Informed consent
All research studies involving human subjects must have received approval of the appropriate institutional ethics committee and informed consent must be obtained from all the patients participating in the studies, prior to manuscript submission.
In cases where the institutional ethics review committee ruled that approval from them was not required or that the need for informed consent was unnecessary, a statement from the committee to this end should be forwarded to the Editor with the manuscript.
Human and animal rights
Studies involving experimental research on animals or humans must conform to the guiding principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. In order to respect a patient`s right to privacy, identifying information such as patients` names, images, initials of hospital numbers should not be included in any published material (tables, figures, text), unless the information is essential for scientific content. In these cases written permission must be obtained from the patient, and should be submitted to the editorial office at the time of manuscript submission. In the case of animal experiments, both national and the institutional guidelines pertaining to the experimental use of laboratory animals should be rigidly followed.
Conflict of interest (Declaration of Interests)
The manuscript should contain a statement fully disclosing any conflict of interest related to the manuscript. If there are no conflicts of interest, this should be stated as “none declared”. Material and financial support should also be acknowledged.
Scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct includes data fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, redundant publication, ghost authorship or other fraudulent research practices. In order to prevent plagiarism issues, all manuscripts sent to the journal will be screened using anti-plagiarism software. Where there is a suspicion of scientific misconduct, the Editor will act in conformity with the principles stated in the COPE guidelines and if the fraudulent practice is confirmed the manuscript will be rejected outright and without the Editor entering into any further correspondence.
Clinical trials
In case of manuscripts presenting clinical trials, the clinical trial should be registered in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment, as a condition for consideration for publication. Trials should be preferably registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, but any registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) is acceptable, in accordance with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
