Publication Ethics

  Authors should ensure that their manuscripts contain nothing which may be regarded as of a personal nature, or is capable of being perceived as such. Correspondence should discuss the science, technical or engineering content only. Any manuscript submitted which does not follow this standard will be rejected.

  Authors must declare any conflicts of interest, which should explain why the interest may be a conflict. If there are none, the corresponding author should state “The corresponding author declares that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.”

  Authors must declare current or recent funding and other payments in the “Acknowledgments”.

 The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.

  No data have been fabricated or manipulated.

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

  Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, before the work is submitted.

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

  Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage may be justifiably warranted. A letter must accompany the revised manuscript to explain the role of the added and/or deleted author(s).

  Requests for addition or removal of authors as a result of authorship disputes after acceptance are honored after formal notification by the institute or when there is agreement between all authors. 

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, retraction of the article will occur. Please note that retraction means that the paper is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted” and explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

·      The author’s institution may be informed.