Copyright and License Statement

Copyright

Authors retain copyright in their articles. Upon acceptance, authors grant the journal a non-exclusive license to publish the version of record and to identify the journal as the original publisher.

Open Access License (CC BY 4.0)

All articles are published Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may read, download, copy, distribute, print, text- and data-mine, adapt, and reuse the work for any lawful purpose, including commercial use, provided appropriate credit is given to the authors and the journal, a link to the license is supplied, and changes are indicated.
Full license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Rights Granted to the Journal

By granting the non-exclusive license, authors allow the journal to:

  • publish and disseminate the article in all media and formats;

  • assign a DOI and include the article in abstracting/indexing services;

  • preserve the article in long-term archiving systems.

Third-Party Material

Authors must ensure that permissions have been obtained for any third-party content (figures, tables, images, instruments, datasets) not covered by the article’s CC BY 4.0 license. Such material will be clearly credited in the article; reuse beyond statutory exceptions requires permission from the rights holder.

Self-Archiving (Green OA)

Authors may deposit the following versions in institutional/subject repositories or personal websites at any time:

  • Submitted manuscript (preprint) – must include a citation once the article is published.

  • Accepted manuscript (postprint) – include the citation and link to the DOI and CC BY 4.0 license.

  • Published version (version of record/PDF) – may be posted with the citation, DOI link, and CC BY 4.0 license.

Preprints

Posting on non-peer-reviewed preprint servers is allowed and does not preclude submission. After publication, authors should update the preprint with the citation and DOI of the version of record.

Metadata and Abstracts

Article metadata (title, authors, affiliations, abstracts, keywords, references, DOI) may be reused for indexing and discovery, provided proper attribution is given.

Author Warranties

By submitting, authors warrant that the work is original, does not infringe third-party rights, all co-authors approve the submission, and any conflicts of interest and funding are disclosed.

Policy Changes

Any future changes to this policy will be announced on this page and will not apply retroactively to already published or accepted articles.