be properly cited.

Peer review processes
Each article is reviewed by two external independent peers to ensure validity, originality and high quality content. Reviewers are aware of the authors‘ names, but the reviewers‘ names are unknown to the authors. Based on the reviewers‘ reports, the final decision will be made by members of the Editorial Board.

Post-publication discussions and corrections
Any post-publication discussions and corrections are allowed via contacting the editor.

Guidelines for Editors

General Responsibilities

The editors are accountable for all content published in their journal. The editors must be ready to publish corrections and apologies when necessary.

The editors must follow a transparent editorial policy. Submission guidelines and requirements for potential contributors to the journal must be published.

Conflicts of Interest

The editors require authors, reviewers and editorial board members to disclose potential conflicts of interest.

The editors make decisions to accept or reject submissions on the basis of the quality of the submission and its suitability for the journal. The editors must make sure that commercial considerations do not interfere with their editorial decisions.

The editors must make sure that non-peer-reviewed sections of the journal are clearly marked as such.

Academic Integrity

Editors and reviewers must treat all submissions under review as confidential.

The editors must protect the identity of reviewers and the identity of authors if a double-blind review process is used.

The editors must ensure that all submissions comply with ethical research standards, particularly in research involving human or animal subjects.

The editors must make sure that all submissions comply with academic integrity standards, particularly with respect to plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation and the like. Suspicions of scientific misconduct must be promptly investigated and a response from authors suspected of misconduct must be sought.

Guidelines for Reviewers

Any manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such; they must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor-in-Chief (who would only do so under exceptional and specific circumstances). This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that is an observation, derivation or argument that has been reported in previous publications should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge.

Any invited referee who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the authors. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Guidelines for Authors

General Responsibilities

Authors are accountable for all aspects of their research submitted for publication to the journal. Authors of a multi-author submission have joint responsibility for their research, unless stated otherwise.

Authors must promptly notify the editors if they discover any errors in their research. This applies to research that has been submitted, is under review or has been published. Authors must cooperate with the editors to rectify any errors.

Authors must comply with submission guidelines and requirements published by the editors. Authors are aware that failure to meet these requirements may result in rejection of their research for publication.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose potential conflicts of interest.

Authors must publish all sources of their research funding, including both financial and non-financial support.

Authors must disclose their relationship to the journal, particularly when editors and reviewers seek publication in a journal that they are affiliated with.

Academic Integrity

Authors must not seek publication of their research in more than one journal concurrently, unless all parties agree on co-publishing.

Authors are accountable for the soundness and honesty of their research. Authors must use appropriate methods for reporting their research and provide sufficient detail for other researchers to repeat their experiments. Authors must publish the complete results of their research and not withhold findings that are inconsistent with their hypothesis.

Authors must comply with ethical research standards, particularly in research involving human or animal subjects, and must be prepared to provide sufficient proof on request.

Authors must comply with academic integrity standards, particularly with respect to plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation and the like. Authors must appropriately quote and cite all sources used in their research and refrain from including indirect quotations from sources that they have not consulted.

Authors must obtain permission to use any third party images, figures and the like from the respective copyright holders.