Acceptance Policy

A manuscript is accepted only when all of the following are true:

  1. It has been reviewed by at least two independent reviewers (or, for editorials, letters and abstracts, by at least two editors), as described in the Peer Review Policy.
  2. All required revisions have been made to the satisfaction of the handling editor.
  3. All ethics, consent, conflict-of-interest, funding, data availability and AI-use statements are complete.
  4. The final decision has been made by the Editor-in-Chief or a Co-Editor-in-Chief.

After acceptance

  • The corresponding author receives a formal acceptance letter. This letter is the only valid confirmation of acceptance.
  • The article processing charge (if any) becomes payable at this stage (see the APC Policy and Waiver Policy). Payment or a waiver has no effect on the editorial decision already made.
  • The manuscript is copy-edited and typeset, and the corresponding author must approve the proof within 3–5 working days. Only corrections of errors are allowed at proof stage, not new content.
  • The article is published online with a Crossref DOI, its submission, revision, acceptance and publication dates, and the CC BY 4.0 licence.

Accuracy of dates

The dates printed on each article (received, revised, accepted, published) are taken directly from the journal's submission system and must match the article page and the DOI metadata.