Submission guidelines

Manuscript Submission

Manuscript Submission

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen.

Source Files

Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files at every submission and revision. Failing to submit a complete set of editable source files will result in your article not being considered for review. For your manuscript text please always submit in common word processing formats such as .docx or LaTeX.

Or you may send your contribution directly to the Legal Manager at iic@ip.mpg.de

Page length

• Articles: Maximum 25 pages (approx. 14,000 words incl. footnotes).
• Opinions and Reports: Maximum 15 pages (approx. 8,500 words incl. footnotes).
• Book reviews: Maximum 4 pages (approx. 2,300 words incl. footnotes).

Title Page

Please make sure your title page contains the following information.

Title

The title should be concise and informative.

Author information

• The name(s) of the author(s)
• The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
• A clear indication and an active e-mail address of the corresponding author
• If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)

If address information is provided with the affiliation(s) it will also be published.

For authors that are (temporarily) unaffiliated we will only capture their city and country of residence, not their e-mail address unless specifically requested.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript. The use of an LLM (or other AI-tool) for "AI assisted copy editing" purposes does not need to be declared. In this context, we define the term "AI assisted copy editing" as AI-assisted improvements to human-generated texts for readability and style, and to ensure that the texts are free of errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation and tone. These AI-assisted improvements may include wording and formatting changes to the texts, but do not include generative editorial work and autonomous content creation. In all cases, there must be human accountability for the final version of the text and agreement from the authors that the edits reflect their original work.

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 150 to 250 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

For life science journals only (when applicable)

• Trial registration number and date of registration for prospectively registered trials
• Trial registration number and date of registration, followed by “retrospectively registered”, for retrospectively registered trials

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

Statements and Declarations

The following statements should be included under the heading "Statements and Declarations" for inclusion in the published paper. Please note that submissions that do not include relevant declarations will be returned as incomplete.

• Competing Interests: Authors are required to disclose financial or non-financial interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. Please refer to “Competing Interests and Funding” below for more information on how to complete this section.

Please see the relevant sections in the submission guidelines for further information as well as various examples of wording. Please revise/customize the sample statements according to your own needs.

Text

Text Formatting

• Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman) for text.
• Use italics for emphasis.
• Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
• Do not use field functions.
• Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
• Save your file in doc format. Do not submit docx files.

Headings

Please use the decimal system of headings with no more than three levels.

For example:

1. Section

1.1 Subsection

1.1.1 Sub-subsection

Abbreviations

Avoid unfamiliar abbreviations, define any abbreviation that you use in the text at first mention and use it consistently thereafter.

Within articles and decisions the terms below are to be abbreviated as follows.

Exceptions are original EU decisions. Here these terms are left as in the original. Also, the § and §§ are left in citations of U.S. Appeal and Supreme Court decisions.

Standard abbreviations of terms:
Article	Art.
Articles	Arts.
Compare	cf.
Figure	Fig.
Figures	Figs.
Number	No.
Numbers	Nos.
Official Journal	OJ
Paragraph	para.
Paragraphs	paras.
Section or §	Sec.
Sections or §§	Secs.

Abbreviations of courts, organizations, treaties and unions:
Court of Appeal	CA
Court of First Instance	CFI
European Community (aka “Treaty of Rome”)	EC
European Court of Justice	ECJ
European Economic Community	EEC
European Patent Convention (aka “Munich Convention”)	EPC
European Patent Office	EPO
European Union (aka “Maastricht Treaty”)	EU
House of Lords	HL
Patent Court	PatC
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights	TRIPS*
WIPO Copyright Treaty	WCT
World Intellectual Property Organization	WIPO
World Trade Organization	WTO

* Note: WIPO uses “TRIPS”, however, some authors prefer “TRIPs”. This is accepted as long as usage is consistent.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

References

Citation

Citations of books, book chapters, or journal articles in the text or in footnotes should be given in a shortened form: author name(s), year and page number or paragraph. Some examples:

• One author: Miller 1991, p. 17 or Miller 1991, para 30
• Two authors: Miller and Smith 1991, p. 17 or Miller and Smith 1991, para 30
• Three authors or more: Miller et al. 1991, p.17 or Miller et al. 1991, para 30
• Commentaries: Smit 2005, Article 5, para 7

Reference list

Please provide a reference list with the bibliographic details of the cited books, book chapters, or journal articles. The list should only include works that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text or the footnotes.

Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last names of the first author of each work.

If available, please always include DOIs as full DOI links in your reference list (e.g. “https://doi.org/abc”).

