Digestive Diseases
Guidelines
About the Journal
Aims and Scope
Digestive Diseases publishes original reports and review articles that describe the most recent advances in diagnostic methods and treatment options for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract and the hepatopancreatobiliary system. The journal also covers related topics such as microbiota, nutrition and probiotics, endoscopy, and imaging. Providing information about the latest clinical evidence and their application in patient care, Digestive Diseases is an invaluable source of information for clinicians, specialists, and physicians in training.Journal Sections
Esophagus
Functional Gastrointestinal Diseases
Stomach and Duodenum
Small and Large Bowel
Liver
Pancreas
Microbiota
Endoscopy and Imaging
Nutrition and Probiotics
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Endoscopy and Imaging
Manuscript should describe a novel endoscopy or imaging technique and
be supported by a video (max. 5 Gb) or high quality images that demonstrate the endoscopic procedure.
The manuscript should include the rationale for the procedure and a detailed description of the
procedure including the equipment used.
Manuscript length should be maximum 1,500 words excluding a
maximum of 15 references. Videos larger than 20 Mb must be sent to the editorial office
(editorialoffice_ddi@karger.com) via a large file sharing service.
The videos should contain a title
and a legend that describes the different steps of the endoscopic procedure.
If the videos and images
have previously been presented at a scientific congress or workshop, the authors should describe in the
cover letter the context of the presentation. Brand and congress names or logos should not be present on
the video. The authors should strictly disclose their conflicts of interest as well as the financial
support that the congress or workshop has received.
Article Types
Research Article
Research Articles report on primary research. They must describe significant and
original observations. Consideration for publication is based on the article’s originality, novelty, and
scientific soundness, and the appropriateness of its analysis.
Research Articles are reports of
original work. Authors are asked to follow the EQUATOR Network for Research Articles.
Prior approval from an Institutional
Review Board (IRB) or an Ethics Review Committee is required for all investigations involving human
subjects.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Research Article (DOCX, 39 KB)
Research articles should not exceed 4,000 words, excluding up to 6 tables or figures and up to 60 references.
Abstracts have a word limit of 250 and should be structured as follows: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusion.
Basic science articles should provide a strong translational aspect and, ideally, include original human data. The journal does not encourage the submission of manuscripts presenting in vitro or in silico research only.
Review Article
Review Articles are considered reviews of research or summary articles. They are state-of-the-art papers covering a current topic by experts in the field. They should give evidence on and provide answers to a well-defined aspect or question in a particular area. Review Articles must include a critical discussion of the reported data and give a clear conclusion with potential impacts on the standard of care.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Review Article (DOCX, 32 KB)
The maximum length of a Review article should be 3,500 words including abstract and discussion, excluding figure legends and references.
Abstracts have a word limit of 200 and should be structured as follows: Background, Summary, Key Messages.
Systematic Review
Systematic Reviews are literature reviews focused on a research question that synthesizes all high-quality research evidence relevant to that question. Systematic Reviews should be presented in the Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion format. The subject must be clearly defined. The objective of a Systematic Review should be to arrive at an evidence-based conclusion. The Methods section should give a clear indication of the literature search strategy, data extraction procedure, grading of evidence, and kind of analysis used. We strongly encourage authors to comply with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Systematic Review (DOCX, 37 KB)
Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses should not exceed 4,000 words, excluding up to 6 tables or figures and up to 100 references.
Brief Report
Brief Reports are short and/or rapid announcements of research results. They must contain data derived from cutting-edge research and be of potential interest to a large proportion of the readership. They are independent, concise reports representing a significant contribution to the field. Such communications should represent complete, original studies and should be arranged in the same way as full-length manuscripts with subheadings.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Brief Report (DOCX, 36 KB)
Commentary
Documents
Commentary (DOCX, 33 KB)
Editorial
Editorials provide a viewpoint on specific articles or on general subjects directly relevant to the journal. Editorials are written by an editor or other member of the journal.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Editorial (DOCX, 34 KB)
The maximum length of an Editorial should be 500 words.
Letter
Letters may explore subjects related to matters discussed in the journal, providing the author’s perspective on a subject. Letters may discuss a recently published article and may lend support or constructively critique the article in line with the author’s experience. The editors reserve the right to share such letters to the authors of the article concerned prior to publication in order to permit response, ideally in the same issue of the journal. Letters should not include original data.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Letter (DOCX, 33 KB)
Letters must not exceed 2000 words and have a maximum of 15 references and one figure or table.
