All manuscripts are subject to peer review and are expected to meet standards of academic excellence. If approved by the editor, submissions will be considered by peer reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors.

Our team will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the academic editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

Authors must declare all potential interests in a ‘Conflicts of interest’ section, which should explain why the interest may be a conflict. If there are none, the authors should state “The author(s) declare(s) that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.” Submitting authors are responsible for coauthors declaring their interests.

Authors must declare current or recent funding (including article processing charges) and other payments, goods, or services that might influence the work. All funding, whether a conflict or not, must be declared in the ‘Funding Statement’.

The involvement of anyone other than the authors who 1) has an interest in the outcome of the work; 2) is affiliated to an organization with such an interest; or 3) was employed or paid by a funder, in the commissioning, conception, planning, design, conduct, or analysis of the work, the preparation or editing of the manuscript or the decision to publish must be declared.

Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article.

All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript, approved its claims, and agreed to be an author. It is important to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution. We refer to the ICMJE guidelines. Changes in authorship must be declared to the journal and agreed to by all authors.

Anyone who contributed to the research or manuscript preparation, but is not an author, should be acknowledged with their permission.

Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be considered.

Authors whose submitted manuscripts are found to include citations whose primary purpose is to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, may incur sanctions.

Editors and reviewers must not ask authors to include references merely to increase citations to their own or an associate’s work, to the journal, or to another journal they are associated with.

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also known as ‘competing interests’) occur when issues outside research could be reasonably perceived to affect the neutrality or objectivity of the work or its assessment. This can happen at any stage in the research cycle, including during the experimentation phase, while a manuscript is being written, or during the process of turning a manuscript into a published article.

If unsure, declare a potential interest or discuss it with the editorial office. Undeclared interests may incur sanctions. Submissions with undeclared conflicts that are later revealed may be rejected. Published articles may need to be re-assessed, have a corrigendum published, or in serious cases be retracted. For more information on COIs, see the guidance from the ICMJE and WAME.

Conflicts of interest do not always stop work from being published or prevent someone from being involved in the review process. However, they must be declared. A clear declaration of all possible conflicts – whether they actually had an influence or not – allows others to make informed decisions about the work and its review process.

If conflicts of interest are found after publication, this may be embarrassing for the authors, the Editor, and the journal. It may be necessary to publish a corrigendum or reassess the review process.

Conflicts include the following:

• Financial — funding and other payments, goods, and services received or expected by the authors relating to the subject of the work or from an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work

• Affiliations — being employed by, on the advisory board for, or a member of an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work

• Intellectual property — patents or trademarks owned by someone or their organization

• Personal — friends, family, relationships, and other close personal connections

• Ideology — beliefs or activism, for example, political or religious, relevant to the work

• Academic — competitors or someone whose work is critiqued

When errors are identified in published articles, the publisher will consider what action is required and may consult the editors and the authors’ institution(s).

Errors by the authors may be corrected by a corrigendum and errors by the publisher by an erratum.

If there are errors that significantly affect the conclusions or there is evidence of misconduct, this may require retraction or an expression of concern following the COPE Retraction Guidelines.

All authors will be asked to agree to the content of the notice.

Maples Scientific Publishers journals consider only original content, i.e. articles that have not been previously published, including in a language other than English. Articles based on content previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered.

Manuscripts submitted to Maples Scientific Publishers journals must not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration and must be withdrawn before being submitted elsewhere. Authors whose articles are found to have been simultaneously submitted elsewhere may incur sanctions.

If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they must cite the previous articles and indicate how their submitted manuscript differs from their previous work. Reuse of the authors’ own words outside the Methods should be attributed or quoted in the text. Reuse of the authors’ own figures or substantial amounts of wording may require permission from the copyright holder and the authors are responsible for obtaining this.

Maples Scientific Publishers journals will consider extended versions of articles published at conferences provided this is declared in the cover letter, the previous version is clearly cited and discussed, there is significant new content, and any necessary permits are obtained.

Redundant publication, the inappropriate division of study outcomes into more than one article (also known as salami slicing), may result in rejection or a request to merge submitted manuscripts, and the correction of published articles. Duplicate publication of the same, or a very similar, article may result in the retraction of the later article and the authors may incur sanctions.

Editors and reviewers should decline to be involved with a submission when they

• Have a recent publication or current submission with any author

• Share or recently shared an affiliation with any author

• Collaborate or recently collaborated with any author

• Have a close personal connection to any author

• Have a financial interest in the subject of the work

• Feel unable to be objective

Reviewers must declare any remaining interests in the ‘Confidential’ section of the review form, which will be considered by the editor.

Editors and reviewers must declare if they have previously discussed the manuscript with the authors.

We ask our authors to ensure not to submit manuscripts containing previously published images or figures unless explicit written permission is obtained from the copyright holder to republish under a CC-BY or CC0 license (as applicable). Images, video, and other materials previously published under a public domain, CC-BY, or CC0 license do not require such permission to be obtained.

