Before submission

Before proceeding to submission check that your manuscript includes the following:

Manuscript title
The manuscript title should include the research question and study design. The titles may be informative or indicative.

Structured abstract
A structured abstract (up to 350 words). Note that some study designs require specific formats of the abstract (e. g., see CONSORT extension for abstracts).


Declarations
Funding statement, preferably worded as follows. Either: ‘This work was supported by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]’ or ‘This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors’. You must ensure that the full, correct details of your funder(s) and any relevant grant numbers are included.
Competing interests statement. See ST-OPEN policy on competing interests.
Articles should list each author’s contribution individually at the end; this section may also include contributors who do not qualify as authors. Please visit the ICMJE website for more information on authorship.
Any checklist and flow diagram for the appropriate reporting statement, e.g. STROBE (see below).
Ethical approval: Any work with human subjects needs approval by institutional Ethics committee.
Declaration of AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process (optional): During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order 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 publication.” 
A statement on the patient consent: Any article that contains personal medical information about an identifiable living individual requires the patient’s explicit consent before we can publish it.
A data sharing statement: Include this statement if relevant, such as: “Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the Dryad repository, DOI: [include DOI for dataset here].
Authors are encouraged to submit figures and images in color – there are no color charges. We require that you upload your figures as separate files rather than embedding them in the manuscript.
Supplementary and raw data can be placed online alongside the article although we prefer raw data to be made publicly available and linked to in DABAR. We may request that you separate out some material into supplementary data files to make the main manuscript clearer for readers.

Subject categories
At upload you will be asked to choose one general subject area that applies to your article – it will be published under this banner on the main table of contents. You will also be asked to select further subject headings to be used for the ‘Browse by topic’ section, and specific keywords for help with identifying reviewers.

Author contacts
E-mail addresses and affiliations of all co-authors should be provided by the corresponding; they will be contacted to confirm their authorship on the submitted manuscript.

Presubmission enquiries should be directed to the Editorial Office (st-open@unist.hr).

ORCID
ST-OPEN recommends ORCID iD for at least one author at the time of article submission; co-authors and reviewers are strongly encouraged to state their ORCID iD. The use and integration of ORCID iDs will be beneficial for the authors as well as for the research community.