• Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour.  Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include*:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one publication for simultaneous consideration. The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work.

• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various publications or to one publication over time (i.e.  ‘salami-slicing/publishing’). 

• Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data.No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’).

• Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

• Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies (if appropriate).

• Research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature in support of the claims made. Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged.

• Authors should avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person. 

• Research that may be misapplied to pose a threat to public health or national security should be clearly identified in the manuscript