Human and Animal Rights

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, the Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editors may reject the manuscript and contact the authors’ institutional ethics board. Clinical based research should be done in accordance with the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, outlined in the Helsinki Declaration. Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. Human subjects should not be identifiable, such that patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. For animal subjects, research should be performed based on the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.

Informed consent 

For clinical studies of human subjects, a certificate, agreement, or approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s institution is required. If necessary, the EIC, AE or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct.
 

Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships that could inappropriately influence (or bias) the author’s decisions, work, or manuscript. The corresponding author of an article is asked to let the Editor-in-Chief know any potential conflict of interest possibly influencing their interpretation of data. Potential conflict of interest is applied even when the authors are confident that their judgments have not been influenced in the manuscript.  The Editor-in-Chief will decide whether the information of the conflict should be included in the published paper. Before publishing such information, the Editor-in-Chief will consult with the corresponding author. In particular, all sources of funding for the research should be explicitly stated.