Guide for authors

Submission and publication workflow

Interested in submitting to the Traffic Safety Research (TSR) journal?

  1. Start by reviewing the focus and scope of the journal to ensure that the TSR is the right venue to publish your work.
  2. Examine the publication types accepted by the journal and decide on your format.
  3. Check the ethical and scientific transparency guidelines—do you comply?
  4. Study the manuscript preparation instructions.
  5. Make sure that you have ‘yes’ for all items in the submission checklist.
  6. Submit!
  7. Learn about what happens after the submission.
  8. Learn how to promote your published article.
  9. Learn what you can do if any post-publication updates are necessary.

Ethical guidelines for authors

The inspiration for these guidelines comes to a high degree from the materials provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Communication language, style, and channels

All communication between the parties of the editorial process must be done in a professional manner, using appropriate language, and with due respect. To promote transparency, communication should be restricted to the official channels, such as the submission-specific discussion tool within the journal software system and/or professional emails. Contacts through personal messaging platforms like WhatsUp, LinkedIn, etc. are strongly discouraged.

Studies involving human subjects

Research involving people must take special considerations to how their rights, dignity, and welfare might be affected. This is best done by seeking an approval (or granted exemption) of the research plan by an appropriate institutional or national research ethics committee.

Research activities that require an external ethical evaluation include (but not limited to):

  • collection or use of data (traceable to individuals) on ethnic origins, political views, religious convictions, health, biometric data, sex life, or legal offences
  • physical interventions on living human beings
  • application of methods that aim to affect the human subjects physically or mentally
  • application of methods that entail obvious risks of harming the human subjects
  • use of biological materials (traceable to individuals) from living or deceased persons
  • involvement of specially vulnerable groups, such as children or people lacking capacity.

Individual participants in studies have the right to decide what happens to the (identifiable) personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview, as well as to any photograph that was taken. In many instances authors will need to secure written consent before including images.

Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers, etc.) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, images, or other media formats unless the information is essential for scholarly purposes and the participant (or parent/guardian if the participant is a minor or incapable) gave written informed consent for publication.

Under certain circumstances consent is not required as long as information is anonymized and the submission does not include images that may identify the person. However, if there is any doubt, informed consent for publication should be obtained.

Details of the ethical approval (body that performed the evaluation, decision identifier, etc.) must be provided in the ‘Ethics statement’. If a study is exempted from requiring an ethical approval, details on how the decision was reached must be provided. Other relevant information, such as whether consent was received from the participants, should also be declared.

Competing interests

A competing interest (the situation may be also referred to as a conflict of interests) occurs when there is a risk that your research was influenced by other people or organizations affected by the publication contents. Competing interests can be of financial (e.g. employment, collaboration, receiving of grants, patents held or pending) or non-financial (e.g. political, legal, or other involvements) nature.

Competing interest does not mean that objectivity of your work is affected, but rather than it can be perceived as affected. As a rule of thumb, the authors should disclose any relations that, if discovered at a later stage, may cause them embarrassment.

Existence of a competing interest does not automatically exclude the paper from publucation. On the other hand, an undisclosed competing interest identified later may lead to delays in the reviewing process and a potential rejection. If the article is already published, the authors will be required to issue a correction notice, or the article may even be retracted from the journal.

A special concern are the submissions in which one or more authors are in some way involved with the TSR journal, for example being members of the editorial team, close colleagues, or students to an editor. As such, the TSR does not forbid such submissions and their eventual publication. However, exceptional transparency of the reviewing and decision taking process is required. In choosing the handling editor, efforts are made to minimize their conflict of interests. If this cannot be satisfactory resolved within the regular editorial team, an external guest editor is called for.

The nature of the existing conflicts of interests, as well as actions taken to mitigate their consequences (when relevant) must to be clearly described in the ‘Declaration of competing interests’.

Authorship

Two minimum requirements define the authorship:

  • Making a substantial contribution to the work, verified by the ‘CRediT contribution statement’. Persons whose contributions are not deemed significant can be mentioned in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section.

  • Being accountable for the work and its published form. This is verified through ORCID iD confirmation that assumes that the author is aware about and approves the submission, and, later, its publication.

Any authorship-related disputes are handled by the editorial team following the guidelines developed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The recommended practice is to delay the review and production processes until a satisfactory resolution of all issues has been reached.

Originality and plagiarism

All manuscripts are checked during the submission using iThenticate plagiarism detection software.

