Research Ethics Policy

Any submission may be rejected by IARCON journals if it contains unethical behaviour in human or animal investigations.

HumanResearch
For studies involving human subjects, the article must include a statement that ethical approval was obtained (or a statement that ethical approval was not necessary and why), along with the names of the ethics committee(s) or institutional review board(s), the number/ID of the approval(s), and a statement that the subjects provided informed consent prior to participating (or a statement that consent was not required and why). The Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in Edinburgh 2000), which is available at https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/doh-oct2000, should also be mentioned by the authors.

Clinical trials should be prospectively registered before subjects are enrolled, in accordance with the World Health Organization's guidelines and the Declaration of Helsinki. All papers that report on clinical trials must include the registration numbers for the studies.

When recognised people—living or dead—are depicted in pictures, great care must be taken to guarantee that permission for publishing has been granted. The privacy of the patient should be protected. To ensure that human subjects cannot be recognised in photographs, they must be appropriately cropped, and (at a minimum) the eyes and brows must be covered using coarse pixilation to render the subject invisible.

Animal Research

The Animal [Scientific Procedures] Act of 1986 and any other applicable licences, as well as any national or institutional rules for the care and use of animals that were used in the research must all be mentioned by the authors of any experiments using animals.

The Editorial Office maintains the right to ask for more details about experiments mentioned in a manuscript, if necessary.