Statement on Human Rights

If a research involves human subjects, its design, conduct, and result reporting should strictly adhere to the Clinical Practice guidelines (such as the Good Clinical Practice in Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-Regulated Clinical Trials (USA) or the Medical Research Council Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice in Clinical Trials (UK)) and/or to the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki.

All research works being performed with human subjects should give an affirming statement that the experiments were performed only after consent (written or verbal, as appropriate) from the participants.

If experimentation on human subjects is being carried out that needs to be reported, authors are required to show that the employed procedures comply with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving human subjects. . If any doubt exists regarding research’s compliance with the Helsinki Declaration, the author(s) need to mention the rationale behind the endeavor and refer to the institutional review body to highlight its approval for the doubtful aspects of the study.

Statement on Animal Rights

If the work is based on animal subjects, the author should prove its compliance with the EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments. Authors should declare that the work holds approval from the concerned institution’s animal use and care committee or equivalent body through a formal statement made at the start of the “Methods” section.

When experiments on animals are to be reported, authors should highlight the extent to which the institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. For obtaining further guidance on animal research ethics, consult the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare.

Statement on Informed Consent

Researches involving human subjects as participants (or their parents or guardians in the case of children under 18) should seek for their informed consent before beginning the research. The main body of research should also highlight the approval obtained from the participants.

Consent for publication of individual patient data:

If materials like personal details, images, or videos of the participants have been used in the research, then participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18) should be made aware of it and their written informed consent for publication should be obtained. A formal statement should be included in the manuscript to address this process. A consent form should also be in possession of the Editor(s) on request who are responsible to respect its confidentiality. If unidentifiable images and general details of participants have been used in the manuscript, then a publication consent might not be necessary to obtain but the final verdict comes from the Editor(s) in this regard.
Patients’ privacy should always be respected and their informed consent should be given due value. Information like patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, should never be a part of the written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless it is a requisite for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written consent for its disclosure. But firstly, the patient should know exactly what manuscript is to be published so he/she can approve disclosure. Authors should also inform them from where the writing assistance and its funding source have been obtained. Identifying details are not obligatory to be added in a manuscript. For making participants’ anonymity possible, an informed consent should be obtained before proceeding with the research.

Last Update: 29-08-2017