Copyright and Licensing

Authors retain copyright in their contributions; transferring copyright to the publisher is not a condition of publication. For an accepted work to be published, authors grant the journal the non-exclusive rights necessary for its first publication in the journal, editorial and technical processing, distribution, and preservation. Before publication, the consent of all co-authors to the final version of the manuscript and the applicable licensing terms must be documented. Where the relevant economic rights are exercised by an employer or another rights holder, any necessary authorisation must also be obtained. The corresponding author may not grant rights that neither they nor the persons they represent are entitled to grant.

CC BY 4.0 Licence

Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence permits the copying, sharing, distribution, and adaptation of licensed material, including for commercial purposes. Anyone reusing the material must give appropriate credit to the authors, retain the required information about its source, provide a link to the licence, and indicate any changes made. Attribution must not suggest that the author or the journal endorses the use in question. No further individual permission is required for uses covered by a validly granted licence. Nor may additional legal restrictions or technological measures be imposed that would prevent others from exercising the rights granted under the licence. The full terms of the CC BY 4.0 licence are authoritative. Once granted, the licensed rights cannot be revoked in respect of a user who complies with its terms.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that any third-party texts, images, tables, or other materials are used lawfully. Acknowledging the source does not replace permission from the rights holder where such permission is required. Any material excluded from the article's CC BY 4.0 licence must be clearly identified at the point of use, together with available information about the rights holder and the applicable terms of use. Subsequent users must respect these separate conditions, without prejudice to statutory exceptions and limitations to copyright. The licence does not replace any permissions required in relation to privacy, personality rights, or trade marks. Accordingly, the open availability of an article does not in itself authorise the unlawful use or disclosure of identifiable information about research participants.

Full text of the CC BY 4.0 licence

Archiving and Further Dissemination

Authors may deposit the preprint, the accepted author manuscript, and the final published version in institutional or subject-specific repositories or make them available on their professional websites without any embargo. The different versions must be clearly distinguished: the preprint as the version preceding peer review, the accepted manuscript as the author's version following acceptance, and the published article as the final version of record. Once the article has been published, authors are encouraged to add the bibliographic details and a link to the published article or its DOI, where assigned, to earlier versions. When distributing the published version, information about authorship, the source, and the licence must be retained. Authors remain obliged to disclose any previously posted preprint to the editorial office, and the right to archive different versions does not permit undisclosed duplicate publication of the same research.

Copyright and licensing information is displayed both on each article's webpage and in its published full text and must accurately identify the relevant rights holders. The licence applying to published articles does not automatically extend to the journal's logo, standalone graphic elements of its website, unpublished manuscripts, internal correspondence, or peer-review reports. The handling of non-public materials is governed by the journal's peer-review and data protection policies. Any copyright notice relating to the website must not be interpreted as restricting the licence granted for individual articles.

If an error or a serious breach of publication policies is identified after publication, the editorial office will act in accordance with the journal's Publication Ethics policy. Corrections, expressions of concern, and retraction notices are linked to the relevant article so that readers can verify its current status. Subsequent users are encouraged to take such information into account when redistributing the article; this does not, however, constitute an additional condition of the CC BY 4.0 licence. Articles are free to read and download, and the journal charges no fees for manuscript submission, peer review, or publication.