Guidelines
Guidelines are statements intended to guide clinical care. They should describe the clinical problem to be addressed, the mechanism by which the statement was generated, a review of the evidence for the statement and the statement on practice itself.
A downloadable template is available below.
Documents
Guidelines (DOCX, 33 KB)
Contact Information
Should you have any problems with your submission, please contact the editorial office:Editorial Office Digestive Diseases
S. Karger AG
P.O. Box
CH-4009 Basel
Email:
editorialoffice_ddi@karger.com
Editorial and Journal Policies
Getting Started
When preparing a manuscript, it is important to review the editorial policies. For full details, please visit the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page. Karger Publishers is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Karger journals aim to adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines.
The presentation of manuscripts should follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). We recommend preparing the manuscript using the dedicated article template for the manuscript type.
Only papers written in English are considered. The articles should be comprehensible to a reader who is fluent in English and should be edited prior to submission to ensure that standard English grammar and usage are observed. Use of a professional language editing service prior to submission can help avoid delays with the review process.
Karger recommends the use of original images and materials whenever possible. If a submitted manuscript contains third-party copyright material(s), it is the authors’ sole responsibility to obtain permission from the relevant copyright holder for reusing the material(s), including any associated licensing fee. The copyright and usage information needs to be checked carefully to avoid copyright infringement. The author(s) is and will remain personally liable for any copyright infringements.
Most publishers offer a quick and easy way to clear permissions for their content via the built-in website application RightsLink or via https://www.copyright.com/get-permissions/. Another widely used licensing tool is PLSClear. Please check the publishers’ websites for the available options and user instructions.
The authors agree that their name, affiliation with their institution and contact details will be available to third parties after the article has been published. Those third parties may be placed within or outside of the European Economic Area.
Research and Publication Ethics
When preparing a manuscript, it is important to review the editorial policies, including those on research ethics, consent, conflict of interest, data sharing and citation, text reuse and plagiarism, reproducibility and more. For full details, please visit the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page.
Karger Publishers is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Karger journals aim to adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. Our policies on reporting and investigation of suspected misconduct in manuscripts and articles and how we handle potential errors in published articles can be found on the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page. Concerns regarding a manuscript in review or a published article should be raised to the Research Integrity and Publication Ethics team at Publication Ethics.
Statements
All submitted manuscripts must contain a statements section after the main body of the text, but before the reference list. A summary of the required information is given below, for full details please refer to the article templates and visit the Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies page.
Statement of Ethics
The Statement of Ethics must provide detail about the ethical approval process for the study reported in the manuscript, including the name and affiliation of the committee who approved the study and the decision reference number. For studies involving human participants, information must be provided about the consent provided to participate in the study. If information is included in the submission that may identify and individual or groups of individuals, specific consent to publish this information must be obtained and reported in the Statement of Ethics.
For complete information on our policies on Studies Involving Human Subjects, Identifiable Materials or Data or Studies Involving Animals, please see here.
Conflict of Interest Statement
Authors are required to disclose any relationship that could be perceived as a conflict of interest in the Conflict of Interest Statement. All forms of support and financial involvement which took place in the previous three years should be listed, regardless of their potential relevance to the paper. Nonfinancial relationships that may potentially influence the writing of the manuscript should also be declared. If there is no potential conflict of interest to report, please state this.
For complete information on our Conflict of Interest policy, please see here.
Funding Sources
Authors must give full details about the funding of any research relevant to their study, including sponsor names, written in full providing any associated grant numbers, and explanation of the roles of these funders in the study design, execution and analysis, and manuscript conception, planning, writing and decision to publish. If the sponsor or funder had no role in any of the above or if no funding was received for the study, please state this.
For complete information on our Funding Sources policy, please see here.
Author Contributions
In the Author Contribution statement, a short statement detailing the contributions of each person named as an author should be included. The CRediT taxonomy is a useful framework for preparing this section. Contributors to the submission who do not fulfil the ICMJE Criteria for Authorship should be credited, with their consent, in the Acknowledgement section.
For complete information on our Authorship and Contributorship policy, please see here.
Data Availability Statement
Authors are required to provide a Data Availability Statement that details whether data are publicly available and where the data supporting their study can be accessed. The journal’s data sharing policy strongly encourages authors to make all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to editors, reviewers and readers without unnecessary restriction wherever possible. In cases where research data are not publicly available on legal or ethical grounds, this should be clearly stated along with any conditions for accessing the data.
