The submitting author assumes all responsibility throughout the submission, peer review and publication process. The email notifications sent by the submitting authors during the submission process would only be considered. Only the submitting author can edit the article, author names and affiliations. If you are submitting on behalf of an author you must update the submitting author as well as sign the consent form. For these reasons, we strongly recommend that authors submit their own work.
The submitting author may designate a co-author to serve as the corresponding author after the article is published. Please note that the corresponding author does not have edit access.
It is a condition of publication that authors make the primary data, materials and code available as open-source for the editing team. These must be provided at the point of submission for our Editors and reviewers for peer-review, and then made openly available at acceptance.
Author’s Guide
Rights Granted
Author hereby grants and assigns to the Publishing House (hereinafter the “Publisher”) the exclusive, sole, permanent, world-wide, transferable, sub-licensable and unlimited right to reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, make available or otherwise communicate to the public, translate, publicly perform, archive, store, lease or lend and sell the Contribution or parts thereof individually or together with other works in any language, in all revisions and versions (including soft cover, book club and collected editions, anthologies, advance printing, reprints or print to order, microfilm editions, audiograms and videograms), in all forms and media of expression including in electronic form (including offline and online use, push or pull technologies, use in databases and data networks (e.g. Internet) for display, print and storing on any and all stationary or portable end-user devices, e.g. text readers, audio, video or interactive devices, and for use in multimedia or interactive versions as well as for the display or transmission of the works or parts thereof in data networks or search engines, and posting the Contribution on social media accounts closely related to the Work, as well as using the Contribution for training purposes, such as but not limited to massive open online courses), in whole, in part or in abridged form, in each case as now known or developed in the future, including the right to grant further time- limited or permanent rights.
Publisher especially has the right to permit others to use individual illustrations, tables or text quotations and may use the Contribution for advertising purposes. For the purposes of use in electronic forms, Publisher may adjust the Contribution to the respective form of use and include links (e.g. frames or inline-links) or otherwise combine it with other works and/or remove links or combinations with other works provided in the Contribution. For the avoidance of doubt, all provisions of this contract apply regardless of whether the Contribution or the Work itself constitutes a database under applicable copyright laws or not.
The copyright in the Contribution shall be vested in the name of Publisher. Author has asserted his/her right(s) to be identified as the originator of this Contribution in all editions and versions of the Work and parts thereof, published in all forms and media. Publisher may take, either in its own name or in that of Author, any necessary steps to protect the rights granted under this Agreement against infringement by third parties. It will have a copyright notice inserted into all editions of the Work according to the provisions of the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC).
Rights retained by Author
Author retains, in addition to uses permitted by law, the right to communicate the content of the Contribution to other research colleagues, to share the Contribution with them in manuscript form, to perform or present the Contribution or to use the content for non-commercial internal and educational purposes, provided the original source of publication is cited according to current citation standards.
Warranties
Author agrees, at the request of Publisher, to execute all documents and do all things reasonably required by Publisher in order to confer to Publisher all rights intended to be granted under this Agreement.
Author warrants that the Contribution is original except for such excerpts from copyrighted works (including illustrations, tables, animations and text quotations) as may be included with the permission of the copyright holder thereof, in which case(s) Author is required to obtain written permission to the extent necessary and to indicate the precise sources of the excerpts in the manuscript. Author is also requested to store the signed permission forms and to make them available to Publisher if required.
Author warrants that Author is entitled to grant the rights in accordance with Clause 1 “Rights Granted”, that Author has not assigned such rights to third parties, that the Contribution has not heretofore been published in whole or in part, that the Contribution contains no libellous or defamatory statements and does not infringe on any copyright, trademark, patent, statutory right or proprietary right of others, including rights obtained through licences; and that Author will indemnify Publisher against any costs, expenses or damages for which Publisher may become liable as a result of any claim which, if true, would constitute a breach by Author of any of Author’s representations or warranties in this Agreement.
Author agrees to amend the Contribution to remove any potential obscenity, defamation, libel, malicious falsehood or otherwise unlawful part(s) identified at any time. Any such removal or alteration shall not affect the warranty and indemnity given by Author in this Agreement.
