Digital Preservation Policy

One of the world’s leading publishers, we are fully aware of and committed to maintaining and making available in perpetuity of our published data. This commitment to preservation is taken to a higher level by the publisher – as part of a contract with Portico, one of the world’s leading digital preservation services. Under the agreement, all articles published in the journal will be securely archived in the Portico digital preservation system in a secure manner. A trigger event will be initiated in the event that the journal is discontinued in print or that its content becomes unavailable, and in the case of such failure, Portico will be able to initiate release of archived content into its network of participating libraries and institutions. The scholarly works become permanently available to the world community of scholars and the scientific record of researchers and scientists.

The journal is also part of the CLOCKSS archive, a digital preservation archive for scholarly works. Under the terms of CLOCKSS, scholarly published content is made available for long-term preservation – including if the journal disappears – and in such a situation the CLOCKSS will trigger open access to the preserved material, thereby safeguarding the availability and integrity of the scientific record.

Conflict of interest

Authors should avoid entering into agreements with study sponsors, both for-profit and non-profit, that interfere with authors’ access to all of the study’s data or that interfere with their ability to analyze and interpret the data and to prepare and publish manuscripts independently when and where they choose.

All authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include but are not limited to financial interests (such as membership, employment, consultancies, stocks/shares ownership, honoraria, grants or other funding, paid expert testimonies and patent-licensing arrangements) and non-financial interests (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, personal beliefs).

Authors will disclose potential conflicts of interest via the online submission system during the submission process. The corresponding author must include a summary statement in the manuscript in a separate section “Conflicts of Interest” placed just before the reference list. The statement should reflect all the collected potential conflict of interest disclosures in the form.

See below for examples of disclosures:

Conflicts of Interest: Author A has received research grants from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X and owns stocks in Company Y. Author C has been involved as a consultant and expert witness in Company Z. Author D is the inventor of patent X.

If no conflicts exist, the authors should state:

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.