For complete information about our Data Sharing policy, please see here.
Further Conditions
Early View
Accepted papers are published online in the unedited, original manuscript version within a few days of acceptance, subject to the authors accepting and confirming applicable conditions of publication, including publication charges. The Early View version will be replaced by the version of record once available.
Peer Review
Peer Review Policy
All Karger journals employ a rigorous peer-review process to confirm the validity and ensure scientific accuracy of published articles. Independent researchers with relevant expertise assess submitted manuscripts to help journal editors determine whether a manuscript should be published in their journal. All articles, except for Editorials and some Correspondence articles, are externally peer reviewed, typically by at least two individuals with expertise in the manuscript content area and/or research methods, before a final decision is made about acceptance for publication.
Peer Review Type and Process
Digestive Diseases uses a single-blind peer review system where reviewers know the names of the authors, but the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript. For full details, including information about peer review policies and appeals process, please visit the Peer review – Karger Publishers page.
Article Preparation
Formatting
- The preferred word processing program for manuscripts is Microsoft Word. Page and line numbering should be activated, and the level of subheadings should be indicated clearly.
- Footnotes should be avoided. When essential, they should be numbered consecutively and appear at the foot of the appropriate page.
- Abbreviations (with the exception of those clearly well established in the field) should be explained when they are first used both in the abstract and in the main text.
- Units of measurement should be expressed in SI units wherever possible.
- Generic names of drugs (first letter: lowercase) should be used whenever possible. Registered trade names (first letter: uppercase) should be marked with the superscript registration symbol ® or ™ when they are first mentioned.
- The manuscript text, tables and figures must be submitted in separate files. Figure legends should be included at the end of manuscript text, not in the figure file. Table headers should be included above or below the table in the table file.
For full technical specifications, including those regarding tables, figures, and illustrations, please refer to Karger’s Technical Instructions to Publish a Paper.
Further Formatting Instructions
Documents
Graphical Abstract
A graphical abstract may be submitted together with the manuscript. It will also be peer-reviewed for online publication next to the abstract text. It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure its quality, resolution and accuracy. The graphical abstract should summarize the main findings of the article in a concise, clear and pictorial form, by means of a single figure designed to capture the content of the article for readers at a single glance. Examples of published graphical abstracts can be found in Rodriguez et al., J Vasc Res 23 March 2023; 60 (1): 1–11. (https://doi.org/10.1159/000529115) and Chapp et al., 2023 Neuroendocrinology 2023 (https://doi.org/10.1159/000530591).
The graphical abstract must be submitted as a single image file in jpg format, with a maximum size of 32 x 14 cm, conforming to 4800 (max) x 2100 pixels, at 300 dpi. The font should be Arial at 9–12 points for any text it may contain within the image. Please use the Sampler above to see if your image fits the available white space. The width of the available white area should be used as much as possible.
Graphical Abstract Sampler (PPTX, 62.99 KB)
Plain Language Summary
A plain language summary may be submitted for Research Articles and Review Articles. The summary should not exceed 250 words and be written in plain English avoiding the use of technical language. If a technical term must be used, then authors must explain it the first time that it is used. The summary must be distinct from the abstract and provide readers with an easy-to-understand description of the manuscript. Authors should avoid the use of personal opinions and/or speculation on the results of the manuscript. No page charges will be incurred by the inclusion of the plain language summary. Use neither bibliographic references nor references to figures or tables in the summary.
Documents
Plain Language Summary Template (DOCX, 20.59 KB)
Manuscript Arrangement
Title Page
The first page should contain a short and concise title plus a running head of no more than 80 characters. Abbreviations should be avoided.
Below the title, list all the authors’ names as outlined in the article sample, which can be downloaded under Article Types. Each listed author must have an affiliation, which comprises the department, university, or organization and its location, city, state/province (if applicable), and country.
Corresponding author information: Please supply the first and last name as well as an e-mail address at the bottom of the title page.
Keywords relevant to the article should be listed below the corresponding author information.
Body
Please refer to the Article Types section of the Guidelines for Authors for information on the relevant article structure, including maximum word counts and downloadable samples.
References
In-Text Citation
References in the text should be identified sequentially using Arabic numerals [in square brackets].
