Copyright Policy

The Journal is fully committed to transparency in regards to the issue of copyright and copyright ownership. Authors who submit papers to this journal retain ownership of their original material. Although as part of the open access process authors permit other individuals, organisations and institutions to access the said material. Whilst other parties may well access materials if they quote from them they are expected to fully credit the author/authors. It is important to remember that the rights of authors are granted and apply only to articles for which you are named as the author or co-author. The author's rights include the following:

  • The right to make copies of the article for your own personal use (including in the course of academic teaching and other scholarly endeavours).
  • The right to reproduce and distribute copies of the article (including in electronic form) for personal use.
  • The right to present the article at conferences and meeting and distribute copies at such gatherings
  • You have patent and trademark rights to any process or procedure described in the article that was formulated by the author/authors.
  • The right to include the article in full or in part in a thesis or dissertation provided that this is not published commercially.
  • The right to prepare other derivative works, to extend the article into book-length form, or to otherwise reuse portions or excerpts in other works, with full acknowledgement of its original publication in the journal.

Copyright Notice
Authors who submit papers that are submitted and accepted for publication in the journal agree to the following:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License version "CC BY 4.0" (this allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and the place of first publication).
  • Authors are perfectly entitled to enter into separate contract arrangements for on-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work providing there is an acknowledgement of its initial place of publication.
  • Once submitted and accepted papers can post-print provided they are in the same format as it appeared in the journal, however, pre-prints are not permitted.
  • Authors may use data contained in the article in other works that they create.
  • Authors may reproduce the article, in whole or in part, in any printed book (including a thesis) of which the author, provided the original article is properly and fully attributed.
  • Authors and any scholarly institution where they are employed may reproduce the article, in whole or in part, for the purpose of teaching students.

Reader & Librarian rights
Readers and librarians are free to make copies of articles without seeking specific permission in the following circumstances: 1) are for private study and 2) are not sold.

Open Access rights and Permissions for our Open Access
Articles can be distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence. Authors retain full ownership of the copyright for their article, but undertake to allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint and distribute the article.

Authors are permitted to post the final, published PDF of their article on a website, institutional repository or other free public server, immediately upon publication, provided, a link is included between the web page containing the article and the journal's website.

These authors’ rights ensure that we are compliant with open access policies of research funding agencies, including the US National Institutes of Health, the Welcome Trust, the UK Medical Research Council, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale in France, and others.