When authors submit an article to an IJSDIP journal it is implied that:

the work described has not been published previously except in the form of a preprint, an abstract, a published lecture, academic thesis or registered report.
the article is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
the article's publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out.
if accepted, the article will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all the following:

The conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data.
Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
Final approval of the version to be submitted.

Authors should appoint a corresponding author to communicate with the journal during the editorial process. All authors should agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work to ensure that the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The editors of this journal generally will not consider changes to authorship once a manuscript has been submitted. It is important that authors carefully consider the authorship list and order of authors and provide a definitive author list at original submission.

The policy of this journal around authorship changes:

• All authors must be listed in the manuscript and their details entered in the submission system.
• Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should only be made prior to acceptance, and only if approved by the journal editor.
• Requests to change authorship should be made by the corresponding author, who must provide the reason for the request to the journal editor with written confirmation from all authors, including any authors being added or removed, that they agree with the addition, removal, or rearrangement.
• All requests to change authorship must be submitted. Requests which do not comply with the instructions outlined in the form will not be considered.
• Only in exceptional circumstances will the journal editor consider the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of authors post acceptance.
• Publication of the manuscript may be paused while a change in authorship request is being considered.
• Any authorship change requests approved by the journal editor will result in a corrigendum if the manuscript has already been published.
• Any unauthorised authorship changes may result in the rejection of the article, or retraction, if the article has already been published.

All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. Examples of potential competing interests include:

• Employment
• Consultancies
• Stock ownership
• Honoraria
• Paid expert testimony
• Patent applications or registrations
• Grants or any other funding

Authors must declare the use of generative AI in scientific writing upon submission of the paper. The following guidance refers only to the writing process, and not to the use of AI tools to analyse and draw insights from data as part of the research process:

• Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies should only be used in the writing process to improve the readability and language of the manuscript.
• The technology must be applied with human oversight and control, and authors should carefully review and edit the result, as AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the work.
• Authors must not list or cite AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author on the manuscript since authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans.
• The use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in scientific writing must be declared by adding a statement at the end of the manuscript when the paper is first submitted. The statement will appear in the published work and should be placed in a new section before the references list.
• Title of new section: Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process.
• Example Statement: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the published article.

The declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools, such as tools used to check grammar, spelling and references. If you have nothing to disclose, you do not need to add a statement.

File format

We ask you to provide editable source files for your entire submission (including figures, tables and text graphics). Some guidelines:

• Save files in an editable format, using the extension .doc/.docx for Word files and .tex for LaTeX files. A PDF is not an acceptable source file.
• Lay out text in a single-column format.
• Remove any strikethrough and underlined text from your manuscript, unless it has scientific significance related to your article.
• Use spell-check and grammar-check functions to avoid errors.

This journal follows a double anonymized review process which means author identities are concealed from reviewers and vice versa. To facilitate the double anonymized review process, we ask that you provide your title page (including author details) and anonymized manuscript (excluding author details) separately in your submission.

The title page should include:

• Article title
• Author name(s)
• Affiliation(s)
• Acknowledgements
• Declaration of Interest statement
• Corresponding author address (full address is required)
• Corresponding author email address

The anonymized manuscript should contain:

• Main body of the paper
• References
• Figures
• Tables

Note: It is important that your anonymized manuscript does not contain any identifying information such as author names or affiliations.

You are required to include the following details in the title page information:

• Article title: Article titles should be concise and informative. Please avoid abbreviations and formulae, where possible, unless they are established and widely understood (e.g., DNA).
• Author names: Provide the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author. The order of authors should match the order in the submission system. Carefully check that all names are accurately spelled. If needed, you can add your name between parentheses in your own script after the English transliteration.
• Affiliations: Add affiliation addresses, referring to where the work was carried out, below the author names. Indicate affiliations using a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the corresponding address. Ensure that you provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the email address of each author.
• Corresponding author: Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence for your article at all stages of the refereeing and publication process and also post-publication. This responsibility includes answering any future queries about your results, data, methodology and materials. It is important that the email address and contact details of your corresponding author are kept up to date during the submission and publication process.
• Present/permanent address: If an author has moved since the work described in your article was carried out, or the author was visiting during that time, a "present address" (or "permanent address") can be indicated by a footnote to the author's name. The address where the author carried out the work must be retained as their main affiliation address. Use superscript Arabic numerals for such footnotes.

You are required to provide a concise and factual abstract which does not exceed 250 words. The abstract should briefly state the purpose of your research, principal results, and major conclusions. Some guidelines:

• Stand-alone requirement: Abstracts must be able to stand alone as they are often presented separately from the article.
• Avoid references: If any are essential to include, cite the author(s) and year(s) directly within the abstract.
• Use of abbreviations: Avoid non-standard or uncommon abbreviations. If essential, define them at first mention within the abstract.

You are required to provide 1 to 7 keywords for indexing purposes. Keywords should be written in English. Please try to avoid keywords consisting of multiple words (using "and" or "of").

We recommend that you only use abbreviations in keywords if they are firmly established in the field.

Tables must be submitted as editable text, not as images. Some guidelines:

• Place tables next to the relevant text or on a separate page(s) at the end of your article.
• Cite all tables in the manuscript text.
• Number tables consecutively according to their appearance in the text.
• Please provide captions along with the tables.
• Place any table notes below the table body.
• Avoid vertical rules and shading within table cells.

We recommend that you use tables sparingly, ensuring that any data presented in tables is not duplicating results described elsewhere in the article.