Delivery of Contribution and Publication
Author shall deliver the Contribution to the responsible Editor on a date to be agreed upon, electronically in Microsoft Word format or in such form as may be agreed in writing with Publisher. The Contribution shall be in a form acceptable to the Publisher (acting reasonably) and in line with the instructions contained in the guidelines and Author shall provide at the same time, or earlier if the Publisher reasonably requests, any editorial, publicity or other form required by the Publisher.
Publisher will undertake the publication and distribution of the Work in print and electronic form at its own expense and risk within a reasonable time after it has given notice of its acceptance of the Work to Author.
Author’s Discount for Books and Electronic Access
Author is entitled to purchase for his/her personal use (if ordered directly from Publisher) the Work or other books published by Publisher at a discount of 20% off the list price for as long as there is a contractual arrangement between Author and Publisher and subject to applicable book price regulation. Resale of such copies or of free copies is not permitted.
Publisher shall provide electronic access to the electronic final published version of the Work to Author, provided Author has included his/her email address in the manuscript of the Work. Furthermore, Author has the right to download and disseminate single contributions from the electronic final published version of the Work for his/her private and professional non-commercial research and classroom use (e.g. sharing the contribution by mail or in hard copy form with research colleagues for their professional non-commercial research and classroom use, or to use it for presentations or handouts for students). Author is also entitled to use single contributions for the further development of his/her scientific career (e.g. by copying and attaching contributions to an electronic or hard copy job or grant application).
When Author is more than one person each of the co-authors may share single contributions of the Work with other scientists or research colleagues as described above. In each case, Publisher grants the rights to Author under this clause provided that Author has obtained the prior consent of any co-author(s) of the respective contribution.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is “the reuse of someone else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source”. Attempting to pass off someone else’s work, words, or ideas as own is extremely unethical and accused as plagiarism. Careful attention to detail when quoting, appropriate paraphrasing, and meticulous acknowledgement of sources will help researchers avoid accusations of plagiarism.
The Publishing House is part of a multi-publisher plagiarism detection initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality. Various publications use the service to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Results returned by the software may be used as a criterion for the analysis of the manuscript by the editorial board and may eventually result in a rejection due to plagiarism, duplicate and/or redundant publication.
The use of relatively short direct quotes from a published work does not usually require permission from the copyright holder as it typically falls under the “fair use” provision. However, extensive quoting of text from a copyrighted source can constitute copyright infringement, whether the appropriated text is properly enclosed in quotation marks or correctly paraphrased, even if a citation is provided according to established scholarly conventions. Obviously, the same applies if the material is plagiarized outright. Moreover, the reader should note that intellectual or artistic work does not need to be published in order to be copyrighted. In fact, the moment the work becomes final it is automatically copyrighted. Thus, instances of plagiarism, whether from a published article or an unpublished manuscript, such as a grant proposal, can also constitute copyright infringement, though, obviously, copyright infringement does not always constitute plagiarism.
Given the above considerations, it should be clear that redundant or duplicate publication, which occurs without the respective editors’ knowledge, is not only considered a form of self-plagiarism, but it may also qualify as copyright infringement because the copyright is held by the publisher; not by the author. This would certainly be the case if the original article were published in a journal owned by one publisher and the second article were to appear in a journal owned by a different publisher. Because some instances of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and even some writing practices that might otherwise be acceptable (e.g., extensive paraphrasing or quoting of key elements of a book) can constitute copyright infringement, authors are strongly encouraged to become familiar with basic elements of copyright law.
It is improper for an author to submit manuscripts/chapter describing essentially the same research to more than one publishing house.
Termination
Either party shall be entitled to terminate this Agreement forthwith by notice in writing to the other party if the other party commits a material breach of the terms of the Agreement which cannot be remedied or, if such breach can be remedied, fails to remedy such breach within 28 days of being given written notice to do so.
On termination of this Agreement in accordance with its terms, all rights and obligations of Publisher and Author under this Agreement will cease immediately, except that any terms of this Agreement that expressly or by implication survive termination of this Agreement shall remain in full force and effect.
All Authors including Corresponding Authors need to give the consent prior for any book and accept the responsibility for releasing the material on behalf of any and all Co- Authors.