• Journal article

  Schwarze J (2000) Der Staat als Adressat des europäischen Wettbewerbsrechts. EuZW 11: 613–618

• Article by DOI

  Cheng, ECM, Courtenay SM (2006) Board composition, regulatory regime and voluntary disclosure. Int J Account 41:262-289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intacc.2006.07.001

• Book

  Enchelmaier S (1997) Europäische Wettbewerbspolitik im Oligopol. Nomos, Baden-Baden

• Book chapter

  Hulle K van, Tas L van der (2001) European Union-individual accounts. In: Ordelheide D, KPMG (eds), Transnational accounting, 2nd edn. Palgrave, Basingstoke, pp 772–826

• Online document

  Deutscher Bundestag (2009) Plenarprotokoll 16/222. http://www.bundestag.de/bic/plenarprotokolle/pp_pdf/16222.pdf. Accessed 18 May 2009

Courts/Names of International Courts

The names of international courts are given in English.*

Example:
“Cour d’appel de Paris”	is “Paris Court of Appeal”
“Bundesgerichtshof or BGH”	is “German Federal Supreme Court”

* Note: For a comprehensive list of foreign courts and their English translation, see below.

Cases:

Clagett v. Daly, 87 S. Ct. 311 (1966).

Federal Supreme Court, May 14, 1998, Case No. I ZB 9/96, 1998 GRUR 938 – Dragon.

German case references in BGH decisions

Examples:

(Original) BGHZ 98, 12, 18 – Formstein

(IIC style) 98 BGHZ 12, 18 [18 IIC 797 (1987)] – Formstein*

* Note: The first number after “BGHZ” in the original example is the volume number and belongs in the first position. Where an IIC translation of the decision exists, the IIC citation information is inserted in squared brackets before the catch words. The catch words are in cursive following an en-dash.

Italics

Case names, including “v.”

Words emphasized by the author.

Translation of German Laws

PatG § 9 Abs. 1 Satz 2 = Patent Act, Sec. 9(1), second sentence

MarkenG § 24 Nr. 2 = Trade Mark Act, Sec. 24, No. 2

MarkenG § 24 Abs. 1 Nr. 2 = Trade Mark Act, Sec. 24(1)(2)

Numbering

Paragraph Numbering/Marginal Numbers:

All translations of BGH decisions should retain the paragraph numbering from the German original. The marginal numbering of paragraphs in BGH decisions is placed at the beginning of each paragraph.

Example:

4 The appeal on the law is admissible and results in the contested decision being set aside and the case being returned to the appeal court for rehearing....

becomes

4 The appeal on the law is admissible and results in the contested decision being set aside and the case being returned to the appeal court for rehearing....

Where a paragraph already contains numbering or lettering along with a marginal number, the marginal number is still set at the beginning, separated by an en-dash.

Example:

5 I. The patent at issue concerns the drawing unit of a machine for drawing metal blanks, and interacts with a drawing tool as shown schematically in Fig. 1 of the patent at issue:...

becomes

5 – I. The patent at issue concerns the drawing unit of a machine for drawing metal blanks, and interacts with a drawing tool as shown schematically in Fig. 1 of the patent at issue:...

