As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
All submissions must meet the following requirements.
The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
Plagiarism declaration:
I acknowledge in submitting this manuscript to the journal that I have included all relevant citations and references necessary. I further acknowledge that this manuscript presents my own original work, and does not copy, borrow from, or represent other published research in a way that would constitute academic plagiarism. Please see our Publication Ethics and Malpractice statement for clarity.
I am submitting a copy of my paper that is prepared for blind peer review. All references to me (or my co-authors) have been removed. See instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review.
I have the necessary ethics approval to conduct and publish the research included in this submission, where relevant. Please ensure that you do have ethics approval if this is required for the kind of research you are writing on.
We note that book reviews will not require ethics approval, nor will review essays or articles that are conceptual or theoretical in nature. Please check this box regardless.
I have declared any funding that supported the research included in the manuscript, including project or funding reference numbers if necessary.
Note: this declaration can be including in the acknowledgements, and should not be included in the peer review version if it compromises blind peer review
Author Guidelines
Document Format
The submission file is in OpenOffice or Microsoft Word format only.
The text is double-spaced/single-spaced and uses a 12-point font, employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
There is an abstract of 250 words and at least 5 keywords.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
Note: all images and illustrations MUST also be attached as supplementary files. All images and illustrations must be high-res images, saved in TIFF, JPEG or .eps format only. Where required, images that have not been generated by the author must have the necessary permissions.
The copyright to this article is transferred to Sotls (including without limitation, the right to publish the work in whole or in part in any and all forms of media, now or hereafter known) effective if and when the article is accepted for publication thus granting Sotls all rights for the work so that both parties may be protected from the consequences of unauthorized use.
The copyright transfer covers the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, microform, electronic form (offline,online) or any other reproductions of similar nature.
The authors warrant that their contribution is an original work not published elsewhere, that they have the full power to make this grant and that the article contains no matter unlawful or which invades the right to privacy or infringes any proprietary right.
Reproducing Published Material from other Publishers
It is absolutely essential that authors obtain permission to reproduce any published material (figures, schemes, tables or any extract of a text) which does not fall into the public domain, or for which they do not hold the copyright. Permission should be requested by the authors from the copyright holder (usually the Publisher, please refer to the imprint of the individual publications to identify the copyright holder).
Permission is required for:
1. Your own works published by other Publishers and for which you did not retain copyright.
2. Substantial extracts from anyones’ works or a series of works.
3. Use of Tables, Graphs, Charts, Schemes and Artworks if they are unaltered or slightly modified.
4. Photographs for which you do not hold copyright.
Permission is not required for:
1. Reconstruction of your own table with data already published elsewhere. Please notice that in this case you must cite the source of the data in the form of either “Data from…” or “Adapted from…”.
2. Reasonably short quotes are considered fair use and therefore do not require permission.
3. Graphs, Charts, Schemes and Artworks that are completely redrawn by the authors and significantly changed beyond recognition do not require permission.
Obtaining Permission
In order to avoid unnecessary delays in the publication process, you should start obtaining permissions as early as possible. If in any doubt about the copyright, apply for permission. Sotls cannot publish material from other publications without permission.
The copyright holder may give you instructions on the form of acknowledgement to be followed; otherwise follow the style: “Reproduced with permission from [author], [book/journal title]; published by [publisher], [year].’ at the end of the caption of the Table, Figure or Scheme.
Authors should understand that consistent with Sotls’s policy of encouraging dissemination of information, each work published by Sotls appears with the Sotls copyright and the following notice:
“Intellectual properties and scientific inventions published with Sotls are protected under International and National Copyright Laws and Treaties. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than Sotls must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.”
However, it is at the discretion of SOTLS if the copyright notice should be included in the published manuscript.
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