Reference List
The reference list should include only those publications which are cited in the text, arranged numerically in the order in which they are cited. Please number the reference list as shown below (i.e., without using full stops, brackets, etc.). The authors’ surnames should be followed by their initials with no punctuation other than a comma to separate individual authors. A maximum of 6 authors should be listed (followed by “et al.” if there are more than 6 authors). Material submitted for publication but not yet accepted should be referred to as “unpublished data” and should not be included in the reference list. Other pre-published or related materials with a DOI, e.g. preprint manuscripts, datasets, and code, may be included. More information on good referencing practice, as well as further examples, can be found in National Library of Medicine Style Guide for Authors.
Examples
Articles published in journals: 1 Sawant KV, Xu R, Cox R, Hawkins H, Sbrana E, Kolli D, et al. Chemokine CXCL1-mediated neutrophil trafficking in the lung: role of CXCR2 activation. J Innate Immun. 2015;6(7):647–58. (Journal names should be abbreviated according to the Index Medicus.)
Articles published only with DOI number: 2 Chen C, Hu Z. ApoE polymorphisms and the risk of different subtypes of stroke in the Chinese population: a comprehensive meta-analysis. Cerebrovasc Dis. DOI: 10.1159/000442678.
Monographs: 3 Matthews DE, Farewell VT. Using and understanding medical statistics. 5th ed, revised. Basel: Karger; 2015.
Edited Books: 4 Cohen SR, Gardner TW. Diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema. In: Nguyen QD, Rodrigues EB, Farah ME, Mieler WF, Do DV, editors. Retinal pharmacotherapeutics. Dev Ophthalmol. Basel: Karger; 2016. Vol. 55; p. 137–46.
Websites: 5 Karger Publishers [Internet]. Basel: Transforming Vesalius: The 16th-Century Scientific Revolution Brought to Life for the 21st Century [cited 2013 Feb 4]. Available from: https://www.vesaliusfabrica.com/en/new-fabrica.html.
Figures and Tables
The figure legend should be placed at the end of the article, after the reference list. The figure legend should not be part of the figure file. Tables require a heading above or below the table in the table file. For more details please download the relevant article template from the section “Article Types”.
Online Supplementary Material
Online Supplementary Material may be used to enhance a publication and increase its visibility on the Web. Supplementary files (directly relevant but not essential to the conclusions of the paper) will undergo editorial review and should be submitted in a separate file with the original manuscript and with all subsequent submissions. The Editor(s) reserve(s) the right to limit the scope and length of supplementary material. Supplementary material must meet production quality standards for publication without the need for any modification or editing. For ease of reader access, we strongly recommend that files be less than 10 MB. Authors wishing to associate larger amounts of supplementary material with their article should deposit their data in an appropriate public data repository. Figures must have legends and tables require headings. All files must be named clearly. Acceptable files and formats are Word or PDF files, Excel spreadsheets (if the data cannot be converted properly into a PDF file), and multimedia files (MPEG, AVI, or QuickTime formats). All supplementary material should be referred to in the main text. A DOI number will be assigned to supplementary material, and it will be hosted online at https://karger.figshare.com under a CC BY license.
Author Services
Karger Publishers offer a range of services to assist authors with the preparation of their manuscript, including discounts for language editing services offered by third parties.
More information is available on the Author Resources section of the Karger homepage.
When submitting a manuscript, authors can add their ORCID number to their Karger account to ensure that their paper is accredited to them correctly.
Cost of Publication
Page Charges/Article Processing Charges
Karger has established Transformative Agreements with many consortia and institutions that include full or partial coverage of the Article Processing Charges (APCs) and/or the Author’s Choice Open Access publication fees. Authors affiliated with those institutions can publish Open Access in all Karger journals and comply with Open Access mandates without incurring any additional costs or with reduced APCs. Find out if your open access charges are covered by an agreement under Publish & Access - Transformative Agreements
Please note that adherence to word limits indicated in previous paragraphs does not guarantee exemption from page charges. Pages charges are calculated based on the final character counts (with spaces) in the main manuscript and all associated tables. Figures and illustrations are counted at a fixed rate of 2000 characters per item. Online supplementary material are not charged. Manuscripts with up to 20,000 character count equivalent do not incur a charge. Each increment of 5000 character count equivalent above that limit will be charged at CHF 365 / USD 410 / EUR 410.
Please note that an automatic calculation system for page charges was introduced in mid-2023. Please do get in touch with the editorial office of the journal if you have any questions.
