Declaration and Verification
An Author Declaration is a mandatory part of the submission process. This Declaration must cover a number of logistic and ethical issues, which are described below. A covering letter should be prepared by authors explaining their view to cover all items in the declaration section.
Corresponding Author
The name, address, and valid email address of the corresponding author. The Corresponding Author is the person who is responsible for the manuscript as it moves through the journal’s submission process. This person must be registered with the Editorial Manager, as all correspondence pertaining to the manuscript will be sent to him/her via the system. The Corresponding Author is the person responsible for making any edits/submitting revisions to the manuscript and is the only author who may view the progress of the manuscript as it moves from one stage to the next. He/she is responsible for communicating with the other authors about progress, revisions, and final approval of the proofs and is the only authorized contact with the Editorial Office.
Redundant or Duplicate Publication
A redundant or duplicate publication is a publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published. If the redundant or duplicate publication is attempted or occurs without notification to the Editor, authors should expect editorial action to be taken.
When submitting a paper, the author should always make a full statement to the editor about all submissions and previous papers that might be regarded as redundant or duplicate publications of the same or very similar work. The author should alert the editor if the work includes subjects about which a previous paper has been published. Any such work should be referred to and referenced in the new paper. Copies of such material, including papers in press, should be included with the submitted paper to assist the editor in determining how to handle the matter.
Authorship
It is required that the Author Declaration be signed by all authors. All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. The corresponding author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article.
Authorship credit should be based only on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions 1, 2, and 3 must all be met.
The order of authorship on the by-line is a matter for the institution (s) and must be agreed upon by all named authors prior to submission.
Addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in an accepted manuscript’s authorship
Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Journal Manager from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include:
(a) The reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged.
(b) Written confirmation (email, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal, or rearrangement. In the case of the addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.
Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded on by the Journal Manager to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above.
Note that:
Journal managers will inform the Editors of any such requests
A publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed
After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue,
Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.
Conflict of Interest
Author conflict of interest for a given manuscript exists when an author has ties to activities that could inappropriately influence his or her judgment, whether or not judgment is in fact affected. Financial relationships with industry are usually considered to be the most important conflicts of interest.
When submitting the manuscript, authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and other conflicts of interest that might bias their work. They should acknowledge in the manuscript all financial support for the work and other financial or personal connections to the work. If there are no such conflicts or financial support to acknowledge, the authors should declare this by the following statement: The authors confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.
Ethical Issues
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institution's or a national research council's guide for or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983.
This means that the authors must make a clear statement that the laws which apply to them in their own country were followed. This is best done as a statement under the section Materials & Methods.
Acknowledgments
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship, such as a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support should be listed in the acknowledgments. Financial and material support should also be recognized by the acknowledgments.
Impact Statement
Authors are encouraged to include in their covering letter a statement of their understanding of the importance and impact of their work. This should not be speculating on vague possibilities for clinical use, but a precise statement relating to the underlying science. A concise statement of this impact should be included at the end of the Abstract.