Author Guidelines – JFSTI

Authors guarantee that their manuscript is their original work, has not been published before, and is not under review elsewhere. Submitting the same manuscript to another journal at the same time counts as misconduct and disqualifies the manuscript from consideration by JFSTI. Please note that posting preprints on preprint servers or repositories does not affect the consideration process before publication.

Authors should disclose details of preprint posting when submitting the manuscript. This must include a link to the preprint's location. If the paper is published later, authors are expected to update the preprint record on the server or repository to indicate that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.

If a manuscript has been previously submitted elsewhere, authors should include information about the previous review process and its outcome. This allows authors to explain how subsequent revisions have addressed earlier reviews and why certain reviewer comments were not considered. Providing details about the author's past reviewing experience can be beneficial: it often assists the editors in selecting more suitable reviewers.

For a manuscript that stems from a research project or has been previously presented at a conference as an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), we recommend providing detailed information about the project, conference, and so on in a footnote or acknowledgements section.

It is each author's responsibility to ensure that manuscripts submitted to the journal are prepared with ethical standards in mind (if necessary, cite relevant codes of conduct). The authors confirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not infringe upon the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible for any compensation claims.

JFSTI is committed to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles contain sufficient information to allow others to reproduce the work. A submitted manuscript should include enough detail and references to enable reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims made — for example, providing complete details of the methods used, including time frames, etc. Authors are required to review the standards available for many research applications from the Equator Network and adopt those relevant to the reported research. The intentional presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.1

Authors are solely responsible for the content of their submissions and must ensure they have obtained permission from all parties involved to publish it.2 They are also solely responsible for the contents of their data and supplementary files. Authors confirm that data protection laws, ethical standards, third-party copyright, and other rights have been adhered to during the collection, processing, and sharing of data.

Authors who want to include figures, tables, or other materials that have already been published elsewhere must obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such permission will be assumed to originate from the authors.3

Authors must ensure that only contributors who have made significant contributions to the submission are listed as authors. Other individuals who contributed some essential aspects of the research work and the preparation or publication of the manuscript should be recognised in a footnote or the Acknowledgements section.

As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To be named on the author list, one must have:

• made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and
• contributed to the drafting of the work, or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
• provided final approval of the version to be published; and
• agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved; and
• agreed to be named on the author list and approved of the full author list.

Each author’s contribution must be detailed by selecting CRediT roles on the article submission form.

The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted if a justifiable explanation is provided to the editorial team and publisher. Attempts to introduce 'ghost', 'gift' or ‘honorary’ authorship will be regarded as misconduct.

Authors must properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and manuscript. Information obtained through private conversations or correspondence with third parties during the preparation of the manuscript must not be used without the explicit written consent of the information source.

When referencing or making claims based on data, authors should provide the data reference in the same way as they cite publications. We recommend the format outlined by the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles.

Plagiarism, which involves taking someone else's ideas, words, or other creative work as your own, is a clear breach of scientific ethics. It can also constitute a violation of copyright law, subject to legal penalties.

Plagiarism includes the following:

• Word-for-word, or nearly word-for-word copying, or deliberately paraphrasing parts of another author's work without clearly citing the source or marking the copied section (for example, using quotation marks);
• Copying equations, figures, or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism using iThenticate or Turnitin software.

Any manuscript displaying clear signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected, and the author(s) will be prohibited from submitting manuscripts to the Journal for one year.

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that the journal has already published, it will be retracted following the procedure described below under the Retraction policy, and the author(s) will be banned from submitting manuscripts to the Journal for 2 years.

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other significant conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, the following standard statement should be included: ‘No competing interests were disclosed’.

A competing interest may be of a non-financial or financial nature. Examples include:

• individuals receiving funding, salary, or other forms of payment from an organisation, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings.
• individuals or their funding organisation or employer holding (or applying for) related patents.
• official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication.
• political, religious, or ideological competing interests.

Authors from pharmaceutical or other commercial organisations that sponsor clinical, field trials, or research studies should declare these as competing interests upon submission. The relationship of each author to such an organisation should be described in the ‘Competing interests’ section. Publications in the journal must not include content that advertises any commercial products.

When authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, they must promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

By submitting a manuscript, the authors agree to abide by the JFSTI Editorial Policies.

The journal requests that all authors submitting a paper create an account with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). ORCID numbers for all authors and co-authors should be included in the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper if it is accepted.

ORCID registration offers a unique and persistent digital identifier for an account, enabling accurate attribution and enhancing the discoverability of published papers, ensuring the correct author receives proper credit for their work.

If a paper results from a funded project, authors must specify the funding sources in accordance with their contracts with the funder.