Upon submitting an article, the authors should indicate their agreement to abide by an open access Creative Commons license (CC-BY). Under the terms of this license, the authors retain ownership of the copyright of their articles. However, the license permits any user to download, print, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of work. The license claims that the article will be available as widely as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive.

Open access not only ensures wide dissemination of knowledge, but also allows others to cite, re-purpose, and build upon the existing published research, which is its greatest impact and contribution to the scientific community

Authors must not use the words, figures, or ideas of others without attribution. All sources must be cited at the point they are used, and reuse of wording must be limited and be attributed or quoted in the text.

Maples Scientific Publishers uses Crossref Similarity Check (Turnitin and iThenticate) software to detect submissions that overlap with published and submitted manuscripts.

Manuscripts that are found to have been plagiarized from a manuscript by other authors, whether published or unpublished, will be rejected and the authors may incur sanctions. Any published articles may need to be corrected or retracted.

Maples Scientific Publishers supports the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We follow its Best Practice Guidelines and abide by its Code of Conduct for dealing with potential cases of misconduct. We expect our authors to comply with best practices in publication ethics particularly with regard to authorship, competing interests, compliance with standards of research ethics, falsification and fabrication of data, redundant publication, plagiarism, figure manipulation, and dual submission.

If we find conclusive evidence of misconduct, we will take measures to correct the scientific record, which may include issuing a correction or retraction.

Any concerns about the above should be addressed to the editorial office at office@maplespub.com

If Maples Scientific Publishers becomes aware of breaches of our publication ethics policies, whether or not the breach occurred in a journal published by Maples Scientific Publishers, the following sanctions may be applied across the Maples Scientific Publishers journals:

• Rejection of the manuscript and any other manuscripts submitted by the author(s).

• Not allowing submission for 1–3 years.

• Prohibition from acting as an editor or reviewer.

Submissions with one or more authors who are United States government employees will be published under a Creative Commons public domain instrument (CC0), which waives all copyright and related rights to the article to the maximum extent allowed by law.

Maples Scientific Publishers is committed to providing high quality articles and uphold the publication ethics to advance the intellectual agenda of science. We expect our authors to comply with, best practice in publication ethics as well as in quality of their articles.

Few of the authors request withdrawal of manuscript from the publication process after submission or after publication. In some instances the request for withdrawal is made when the manuscript is only a few days away from publication in the journal. This may cause the time waste by the editors, reviewers and the editorial staff.

To evade gratuitous withdrawal of manuscripts Maples Scientific Publishers declared the below withdrawal policy. The corresponding author or co authors should address the below statement before sending a request for withdrawal.

All authors include corresponding and co authors should confirm the number of authors, authorship, approval and integrity of the manuscript before submission. In case of any differences of opinion, address the concerns of all the authors before submitting the manuscript for publication.

Research students or Researchers should take prior permission from their guides and professors before sending/submitting their manuscripts in Maples Scientific Publishers journals.

Authors should follow the publication ethics (details are included in our Publication ethics page: https://maplespub.com/publication-ethics)

Manuscript is appropriately withdrawn from any previous publisher (if submitted).

It is unacceptable to withdraw a manuscript from a journal because it is being accepted by another journal.

Before submitting the manuscript authors should carefully check the facts and data presented in the manuscripts are accurate and error-free.

All authors need agree for publishing the articles on the specific journal before submission.

Unethical withdrawal

Advanced stage in the editorial process, when peer reviews were near completion was unacceptable unless there are compelling reasons.

If the author withdraws a manuscript after publication, the article publication charges, if paid by the authors, will not be refunded.

If the authors do not reply to communication from the editorial office, even after multiple reminders, at any stage of the publication process; Maples Scientific Publishers Journals holds all rights to disclose the conduct of the authors and content of the manuscript without further approval from the authors, and cannot be held responsible for the consequences arising from it.

Withdrawal of a manuscript will be permitted only for the most compelling and unavoidable reasons. For withdrawal of a manuscript authors need to submit an "Article withdrawal Form", signed by all authors mentioning the reason for withdrawal to the Editorial Office. The form is available from the editorial office of the journal. Authors must not assume that their manuscript has been withdrawn until they have received appropriate notification to this effect from the editorial office.

In a case where a manuscript has taken more than six months time for review process, that allows the author to withdraw manuscript without paying any charges.

Manuscript withdrawal charges

The author is allowed to withdraw the manuscript without paying any withdrawal penalty, if the author(s) requests a withdrawal of manuscript, within 48 hours of submission.

If the author(s) requests a withdrawal of manuscript, after the peer review process or in the production stage (Early Release or Ahead of publishing) or published online; then authors need to make a withdrawal penalty.

Maples Scientific Publishers Journal Editorial Office will provide the corresponding author a formal letter of Manuscript Withdrawal. Withdrawal of manuscripts is only allowed after withdrawal penalty has been fully paid to the Maples Scientific Publishers Editorial Office.

As per the policy, we declare that the withdrawal charges are applicable in case of withdrawal.