Countries and Their Courts
Austria
Kartellgericht (1. Instance – not appellate court)	Cartel Court
Kartellobergericht	Cartel Supreme Court
Oberlandesgericht Wien	Vienna Court of Appeal
Oberster Gerichtshof	Supreme Court
Österreichisches Patentamt,	Patent Office,
Beschwerdeabteilung	Appeals Division
Nichtigkeitsabteilung	Nullity Procedures Division
Oberster Patent- und Markensenat	Supreme Patent and Trade Mark Chamber
Patentgerichtshof	Patent Court
Verfassungsgerichtshof	Constitutional Court
Verwaltungsgericht	Administrative Court
Arbeiterkammertag	Govt. Agency representing workers (not a court)
Belgium
Tribunal de première instance de Bruxelles	Court of First Instance
Cour d’appel de Bruxelles	Court of Appeal
Tribunal de commerce	District Court for Commerce Matters
Rechtbank van Koophandel	District Court
Hof van Beroep	Court of Appeal
Benelux
Gerechtshof	Court of Justice
Rechtbank	District Court
Brazil
Tribunal da Relação	Court of Appeal
Supremo Tribunal de Justiça	Supreme Court of Justice
Denmark
So-og Handelsret	Maritime & Commercial Court
Byret	Court of First Instance
Hojesteret	Supreme Court
Ostrelandsret	District Court
Fojesteret	Bailiffs Court
Marktgesetz	Marketing Practices Act
France
Cour d’appel de Paris	Paris Court of Appeal
Cour de cassation	Supreme Court
Tribunal de commerce de la Seine	District Court for Commerce Matters
Tribunal de grande instance de Paris	Paris District Court
Germany
Amtsgericht	Local Court
Bundesgerichtshof	Federal Supreme Court
Bundespatentgericht	Federal Patent Court
(4. Senat)	(4th Chamber)
(Senat)	this Court, the Court
Landgericht	District Court
Oberlandesgericht	Court of Appeal
Bundeskartellamt	Federal Cartel Office
Kammergericht	Berlin Court of Appeal
Schiedsstelle nach dem ArbnErfG beim Deutschen Patentamt	Arbitration Board at the German Patent Office according to the Act on Employees’ Inventions
Bundesverfassungsgericht	Federal Constitutional Court
Hungary
Fovarosi Birosag	District Court
Legfelsobb Birosag	Supreme Court
Italy	Z52,1
Corte di Cassazione	Supreme Court
Corte di Apello	Court of Appeal
Corte Costituzionale	Constitutional Court
Tribunale di Milano	District Court
Pretura di Roma	County Court
Commissione dei Ricorsi in materia	Patent Appeal Commission Di brevetti
Luxembourg
Tribunal d’Arrondisement	District Court
Netherlands
Octrooiraad Afdeling van Beroep	Patent Office Board of Appeal
Arrondisements-Rechtbank te Breda	District Court
Hoge Raad	Supreme Court
Gerechtshof	Court of Appeal
Norway
Hoysterett	Supreme Court
Byrett	District Court
Poland
Komisja Odwolawcza	Patent Office Appeal Commission
Komisja Rozjemcza	Patent Office Arbitration Commission
Kollegium Orzekajace	Decisions Board
Sad Najwyzszy	Supreme Court
Vojvod	District Court
Rumania
Comisia pentru solutionarea	Appeal Commission
Contestatiilor privind inventiile	Board of Appeals for Inventions
Russia
Comitet po delam izobretenij i otkrytij	Committee for Discoveries and Inventions
Verchovnyj sud	Supreme Court
Ekspertnyj sovet	Board of experts
	Statute on Discoveries, Inventions and Rationalization Proposals
	State Office for Scientific-Technical Examination of Inventions
Spain
Tribunal Supremo	Supreme Court
Sweden
Tingsrätt	City Court
Svea Hovrätt	Court of Appeal
	Market Court
	Marketing Practices Act
Switzerland
Bundesgericht	Federal Supreme Court
Bezirksgericht	District Court
Eidgenössisches Amt für Geistiges Eigentum	Federal Office for Intellectual Property
Vorprüfungssektion	Examining Division
Markenabteilung	Trade Mark Division
Beschwerdeabteilung	Board of Appeals
Handelsgericht	District Court for Commercial Matters
Obergericht	Court of Appeal
Zivilgericht Basel-Stadt	Canton of Basel District Court
Cour de justice civile	Court of Appeal
Kartellkommission	Cartel Commission
Yugoslavia
Oberstes Wirtschaftsgericht	Supreme Economic Court

Tables

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
• Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
• Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Artwork and Illustrations Guidelines

Electronic Figure Submission

• Supply all figures electronically.
• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MSOffice files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Line Art

• Definition: Black and white graphic with no shading.
• Do not use faint lines and/or lettering and check that all lines and lettering within the figures are legible at final size.
• All lines should be at least 0.1 mm (0.3 pt) wide.
• Scanned line drawings and line drawings in bitmap format should have a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.

Halftone Art

• Definition: Photographs, drawings, or paintings with fine shading, etc.
• If any magnification is used in the photographs, indicate this by using scale bars within the figures themselves.
• Halftones should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination Art

• Definition: a combination of halftone and line art, e.g., halftones containing line drawing, extensive lettering, color diagrams, etc.
• Combination artwork should have a minimum resolution of 600 dpi.

Color Art

• Color art is free of charge for online publication.
• If black and white will be shown in the print version, make sure that the main information will still be visible. Many colors are not distinguishable from one another when converted to black and white. A simple way to check this is to make a xerographic copy to see if the necessary distinctions between the different colors are still apparent.
• If the figures will be printed in black and white, do not refer to color in the captions.
• Color illustrations should be submitted as RGB (8 bits per channel).

Figure Lettering

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures,"A1, A2, A3, etc." Figures in online appendices [Supplementary Information (SI)] should, however, be numbered separately.

