Editorial Policies

Authorship is limited to those who made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of the data, who helped draft or critically revise the manuscript, and who approve the version submitted.

Everyone who meets those conditions should be listed, and everyone listed should meet them. Other contributions belong in the acknowledgments. Changes to the author list after submission require the written agreement of all authors.

Manuscripts must report work that has not been published before and is not under consideration elsewhere. Posting a preprint is compatible with submission and should be disclosed with the preprint's identifier.

Similarity reports inform a contextual editorial assessment of originality and attribution. Reuse of the authors' own earlier text must be cited like any other source.

All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.

Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.

When double-blind review is requested, editors must ensure that author-identifying information is not shared with reviewers.

Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.

Decisions remain independent of fees, services, memberships, and editorial or reviewer roles. Editors recuse themselves from decisions on their own submissions, which are handled independently by another member of the board.

Authors declare financial and non-financial interests that a reader could reasonably consider relevant to the work, including funding, employment, consultancies, patents and personal relationships. A statement appears in every published article, including one recording that no such interests exist.

Editors and reviewers disclose competing interests and withdraw from handling a manuscript where one exists.

Studies involving animals must report approval by the relevant institutional or national body and the approval reference. Fieldwork must report the permits under which it was conducted, including collection, access and protected-area permissions, and must comply with the rules governing protected, endangered and traded species.

Research on human participants must report ethical approval and informed consent. Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.

Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement. The statement identifies where the data supporting the findings can be found, or the conditions under which they are available.

Locations of endangered species, culturally sensitive sites and other information that could cause harm if released may be withheld or shared under documented restrictions; the statement should record that this is the case and how access is arranged.

Authors disclose any use of generative artificial intelligence in preparing the manuscript, naming the tool and describing what it was used for. AI tools cannot be listed as authors, and authors remain responsible for the whole of the submitted work.

Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.

Errors that affect the record are corrected through a published correction linked to the original article. Work that is invalid, or that was published in breach of these policies, is retracted through a published notice that states the reason and remains permanently linked to the article.

Corrections and retractions remain part of the published record and are listed in the archive alongside the articles they concern.

Concerns about a published article or about the conduct of the review should be sent to the editorial office with the supporting detail. Authors who wish to appeal a decision may write to the editorial office setting out the scientific grounds; the appeal is considered by an editor who was not responsible for the original decision.

Authors retain copyright. Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits redistribution and adaptation with attribution, and authors may deposit the published version in an institutional repository.

Third-party material reproduced in an article requires permission from the rights holder and a credit line identifying its source and terms.

An article processing charge applies after a manuscript has been accepted for publication. The journal's charge and the complete withdrawal terms are set out on the Article Processing Charges page.

Authors should contact the editorial office promptly and wait for written confirmation before submitting the work elsewhere.

Manuscripts withdrawn within 3 days of submission are not subject to a withdrawal charge.

Manuscripts withdrawn more than 3 days after submission incur a withdrawal charge equal to 30% of the journal's APC.

Authors must receive official withdrawal confirmation before submitting the manuscript to another journal.

Decisions remain independent of fees, services, memberships, and editorial or reviewer roles.