Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:

• Conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
• Preparation of the original draft of the manuscript and/or critical revision of intellectual content;
• Final approval of the version to be submitted and published.

Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing of the manuscript. Once submitted, the order cannot be changed without the written consent of all the contributors and permission of the Editorial Office. The journal prescribes a maximum number of authors for manuscripts depending upon the type of manuscript, its scope, and the number of institutions involved. The authors should provide a justification if the number of authors exceeds these limits.

Ethical responsibilities of authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. The journal follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on addressing potential ethical misconducts by authors.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage trust in the journal and ultimately the entire scientific endeavor. Upon request, authors are required to prepare relevant documentation or data to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Maintaining the integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, as follows:

• 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 number 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 acknowledgments 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.

If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the Editorial Office 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 proven, 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 issued for the published article or, in severe cases, a complete retraction of the article will be initiated. Correction and retraction will be justified with reasons in the erratum and retraction note, respectively.
• The author's institution may be informed.

Changes to authorship or contributorship:

Authorship changes are typically not taken into consideration by the journal's editors after a manuscript has been submitted. The authorship list and author order should be carefully considered by the authors, and a definitive author list should be provided at the time of original submission.  

This journal's policy regarding authorship changes is as follows:

• Requests to add or delete authors before acceptance or after publication are serious matters and may be considered only after receipt of written approval from all authors and a detailed explanation about the role/deletion of the new/deleted author. The decision to accept the change rests with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.
• Authorship changes are generally permitted when the request is made before acceptance but with the journal editor's permission and on reasonable grounds. The changes may include addition, removal, or rearrangement in the author list. For published articles, any authorship change, if approved by the journal editor, will be reflected accordingly, along with publication of a Correction.
• Requests to change authorship should be made by the corresponding author, accompanied by a cover letter containing justification for the journal editors’ consideration. All authors, including those being added or removed, must confirm that they approve of the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of the author list through signing on the cover letter.