The authors must ensure that all parts of their work are original. If the work and/or words of others have been used, they must be appropriately cited or quoted.

Overlap of text with an author's own previously published work, so called text recycling, is considered by the editor on the case-to-case basis. Generally, the significance of the overlap is taken into account, as well as in which parts of the manuscript it takes place (e.g. it might be hard to avoid in the method description, but is completely unacceptable in the results section). The TSR follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) regarding text recycling.

Text recycling is not to be confused with a redundant publication, which is generally a more serious problem.

Redundant or concurrent publications

In general, the authors should not publish more than one manuscript describing essentially the same research.

It is still acceptable that the research has been made public earlier in form of an abstract, a poster, a conference presentation, a project report, or an academic thesis. Preprints are allowed, too (read more about the preprint policy of the TSR journal here).

In such cases, a proper note must be made in the ‘Prior dissemination declaration’.

Fundamental error in published work

If the authors discover a significant error in their published work, they must notify the journal editor and promptly retract or correct the paper. Read more about post-publication corrections here.

Funding sources

The authors must state all sponsors for the work described in the submitted manuscript (or explicitly state their absence) in the ‘Funding statement’.

In case a funder was involved in (i) study design, (ii) data collection, analysis and interpretation, (iii) writing process, or (iv) decision to submit the paper for publication, their role should be clearly described.

The journal submission system is integrated with the Open Funder Registry (OFR). During the submission, the author should provide the funder names and grant numbers in the article metadata (this might not be possible for some grant-giving organizations that are not registered with the OFR).

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies

Writing process. The TSR permits usage of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in writing to improve readability and language of the work. However, since AI is known to occasionally produce biased, incomplete, or incorrect output, the authors must carefully review and edit the AI-generated results. The authors are ultimately responsible for the contents of the work they submit. The authors should disclose the use of AI in the ‘Declaration of generative AI use’. They should not list AI as a co-author, nor cite AI as an author. Authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans. The standard requirement for the work's originality applies.

Figures, images, artwork. It is not allowed to use generative AI to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts. This may include enhancing, obscuring, moving, removing, or introducing specific features within an image or figure. The only exception is when AI is used as a part of the research design, see below. Adjustment of brightness, contrast, or colour balance is acceptable as long as it does not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. A good practice is to present both the original and enhanced images.

AI as research method. When AI or AI-assisted tools are used as a research method, such use must be described in a reproducible manner in the methods section. This should include explanations on how the AI tool was used, as well as its name, version, and manufacturer. The general requirement of scientific transparency applies.

Unethical behaviour

In case the editor, reviewers, or peer researches suspect that the authors behaved unethically, the journal has a formal procedure for investigating such allegations as described here. On the other hand, the authors may raise complaints about the conduct of the handling editor or reviewers as described here.

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Scientific transparency

Scientific transparency means making the entire research process open, understandable, and accessible so others can evaluate, verify, and reproduce the work. It is a core value in modern science and a foundation of credibility and trust.

The guiding principle is ‘as transparent as scientifically valuable, as private as ethically mandatory’.

Scientific transparency typically requires:

  • clear, unambiguous identification
  • relevant declarations
  • clear documentation of methods and protocols
  • public availability of data
  • sharing analysis code and computational workflows
  • disclosure of interpretive decisions and deviations from plans
  • transparent reporting of results, including negative or null findings.

Identification

Includes:

  • authors (ORCID iDs)
  • research organizations (RoR IDs)
  • funding sources (grant numbers)
  • ethics board decisions (decision numbers).

Declarations

Include:

  • CRediT contribution for all authors
  • conflicts of interests
  • AI usage
  • prior dissemination
  • funder's involvement in the research process.

Methods and reporting standards

Includes:

  • complete, stepwise method description (not ‘available upon request’ or only in references)
  • experimental design (inclusion/exclusion criteria, blocking, randomization, etc.)
  • human participants characteristics (distribution of age, gender, other relevant demographics, recruitment methods, etc.)
  • hardware specifics (model numbers, firmware versions, settings, etc.)
  • software specifics (programming environments, versions, packages, OS, etc.)
  • power/sample size rationale
  • standards compliance (cite relevant standards and test methods, declare deviations)
  • uncertainty and error analysis (measurement uncertainty, confidence intervals, sensitivity analyses)
  • negative/null results policy (include reporting of tests performed, not selective reporting)
  • benchmarking: justify baselines; report parameter tuning; avoid cherry-picked datasets.