Figures, images, artwork, diagrams and other graphical media must be supplied as separate files along with the manuscript. Some excerpts:

• Cite all images in the manuscript text.
• Number images according to the sequence they appear within your article.
• Submit each image as a separate file using a logical naming convention for your files (for example, Figure_1, Figure_2 etc).
• Please provide captions for all figures, images, and artwork.
• Text graphics may be embedded in the text at the appropriate position. If you are working with LaTeX, text graphics may also be embedded in the file.

We encourage the use of supplementary materials such as applications, images and sound clips to enhance research. Some guidelines:

• Supplementary material should be accurate and relevant to the research.
• Cite all supplementary files in the manuscript text.
• Submit supplementary materials at the same time as your article. Be aware that all supplementary materials provided will appear online in the exact same file type as received. These files will not be formatted or typeset by the production team.
• Include a concise, descriptive caption for each supplementary file describing its content.
• Provide updated files if at any stage of the publication process you wish to make changes to submitted supplementary materials.
• Do not make annotations or corrections to a previous version of a supplementary file.
• Switch off the option to track changes in Microsoft Office files. If tracked changes are left on, they will appear in your published version.

This journal accepts video material and animation sequences to support and enhance your scientific research. We encourage you to include links to video or animation files within articles. Some guidelines:

• When including video or animation file links within your article, refer to the video or animation content by adding a note in your text where the file should be placed.
• Clearly label files ensuring the given file name is directly related to the file content.
• Provide "stills" for each of your files. These will be used as standard icons to personalize the link to your video data. You can choose any frame from your video or animation or make a separate image.
• Provide text (for both the electronic and the print version) to be placed in the portions of your article that refer to the video content. This is essential text, as video and animation files cannot be embedded in the print version of the journal.
• We publish all video and animation files supplied in the electronic version of your article.

We are committed to supporting the storage of, access to and discovery of research data, and our research data policy sets out the principles guiding how we work with the research community to support a more efficient and transparent research process.

Research data refers to the results of observations or experimentation that validate research findings, which may also include software, code, models, algorithms, protocols, methods and other useful materials related to the project.

Please read our guidelines on sharing research data for more information on depositing, sharing and using research data and other relevant research materials.

For this journal, the following instructions from our research data guidelines apply.

Option C: Research data deposit, citation and linking

• Deposit your research data in a relevant data repository.
• Cite and link to this dataset in your article.
• If this is not possible, make a statement explaining why research data cannot be shared.

Include any individuals who provided you with help during your research, such as help with language, writing or proofreading, in the acknowledgements section. Include acknowledgements only in the title page since this journal follows a double anonymized peer review process. Do not add it as a footnote to your title.

• Conceptualization
• Data curation
• Formal analysis
• Funding acquisition
• Investigation
• Methodology
• Project administration
• Resources
• Software
• Supervision
• Validation
• Visualization
• Writing – original draft
• Writing – review and editing

Authors must disclose any funding sources who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article.

The role of sponsors, if any, should be declared in relation to the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the report and decision to submit the article for publication.

If funding sources had no such involvement this should be stated in your submission.

We ask you to use the following format for appendices:

• Identify individual appendices within your article using the format: A, B, etc.
• Give separate numbering to formulae and equations within appendices using formats such as Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc. and in subsequent appendices, Eq. (B.1), Eq. (B.2), etc.
• In a similar way, give separate numbering to tables and figures using formats such as Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

References within text

Any references cited within your article should also be present in your reference list and vice versa. Some guidelines:

• References cited in your abstract must be given in full.
• We recommend that you do not include unpublished results and personal communications in your reference list, though you may mention them in the text of your article.
• Any unpublished results and personal communications included in your reference list must follow the standard reference style of the journal. In substitution of the publication date add "unpublished results" or "personal communication."
• References cited as "in press" imply that the item has been accepted for publication.
• Linking to cited sources will increase the discoverability of your research.
• Before submission, check that all data provided in your reference list are correct, including any references which have been copied. Providing correct reference data allows us to link to abstracting and indexing services such as Scopus, Crossref and PubMed. Any incorrect surnames, journal or book titles, publication years or pagination within your references may prevent link creation.
• We encourage the use of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as reference links as they provide a permanent link to the electronic article referenced.

Web references

When listing web references, as a minimum you should provide the full URL and the date when the reference was last accessed. Additional information (e.g. DOI, author names, dates or reference to a source publication) should also be provided, if known.

You can list web references separately under a new heading directly after your reference list or include them in your reference list.

Data references

We encourage you to cite underlying or relevant datasets within article text and to list data references in the reference list.

When citing data references, you should include:

• author name(s)
• dataset title
• data repository
• version (where available)
• year
• global persistent identifier

Add [dataset] immediately before your reference. This will help us to properly identify the dataset. The [dataset] identifier will not appear in your published article.

Preprint references

We ask you to mark preprints clearly. You should include the word "preprint" or the name of the preprint server as part of your reference and provide the preprint DOI.

Where a preprint has subsequently become available as a peer-reviewed publication, use the formal publication as your reference.

If there are preprints that are central to your work or that cover crucial developments in the topic, but they are not yet formally published, you may reference the preprint.

Before completing the submission of your manuscript, we advise you to read our submission checklist:

• One author has been designated as the corresponding author and their full contact details (email address, full postal address and phone numbers) have been provided.
• All files have been uploaded, including keywords, figure captions and tables (including a title, description and footnotes) included.
• Spelling and grammar checks have been carried out.
• All references in the article text are cited in the reference list and vice versa.
• Permission has been obtained for the use of any copyrighted material from other sources, including the Web.
• For gold open access articles, all authors understand that they are responsible for payment of the article publishing charge (APC) if the manuscript is accepted. Payment of the APC may be covered by the corresponding author's institution, or the research funder.

Authors will be asked to complete a publishing agreement after acceptance. The corresponding author will receive a link to the online agreement by email.