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation to be placed at the end of the caption.
• Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.
• Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

Figure Placement and Size

• Figures should be submitted within the body of the text. Only if the file size of the manuscript causes problems in uploading it, the large figures should be submitted separately from the text.
• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
• For large-sized journals the figures should be 84 mm (for double-column text areas), or 174 mm (for single-column text areas) wide and not higher than 234 mm.
• For small-sized journals, the figures should be 119 mm wide and not higher than 195 mm.

Permissions

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that Springer will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your figures, please make sure that

• All figures have descriptive captions (blind users could then use a text-to-speech software or a text-to-Braille hardware)
• Patterns are used instead of or in addition to colors for conveying information (colorblind users would then be able to distinguish the visual elements)
• Any figure lettering has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Generative AI Images

Please check Springer’s policy on generative AI images and make sure your work adheres to the principles described therein.

Supplementary Information (SI)

Springer accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article or a book chapter. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

Before submitting research datasets as Supplementary Information, authors should read the journal’s Research data policy. We encourage research data to be archived in data repositories wherever possible.

Submission

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.
• High resolution (streamable quality) videos can be submitted up to a maximum of 25GB; low resolution videos should not be larger than 5GB.

Audio, Video, and Animations

• Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 4:3
• Maximum file size: 25 GB for high resolution files; 5 GB for low resolution files
• Minimum video duration: 1 sec
• Supported file formats: avi, wmv, mp4, mov, m2p, mp2, mpg, mpeg, flv, mxf, mts, m4v, 3gp

Text and Presentations

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets

• Spreadsheets should be submitted as .csv or .xlsx files (MS Excel).

Specialized Formats

• Specialized format such as .pdb (chemical), .wrl (VRML), .nb (Mathematica notebook), and .tex can also be supplied.

Collecting Multiple Files

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip or .gz file.

Numbering

• If supplying any supplementary material, the text must make specific mention of the material as a citation, similar to that of figures and tables.
• Refer to the supplementary files as “Online Resource”, e.g., "... as shown in the animation (Online Resource 3)", “... additional data are given in Online Resource 4”.
• Name the files consecutively, e.g. “ESM_3.mpg”, “ESM_4.pdf”.

Captions

• For each supplementary material, please supply a concise caption describing the content of the file.

Processing of supplementary files

• Supplementary Information (SI) will be published as received from the author without any conversion, editing, or reformatting.

Accessibility

In order to give people of all abilities and disabilities access to the content of your supplementary files, please make sure that

• The manuscript contains a descriptive caption for each supplementary material
• Video files do not contain anything that flashes more than three times per second (so that users prone to seizures caused by such effects are not put at risk)

Generative AI Images

Please check Springer’s policy on generative AI images and make sure your work adheres to the principles described therein.

Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) the journal will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include*:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. (Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the concerns about text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’).
• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (i.e. ‘salami-slicing/publishing’).
• Concurrent or secondary publication is sometimes justifiable, provided certain conditions are met. Examples include: translations or a manuscript that is intended for a different group of readers.
• Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data.
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

• Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies (if appropriate).
• Research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature in support of the claims made. Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged.
• Authors should avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person.
• Research that may be misapplied to pose a threat to public health or national security should be clearly identified in the manuscript (e.g. dual use of research). Examples include creation of harmful consequences of biological agents or toxins, disruption of immunity of vaccines, unusual hazards in the use of chemicals, weaponization of research/technology (amongst others).
• Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors are all correct at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

*All of the above are guidelines and authors need to make sure to respect third parties rights such as copyright and/or moral rights.

Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

If there is suspicion of misbehavior or alleged fraud the Journal and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, there are valid concerns, the author(s) concerned will be contacted under their given e-mail address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal’s and/or Publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:

  - an erratum/correction may be placed with the article

  - an expression of concern may be placed with the article

  - or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur.

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, expression of concern or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted” and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.

• The author’s institution may be informed
• A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

Fundamental errors

Authors have an obligation to correct mistakes once they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article. The author(s) is/are requested to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article. A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction. The retraction note should provide transparency which parts of the article are impacted by the error.

Suggesting / excluding reviewers

Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer, or, if this is not possible to include other means of verifying the identity such as a link to a personal homepage, a link to the publication record or a researcher or author ID in the submission letter. Please note that the Journal may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.

Authorship principles

These guidelines describe authorship principles and good authorship practices to which prospective authors should adhere to.

Authorship clarified

The Journal and Publisher assume all authors agreed with the content and that all gave explicit consent to submit and that they obtained consent from the responsible authorities at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.