Data and reproducibility

Traffic Safety Research encourages the authors to share their research data and methodology (e.g. computer codes used in the analysis) when it is permitted by the data protection regulations. You can either share the data upon a request or (a much better option) share it directly by uploading to a publicly accessible data repository. A useful overview of repository services can be found here.

State clearly in the ‘Data availability statement’ and the ‘Code availability statement’ how the readers may get access to your data/protocols/analysis code.

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Manuscript preparation instructions

Manuscript template

Traffic Safety Research strongly recommends the authors to get familiar with the article submission template. The template contains style and formatting instructions, and lists the compulsory sections to be included at the end of the manuscript. While the initially submitted manuscript may be formatted differently, upon its acceptance the authors will be requested to make adjustments to ensure consistency with the journal production style as described in the template.

The templates can be downloaded here (Word) and here (LaTeX).

Manuscript length

The TSR does not impose any specific restrictions on the length of the manuscripts. The length should be adequate in relation to the contents, allowing for description of the work done in sufficient detail yet not giving the impression of lengthiness.

During the review stage, the authors may receive recommendations from the editor regarding shortening or expanding the manuscript or its specific parts.

Language standard

The TSR publishes materials written in English language. British, American, and other varieties are equally acceptable. It is expected that the authors have proofread their manuscript prior to the submission, consulting specialized language services if necessary. Manuscripts written sloppily, or found difficult to understand due to language issues, will be desk rejected by the editor.

Given the fact that the majority of the TSR's authors, reviewers, and editors are not native English speakers, a certain share of ‘language imperfections’ is unavoidable. However, they should not hinder the reading flow or create ambiguity about the contents.

In case AI tools are used to improve the language, it should be disclosed under ‘Declaration of generative AI use’.

‘Crash’ or ‘accident’?

The TSR editorial team finds the ‘crash or accident’ debate overheated and, on some occasions, counterproductive. The journal acknowledges that the debate has raised issues worthy of consideration, notably from both sides (e.g. here and here). It does not, however, regard language policing as the appropriate means of addressing them. Accordingly, authors may decide for themselves which term they consider most suitable. Reviewers are advised to refrain from commenting on this matter, and editors are instructed to disregard such comments when making their decisions.

Compulsory sections

The manuscript must contain the following statements and declarations:

Additionally, the manuscript may contain:

‘Author information’

The manuscript must include a photo and a short professional biography (4–8 lines) for each of the authors.

‘CRediT contribution statement’

All authors of a submitted manuscript must state their contributions. The same applies even if the manuscript has a single author.

Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is a high-level taxonomy that includes 14 roles typically played by the authors of a scientific paper. These include:

  • Conceptualization: ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims
  • Data curation: management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use
  • Formal analysis: application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data
  • Funding acquisition: acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication
  • Investigation: conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection
  • Methodology: development or design of methodology; creation of models
  • Project administration: management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution
  • Resources: provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools
  • Software: programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components
  • Supervision: oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team
  • Validation: verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs
  • Visualization: preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation
  • Writing – original draft: preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation)
  • Writing – review & editing: preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision—including pre- or post-publication stages.

The role titles must be used as is, without any modifications.

‘Acknowledgements’

The Acknowledgements section is common, but not compulsory. It usually contains expressions of gratitude to people and organizations who helped with the research but do not qualify as co-authors. Typical examples of such contributions are:

  • field data collection
  • access to equipment and facilities
  • advice on statistical tools and methods
  • feedback on early drafts
  • helpful discussions
  • mentorship
  • permissions to use materials or datasets.

‘Declaration of competing interests’

The manuscript must include a declaration of competing interests. If the authors have no competing interests to declare, they should state this explicitly. Read more on competing interests here.

‘Declaration of generative AI use’

The authors must state whether in preparation of the manuscript they used generative artificial intelligence (AI) or AI-assisted tools, and if so, specify the tool and for which tasks it was used. Read more on generative AI technologies here.

‘Prior dissemination declaration’

The authors must state whether the current research has been disseminated earlier (e.g. as a preprint, conference presentation or poster, report, academic theses, etc.). Read more on originality and plagiarism here, redundant or concurrent publications here, and preprints here.

