Publication in this journal is an essential building block in a coherent, respected network of knowledge, and a direct reflection of the quality of its authors and their institutions. Standards of ethical behaviour apply to all parties: authors, editors, reviewers, the publisher and society. Our ethics statements follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines. Publishing-ethics issues are treated with a zero-tolerance policy.

Author rights and publication terms

• Authors guarantee their submission is original, unpublished, not under review elsewhere, and that they hold the legal right to publish all included content.
• Authors retain copyright, and grant the publisher the right to publish, preserve and distribute the work in print and electronic form.
• Articles are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
• Authors may archive preprints and postprints in institutional or personal repositories, with proper citation of the original source.

CC BY-SA 4.0 lets anyone share and adapt the work, including commercially, provided that (1) appropriate attribution is given (author(s), article title, journal, a link to the license and an indication of any changes), and (2) adapted material is distributed under the same license. It does not cover patent, trademark or moral rights, or rights held by third parties.

Third-party material

Authors are solely responsible for obtaining permission for any third-party material (photographs, figures, maps, satellite images, screenshots, tables, illustrations not created by the author). Such material is not covered by the article's CC license unless the rights holder has explicitly granted it, and must be in the public domain, licensed for reuse in open-access publication, or accompanied by written permission. Images from search engines or social media are not acceptable proof of permission.

Warranties, removal & disclaimer

By submitting, authors warrant that all content has been cleared for publication and agree to indemnify the publisher, editors and journal against claims arising from a breach. The publisher may remove, replace or redact content if credible copyright, licensing or legal concerns are raised, and assumes no responsibility for loss arising from libel, copyright infringement, privacy violation or product liability in published articles.

The publisher, European Open Science (71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ, United Kingdom), is the data controller, and sets out here how authors' personal data is collected, used, shared, stored and secured.

• What we collect: only authors' names, surnames, affiliations and email addresses.
• How we use it: names and affiliations distinguish authors and credit their contributions; email is used solely for correspondence during submission and publication.
• Disclosure: only the publisher has access; data is not exported outside our system.
• Storage: held in our submission system, accessible to authors at any time; retention is indefinite because published articles remain permanently archived.
• Author rights: access and edit their data, be forgotten (data deleted on withdrawal request), and object to changes at galley-proof stage.

To exercise these rights, complain, or for more information, contact [email protected]. The publisher may update this policy and will notify authors via the website.

Authors are free to withdraw a manuscript at any stage by contacting the editorial office. Authors pay the APC only after a manuscript is accepted, so nothing is charged, and nothing is refundable, before then.

For an accepted article: withdraw before copyediting and production begin and the fee is refunded in full; once copyediting has begun, it is non-refundable, as the article has entered copyediting and production, and editorial resources have been committed.