Online Supplementary Material
We strongly encourage authors to make all the datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript are based available. Online supplementary material is hosted for free with a published article. For ease of reader access, we strongly recommend that files be less than 10 MB. Authors wishing to associate larger amounts of supplementary material with their article should deposit their data in an appropriate public data repository.Illustration Charges
Author's Choice
Karger Publisher’s Author’s Choice™ service broadens the reach of your article and gives all users worldwide free and full access for reading, downloading, and printing at karger.com. The option is available for a one-time fee, which is a permissible cost in grant allocation. More information can be found at karger.com/authors_choice. For a fee of CHF 2,700.00 / USD 3,000.00 / EUR 3,000.00, the final, published version of the article may be posted at any time and in any repository or on other websites, in accordance with the relevant Creative Commons license as well as the current Karger self-archiving policy for Open Access articles. Karger supplies all articles to PubMed Central for indexing.After Acceptance and Sharing Policies
Copyediting and Proofs
Manuscripts accepted for publication by Karger Publishers will undergo basic proofreading to check for obvious spelling and grammar mistakes. If you would prefer a more in-depth language editing service to improve clarity and style, please consult a service provider prior to submission. Please note that the use of a language editing service before submission is not a requirement for publication in the journal and does not guarantee that the manuscript will be considered for peer review or accepted.
Karger Publishers’ house style is based on internationally recognized standard manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style.
Proof Central
An email containing a link to access the proofs will be sent to the contact author. The authors should check the document and respond to any questions that have been raised during copyediting within 48 hours. A provisional PDF can be viewed for an impression of the final layout of the manuscript.
Corrections to the text and tables should be made directly in the template. Changes to figures are discouraged but can be indicated with comments. Final layout and typesetting take place at a later stage.
Alterations made to proofs, other than the correction of errors introduced during production, are subject to review and may require editorial approval which could delay the publication of your manuscript
Please note that the revised proofs are not sent to the authors prior to typesetting and online publication unless there are exceptional circumstances. The article layout will be created according to the Karger standard.
DOI Number
A DOI number will be available as a unique identifier on the title page of each article. DOIs are useful for identifying and citing articles published online without volume or issue information (for more information, see www.doi.org).Online First Publication
All articles are published electronically ahead of print with a DOI number and are supplemented later with the definite reference to the printed version. The articles become available immediately after the authors’ approval to print.Licenses and Copyright
Archiving and Self-Archiving
All articles are archived in Portico. Articles may also be archived in PubMed Central if the journal is indexed there. Karger supports Green Open Access and permits authors to archive their Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM, i.e., accepted manuscripts after peer review but before production; also referred to as a postprint) on their personal home page or institution’s repository, provided that these are not used for commercial purposes, are linked to the publisher’s version, and acknowledge the publisher’s copyright. Preprints may be shared without restriction.
In addition, authors may post their accepted manuscripts in public Open Access repositories and scientific networks no earlier than 12 months following publication of the final version of their article. The posted manuscripts must:
1. Be used for noncommercial purposes only
2. Be linked to the final version on karger.com and include the following statement:
"This is the peer-reviewed but unedited manuscript version of the following article: [insert full citation, e.g., Cytogenet Genome Res 2014;142:227–238 (DOI: 10.1159/000361001)]. The final, published version is available at http://karger.com/?doi=[insert DOI number]."
It is the authors’ responsibility to fulfill these requirements.
For papers published online first
with a DOI number only, full citation details must be added as soon as the paper is published in its final
version. This is important to ensure that citations can be credited to the article.
To facilitate
compliance with Coalition S/Plan S Open Access mandates, Karger permits authors, independently and without
Karger`s action, to upload a copy of their Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAM), applying a CC BY license, to a
repository designated by their Plan S funders. However, when an article is published as Open Access, the
Version of Record should be archived instead of the AAM. The AAM may be made freely available in the archive
upon the official, final publication of the article (Version of Record or VOR, i.e. the post-production,
final article version). Manuscripts to be archived in PubMed Central (PMC) due to NIH funding
requirements or that have been published Open Access under Author’s Choice™ will be submitted by Karger on
the authors’ behalf, as outlined under Funding Organizations.
Articles published as Open Access under
Author’s Choice may be shared freely on any repository or website. Re-posted Open Access articles must
follow the terms of the relevant Creative Commons license. To ensure citations are credited to the Version
of Record, Karger encourages authors to link to the published article on karger.com and include the
following statement: "The Version of Record of this article is available at
http://karger.com/?doi=[insert DOI number](e.g. http://karger.com/?doi=10.1159/000365070)."