‘Ethics statement’

A submitted manuscript must include the ethics statement. Usually, it will contain a reference to the ethical evaluation of the research plan performed by a relevant authority (specifying the authority and the decision identifier). If a study was exempted from requiring an ethical approval, the reasons for and the procedure for arriving at such conclusion must be provided.

‘Funding statement’

The authors must state which funding agencies, and through which grants, financed the research described in the manuscript. If no external funding was received, it should be clearly stated so.

If a funder directly affected some of the decisions related to this research, this must be clearly described. Read more on funding sources here.

‘Data availability statement’

The manuscript must include a statement specifying how the data underlying the study can be accessed, with a justified explanation provided in exceptional cases where the data cannot be made accessible.

Generally, the authors are strongly encouraged together with publication of the research results to share relevant data and methodology (data collection protocols, variables, analytical procedures) through open access repositories (e.g. Zenodo, www.zenodo.org).

It remains the authors' duty to share the data responsibly. Responsible data sharing aims to maximize transparency and scientific value while ensuring that no information is disclosed that could compromise the privacy, dignity, or safety of the individuals involved. This is achieved through a combination of ethical, technical, and procedural safeguards such as:

  • obtaining of informed consents
  • removing or transforming identifiable information
  • applying data-minimization principles
  • using controlled-access repositories
  • implementing legal and contractual protections
  • providing transparent metadata and documentation so that methods and decisions are visible even when raw data cannot be released.

Before publishing, ensure that all data are clearly organized with descriptive filenames, documented variables, and a structure that allows others to understand and reuse the dataset without additional explanation. State clearly the level of access and the specific licence applied to their dataset.

‘Code availability statement’

The manuscript must include a statement specifying the availability of the code underlying the study, with a justified explanation provided in exceptional cases where the code cannot be made accessible.

The authors are strongly encouraged to share their analysis code through open access repositories (e.g. Zenodo, www.zenodo.org). The code may be published alongside the data or released as a separate publication.

Ensure that any custom scripts, analysis code, or computational workflows used in the study are organized, documented, and runnable. Remove any confidential information, passwords, or locally‑specific paths before publication. State clearly the specific licence applied to the code.

If proprietary code is used, clearly disclose its nature (identify the software or package by name and version, and describe the specific functions or modules used). Justify non‑sharing by referring to licensing restrictions, intellectual property agreements, or third‑party ownership. If relevant, provide pseudocode, workflow diagrams, or algorithmic descriptions to support transparency and reproducibility.

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Submission checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items:

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Submission

Ready? Go to the Submission page. You will be asked to register or, if already registered, simply log in to begin the submission process.

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What happens after?

Open peer review

After receiving your submission, the journal will assign a handling editor to it. It is the editor's responsibility to handle the peer-review process, including the initial editorial triage, and communication with external reviewers and the authors. Read more about the open peer reviewing procedure at the TSR here.

Complaints and appeals

In case the authors suspect some misconduct during the review process or disagree with the editor's decisions, they may lodge an appeal and request the situation to be investigated. Read more about the procedures for complaints and appeals here.

Editorial statistics (based on 2025)

Acceptance rate 28%
Rejection rate 72%
Desk rejection (editorial triage) 53%
Post-review rejection 19%
Submission-to-desk rejection time within 2-3 weeks
Submission-to-acceptance time, median 158 days
Submission-to-acceptance time, 85% 265 days

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Promote your published article

You publication will receive more attention (and, ultimately, citations) if you actively promote it. Here are some ideas on how to do that: 

  • Add a TSR banner to your email signature linking to the published paper. You can download the suggested banners here.
  • Use the ‘Share’ buttons that appear on your article page at the TSR website (just next to the Scopus citation counter).
  • Like or share the post about your article in the journal's official LinkedIn and Bluesky channels.
  • Alternatively, put some efforts into writing an original ‘tweetable’ abstract for your paper—concise, engaging, and not too technical. Carefully choose a picture that best illustrates your work.
  • Write a post about your findings in your professional blog, add a link to the full paper.
  • Make sure that the paper is listed in your research profiles—institutional, ORCID, ResearchGate, etc. See the TSR's pre- and postprint policy for details on how to share your work responsibly.
  • Present/share your paper at workshops, seminars, conferences.
  • Ask your co-authors to do the same!
  • Timing is crucial. Start promoting your paper as soon as it has been published.

Please, use the hashtag #TSRjournal when posting about the Traffic Safety Research journal.

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Updates after publication

Read more about the TSR's policy regarding post-publication corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern here.

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