Authorship: According to the ICMJE recommendations, all who meet the following four criteria should be identified as authors:
Adherence to guidelines: The authors should strictly adhere to the manuscript preparation guidelines and be aware of the peer-review process.
Permission and copyright: Where relevant, it is the responsibility of the authors to obtain permission from copyright holders, and to ensure that the use of images, data and illustrations in the manuscripts do not violate copyright laws. If a copyright violation in any of the published article is brought to our attention, we will notify the author for correspondence. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to settle issues with the copyright holder.
Research and data integrity: The authors are responsible for ensuring the research was conducted in an ethical manner, data were collected and analyzed by employing appropriate scientific methods, and interpreted accurately. If required, the authors should produce raw data to the reviewers.
Acknowledgments: Where relevant, the authors should acknowledge their colleagues and sources of funding that made their research possible.
Conflict of interest: It is mandatory that the authors declare any conflicts of interest that are pertinent to their manuscript. More information on conflict of interest is given here.
Withdrawal: Authors can withdraw their manuscript at any stage until the production of the first pdf. A manuscript cannot be withdrawn after the production of the first pdf unless there is proof of scientific misconduct. If the authors insist on retracting the manuscript for any reason other than scientific misconduct, we will withdraw. However, the full publishing fee must be paid, because it costs us a lot of money to copyedit and produce the pdf. Also, removing a manuscript after the production of the pdf will incur additional costs to us to reset the Issues and page arrangements.