Karger
policies on Open Access, licensing and self-archiving can also be found at Sherpa Romeo.
Funding Organizations
If the authors are affiliated with an organization that has an Open Access agreement with Karger, the authors are prompted during submission to select from a list of these organizations. By choosing one of the listed organizations, eligibility can then be assessed.NIH-Funded Research
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy mandates that AAMs must be archived in its digital database PubMed Central (PMC) within 12 months of the official publication date. As a service to authors, Karger Publishers submits the accepted, unedited version of NIH-funded manuscripts to PMC upon publication, where it is made available after a 12-month embargo period. Where the authors have chosen to make their paper freely available under Karger’s Author’s Choice™ service, this embargo does not apply.
Plan S
Karger approves authors, independently and without Karger`s action, to make their AAMs openly available in PMC or another repository under a CC BY license upon publication of the Version of Record (VOR, i.e post-production, final article version). However, when an article is published as Open Access, the Version of Record should be archived instead of the AAM. Some Coalition S funders, such as Wellcome Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and FWF, designate PMC as the repository in which to make the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) openly available. For papers made Open Access via Author's Choice, Karger will deposit the article in PMC on the author’s behalf with a CC BY license. Authors should refer to their funders’ policies for details. Authors should check their funders’ requirements about how to declare their funding and any associated mandates within their manuscript.
Karger publishes some journals under the Transformative Journals model, compliant with Plan S. Find more information about Transformative Journals on the Karger website.
Other Funding Sources
Karger Publishers also complies with other funders’ requirements for submission to PMC. In some cases, doing so requires that authors select Author’s Choice™, which is generally reimbursed by the funder or is a permissible cost in the grant. Authors should include information on their grants in the Funding Sources section of their papers.
More information on funding sources can be found on the Karger website.
Submission
Cover Letter
In your cover letter, please describe the gap in knowledge that this manuscript addresses, and discuss the implications, significance and novelty of your research for the Editor. Furthermore, please emphasize the unique and important contributions that your manuscript makes to our understanding of the field. If your submission is part of a special issue of the journal, please refer to the specific name of the special issue in your cover letter and specify who invited the submission where appropriate.
Manuscript Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online via the Digestive Diseases submission and peer review system by the manuscript’s corresponding author. The corresponding (submitting) author will automatically be the contact person for the manuscript for the peer review and production process. For fee payment and license signing, the contact author will be the first listed corresponding author.
The corresponding (submitting) author is solely responsible for managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors and acts on behalf of all listed authors. This ensures that all correspondence reaches a unique contact and thereby secures swift communication in particular throughout the submission, peer review and production process. Articles can be published with more than one corresponding author (usually limited to three), but only the submitting author can be accommodated during the submission, peer review and production process.
The corresponding (submitting) author’s specific responsibilities include:
- Ensuring all the listed authors have approved the manuscript submission to the journal and agreed to all of the content including the author list, including the Submission Declaration
- Handling the revision(s) and re-submission(s) of the manuscript until acceptance
- After acceptance, manuscript proof reading and approving the final proof
- Acting as the point of contact for queries about the published article. It is their responsibility to inform all co-authors of any matters arising in relation to the published article including questions relating to publication ethics, availability of data, materials, etc.
Where there are multiple corresponding authors, the first listed corresponding author’s specific responsibilities include:
- Upon acceptance, ensuring that all listed authors agree to the license agreement
- Arranging for payment of Page Charges/Article Processing Charges where required. The affiliation of the corresponding author will be used to determine eligibility for discounted or waived charges including discounted or waived APCs under read and publish/offsetting/OA agreements
Please note that the author names entered into the manuscript submission and peer review system should be identical to the information presented on the title page of the manuscript, including the sequence of authorship. The author names submitted should reflect the official publication names. It is the submitting (corresponding) author’s responsibility to ensure the accuracy of all content in the proof, including the names of co-authors, addresses and affiliations.
Before submission, please read the Submission Guidelines in full for specific requirements for manuscript preparation.
Submission Declaration
The submitting author will submit, on behalf of all authors, their manuscript for potential publication after full peer-review. All co-authors will confirm that the submitting author has authority to act on their behalf via the verification link sent out to all authors upon completion of the submission. Please refer to the Submission Declaration PDF for details.Documents
Submission Declaration (PDF, 89 KB)
