Title Page
Please make sure your title page contains the following information.
Title
The title should be concise and informative.

• 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.

Abstract
Please provide a structured abstract of 150 to 250 words which should be divided into the following sections:

• Purpose (stating the main purposes and research question)
• Methods
• Results
• Conclusion

For life science journals only (when applicable)
Trial registration number and date of registration
Trial registration number, date of registration followed by “retrospectively registered”

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

Declarations
All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations'.
If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section.
To be used for all articles, including articles with biological applications

Funding
Information that explains whether and by whom the research was supported

Conflicts of interest/Competing interests
Include appropriate disclosures

Availability of data and material
Data transparency

Code availability
Software application or custom code

Authors' contributions
Optional: please review the submission guidelines from the journal whether statements are mandatory
Additional declarations for articles in life science journals that report the results of studies involving humans and/or animals

Ethics approval
Include appropriate approvals or waivers

Consent to participate
Include appropriate statements

Consent for publication
Include appropriate statements
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.
Please note: All personal information (including names, email address, institution and prior publications) should be stated only in the title page and not even in a supplementary file.

Text Formatting
Manuscripts should be submitted in Word.

• 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.
• Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
• Use the equation editor or MathType for equations.
• Save your file in docx format (Word 2007 or higher) or doc format (older Word versions).

Headings
Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations
Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also 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 on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

References
Citation
Reference citations in the text should be identified by numbers in square brackets. Some examples:

• Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].
•  
• This effect has been widely studied [1-3, 7].

Reference list
The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.
The entries in the list should be numbered consecutively.
If available, please always include DOI numbers or full DOI links in your reference list.

• Journal article
  Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci. 1999;36:234–5.
• Article by DOI
  Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. J Mol Med. 2000; https://doi.org/10.1007/s001090000086
• Book
  Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.
• Book chapter
  Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.
• Online document
  Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

  Always use the standard abbreviation of a journal’s name according to the ISSN List of Title Word Abbreviations, see
  ISSN.org LTWA

   

  If you are unsure, please use the full journal title.
  For authors using EndNote, Springer provides an output style that supports the formatting of in-text citations and reference list.
  EndNote style (Download zip, 4 kB)