Ethical approvals, patients’ rights and informed consent

Patient Rights

Patients have a right to privacy; all studies should be conducted with informed consent. No identifying information should be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent, guardian, or legally authorized representative) gives written informed consent for publication. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the article. Investigations with human subjects must follow the ethical standards formulated in the Helsinki Declaration of 1964, revised in 2000. All experiments should be approved by the institutional human experimentation committee or equivalent.

Note: Do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. Authors need to include a statement regarding informed consent in the manuscript text.

Animal Rights

Animal experiments must follow ethical standards for the care and use of laboratory animals. Articles involving animal experiments must seek approval from the appropriate Ethical Committee in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and CPCSEA guidelines. A statement on ethics committee permission must be included in all research articles.

Clinical Trial Registry

The journal recommends that clinical trials be registered in a publicly accessible database. Authors should include the clinical trial registration numbers in all papers reporting results. Authors must adhere to the minimum set of recommendations for reporting randomized trials as described in The CONSORT (CONsolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) guideline.