The Publisher does not prescribe the kinds of contributions that warrant authorship. It is recommended that authors adhere to the guidelines for authorship that are applicable in their specific research field. In absence of specific guidelines it is recommended to adhere to the following guidelines*:

All authors whose names appear on the submission

1) made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work;

2) drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content;

3) approved the version to be published; and

4) agree 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.

* Based on/adapted from:

ICMJE, Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors,

Transparency in authors’ contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication, McNutt at all, PNAS February 27, 2018

Disclosures and declarations

All authors are requested to include information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, study-specific approval by the appropriate ethics committee for research involving humans and/or animals, informed consent if the research involved human participants, and a statement on welfare of animals if the research involved animals (as appropriate).

The decision whether such information should be included is not only dependent on the scope of the journal, but also the scope of the article. Work submitted for publication may have implications for public health or general welfare and in those cases it is the responsibility of all authors to include the appropriate disclosures and declarations.

Data transparency

All authors are requested to make sure that all data and materials as well as software application or custom code support their published claims and comply with field standards. Please note that journals may have individual policies on (sharing) research data in concordance with disciplinary norms and expectations.

Role of the Corresponding Author

One author is assigned as Corresponding Author and acts on behalf of all co-authors and ensures that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately addressed.

The Corresponding Author is responsible for the following requirements:

• ensuring that all listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission, including the names and order of authors;
• managing all communication between the Journal and all co-authors, before and after publication;*
• providing transparency on re-use of material and mention any unpublished material (for example manuscripts in press) included in the manuscript in a cover letter to the Editor;
• making sure disclosures, declarations and transparency on data statements from all authors are included in the manuscript as appropriate (see above).

* The requirement of managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors during submission and proofing may be delegated to a Contact or Submitting Author. In this case please make sure the Corresponding Author is clearly indicated in the manuscript.

Author contributions

In absence of specific instructions and in research fields where it is possible to describe discrete efforts, the Publisher recommends authors to include contribution statements in the work that specifies the contribution of every author in order to promote transparency. These contributions should be listed at the separate title page.

Examples of such statement(s) are shown below:

• Free text:

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Example: CRediT taxonomy:

• Conceptualization: [full name], …; Methodology: [full name], …; Formal analysis and investigation: [full name], …; Writing - original draft preparation: [full name, …]; Writing - review and editing: [full name], …; Funding acquisition: [full name], …; Resources: [full name], …; Supervision: [full name],….

For review articles where discrete statements are less applicable a statement should be included who had the idea for the article, who performed the literature search and data analysis, and who drafted and/or critically revised the work.

For articles that are based primarily on the student’s dissertation or thesis, it is recommended that the student is usually listed as principal author:

A Graduate Student’s Guide to Determining Authorship Credit and Authorship Order, APA Science Student Council 2006

Affiliation

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may additionally be stated. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article.

Changes to authorship

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

• Please note that author names will be published exactly as they appear on the accepted submission!

Please make sure that the names of all authors are present and correctly spelled, and that addresses and affiliations are current.

Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage are generally not permitted, but in some cases it may be warranted. Reasons for these changes in authorship should be explained. Approval of the change during revision is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief. Please note that journals may have individual policies on adding and/or deleting authors during revision stage.

Author identification

Authors are recommended to use their ORCID ID when submitting an article for consideration or acquire an ORCID ID via the submission process.

Deceased or incapacitated authors

For cases in which a co-author dies or is incapacitated during the writing, submission, or peer-review process, and the co-authors feel it is appropriate to include the author, co-authors should obtain approval from a (legal) representative which could be a direct relative.

Authorship issues or disputes

In the case of an authorship dispute during peer review or after acceptance and publication, the Journal will not be in a position to investigate or adjudicate. Authors will be asked to resolve the dispute themselves. If they are unable the Journal reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process or in case of a published paper raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.

Confidentiality

Authors should treat all communication with the Journal as confidential which includes correspondence with direct representatives from the Journal such as Editors-in-Chief and/or Handling Editors and reviewers’ reports unless explicit consent has been received to share information.

After acceptance

Upon acceptance of your article you will receive a link to the special Author Query Application at Springer’s web page where you can sign the Copyright Transfer Statement online and indicate whether you wish to order offprints, or printing of figures in color.

Once the Author Query Application has been completed, your article will be processed and you will receive the proofs.

Offprints

Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

Color illustrations

Online publication of color illustrations is free of charge. For color in the print version, authors will be expected to make a contribution towards the extra costs.

Proof reading

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor.

After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Online First

The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. This is the official first publication citable with the DOI. After release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.

To find out more about publishing your work Open Access in IIC - International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, including information on fees, funding and licences, visit our Open access publishing page.