Human and Animal Subject Research Ethics Policy

Research involving human or animal subjects must adhere to all relevant laws and institutional guidelines. 

Research Involving Human Subjects

Information of Consent

Manuscripts involving human participants, human data, or human tissue must include a statement confirming informed consent for participation. Human subjects' right to privacy must always be observed. The authors should ensure that the individual rights of all the participants who are involved in the study are protected. Identifying details (e.g., names and dates of birth) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or guardian if the participant is incapable) gave written informed consent for publication. If verbal informed consent is used, authors must provide a rationale for its use in the "Comments for the Editor" field. 

Ethics Approval Statements

Authors must obtain approval (or waiver) from the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB) before submitting the manuscript if the research involves human or animal subjects. For multisite studies, approval from the IRB or Ethics Committee at each participating institution is required. If ethical approval was not needed, this must be explicitly stated in the "Comments for the Editor" field.

For human subjects, the authors must ensure that their research was carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki, as revised in 2024. The manuscript must include a statement of IRB approval or waiver (with the reason for the waiver), or a statement confirming adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki. An example of the IRB statement is as follows: "All subjects provided informed consent for inclusion before participating in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code)."

Clinical Trials Registration

This journal adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, which require clinical trials to be registered in a public trials registry at or before the time of the first patient enrollment as a condition for publication consideration. Authors must pre-register clinical trials with an internationally recognized clinical trials registry. Manuscripts based on clinical trials should include the trial registration number at the end of the abstract.

Research Involving Animal Subjects

For animal subjects, all experiments should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and should be carried out in accordance with the U.K. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and associated guidelines, or EU Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, or the U.S. Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. A statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments, including any relevant details must be included in the manuscript. If no animal ethics committee is available to review applications, the ethics of research will be evaluated by reviewers and editors. Authors should provide a statement justifying the work from an ethical perspective.

Manuscripts that fail to meet these ethical requirements may be rejected.

Further reading and compliance

WMA Declaration of Helsinki; ARRIVE guidelines; ICMJE Recommendations.