Copyright and Licensing Policy

Unless otherwise stated on the article, all content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Under this licence anyone may:

  • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format;
  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercially;

on condition that they give appropriate credit to the authors and the journal, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made.

The full legal text is at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

The licence applies from the moment of publication and cannot be revoked. Where an author's funder or institution requires a different Creative Commons licence (e.g. CC BY-NC), the author should contact the editorial office before acceptance.

Copyright

Authors retain copyright in their work without restriction. On acceptance the corresponding author, on behalf of all authors, grants Somato Publications a non-exclusive licence to publish the article as the version of record and to identify itself as the original publisher.

Authors are free to:

  • Post the accepted manuscript or published version in any repository or on any website at any time;
  • Reuse the article, in whole or in part, in their own future work (including theses) with citation of the original publication;
  • Translate the article, distribute copies, and include it in course packs;
  • Enter into separate arrangements for distribution of the published version, provided the journal is acknowledged as the original publisher.

Third-party material

Authors must obtain permission for any copyrighted material (figures, tables, extended quotations) that is not their own and is not already under a compatible open licence, and must ensure the permission covers publication under CC BY 4.0. Credit the source in the figure legend or table footnote.

Reuse of published content by the journal

The journal may reproduce published articles in collections, special issues, or other formats, always with attribution and under the same licence.

Last updated: 29 September 2026