For Authors

All authors submitting manuscripts to the publisher’s journals must comply strictly with all editorial and ethical policies stated herein. This section clarifies full obligations, requirements, rights and standard procedures for all submitting authors.

1. General Manuscript Submission Rules

All submitted manuscripts must be original, unpublished work and shall not be concurrently submitted to any other journal, conference or publication platform. Multiple submission, duplicate publication, self-plagiarism, text recycling, and partial republishing without proper citation are explicitly prohibited and will be treated as academic misconduct.

Manuscripts must follow the journal’s official formatting guidelines, reference styles, length limits, and structural requirements. Authors shall conduct self-check for grammar, language accuracy, typographical errors, and logical coherence before submission.

The corresponding author takes full responsibility for manuscript submission, communication with the editorial office, revision arrangement, proofreading, fee settlement, and all formal matters throughout the publishing process. The corresponding author shall ensure that all co-authors have read, agreed to and approved the manuscript content before submission.

2. Ethics and Compliance Submission Requirements

For research involving human participants, vulnerable groups, human biological samples or identifiable personal data: Authors must upload valid ethics approval documents issued by Institutional Review Board (IRB) or ethics committee, as well as records of informed consent from participants during submission. Research without valid ethical approval will be rejected directly.

For animal experiments: Valid approval documents from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) must be provided. All animal research shall follow the 3Rs principles and Core Principles for the Care and Use of Animals in Research.

For clinical trials: A valid trial registration number and registration link from WHO ICTRP recognized platforms are mandatory. Trials without pre-registration will not be accepted for publication.

For research involving biological cells, genetic materials and high-risk biomedical research: Complete legal source certification, biosafety assessment, and ethical authorization shall be submitted as required.

3. AIGC, Authorship and Contribution Statement

Authorship is required to strictly comply with the policy on Authorship.

If Artificial Intelligence tools (LLMs, generative AI, image generation tools, etc.) are used for manuscript drafting, language polishing, data processing, or content generation, authors must make full and explicit disclosure in the manuscript. AI systems and algorithms shall not be listed as formal authors. Authors bear full legal and academic liability for all AI-assisted content.

All authors must fully comply with the recommendations of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) four authorship criteria. Honorary authorship, ghost authorship, and gift authorship are forbidden. Any addition, deletion or reordering of authors after submission requires written consent from all authors and formal application to the editorial office.

A complete CRediT Contributor Role Taxonomy statement must be included in each original research article to specify the individual academic contribution of every author, in accordance with the official CRediT standards.

4. Research Data and Citation Rules

A standard Data Availability Statement is a compulsory part of every manuscript. Authors are encouraged to state the status of raw data, processed data, code, and supplementary materials, and provide access links, DOIs, or repository information for publicly shared data.

Authors are required to deposit research data into qualified discipline-specific repositories where applicable, follow FAIR data principles, and cite datasets formally in the reference list. All original research data must be properly preserved for long-term verification and reproducibility.

All citations, references, figures, tables and images must come from legally authorized sources. Authors shall obtain copyright permission for reused copyrighted materials. Tampering, falsification, or improper modification of images, charts, and experimental results is regarded as serious academic misconduct.

5. Copyright, Open Access, and License

Upon acceptance and publication, all articles are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Authors retain full copyright of their work.

Under CC BY 4.0, third parties are allowed to copy, distribute, adapt and reuse the published content for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided that original authorship and journal source are properly cited and attributed.

Authors grant the publisher permanent, worldwide rights to publish, distribute, archive, and disseminate the accepted manuscript online.

6. Article Processing Charges (APC)

All journals adopt a transparent APC model. Article Processing Charges are only charged after formal acceptance of the manuscript. There are no submission fees, pre-review fees, or hidden charges.

Authors may apply for APC discount or waiver according to the journal’s policies for researchers from low-income regions or eligible non-profit research projects. All applications will be reviewed confidentially.

Official invoices will be issued upon successful payment in accordance with relevant regulations.

7. Manuscript Revision, Proofreading, and Withdrawal

Authors must complete manuscript revisions and respond to reviewer comments item by item within the time limit specified by the editorial office. Failure to submit revisions on time without reasonable explanation will be deemed as voluntary abandonment of submission.

Once the manuscript is accepted, authors shall complete online proofreading promptly. Corrections that alter core research content or conclusions are not allowed during the proof stage.

Authors may withdraw an unaccepted manuscript by submitting a formal withdrawal application, and please refer to the Correction, Retraction and Withdrawal Policy. Frequent or unreasonable withdrawal will be recorded and may affect future submission eligibility. After formal online publication, voluntary withdrawal is not permitted.

8. Post-publication Obligations

After publication, authors are responsible for responding to academic queries, comments, and questions related to their research.

If errors, omissions, or potential academic issues are found in published articles, authors shall actively cooperate with the editorial team to issue Corrections or Expressions of Concern, or participate in retraction procedures in line with COPE guidelines.

Authors shall fully cooperate with the journal’s post-publication audit, data verification, and academic misconduct investigation.

9. Right to Appeal

If authors disagree with the final editorial decision, they may submit a formal appeal with sufficient academic evidence within four weeks. The appeal will be handled by an independent committee following the journal’s appeal mechanism, and the final appeal result is conclusive.