Human and animal rights
1.
All research must have been carried out within an appropriate
ethical framework. If there is suspicion that work has not taken place within
an appropriate ethical framework, Editors will follow the Misconduct policy and
may reject the manuscript, and/or contact the author(s)’ institution or ethics
committee. On rare occasions, if the Editor has serious concerns about the
ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if
approval from an ethics committee has been obtained.
2.
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human
data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of
Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/) and must have been approved by an
appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of
the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in
all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted an
exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the
manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the
exemption). Further information and documentation to support this should be
made available to Editors on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor
considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate
ethical framework. In rare cases, Editors may contact the ethics committee for
further information.
3.
If a study has not been submitted to an ethics committee prior
to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it
may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. How to proceed
in such cases is at the Editor(s)’ discretion.
4. Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice to meet the patient’s clinical need. Such justification is not required if the new procedure is already approved for clinical use at the authors’ institution. Authors will be expected to have obtained ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a novel procedure or tool where a clear clinical advantage based on clinical need was not apparent before treatment.
5. Research studies composed of animal subjects must adhere to the ARRIVE guidelines (The ARRIVE guidelines 2.0): https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000410