Statement of Human & Animal Rights
Informed consent requirements, patient privacy protections, and the consent needed before IJPR publishes identifiable patient data or images.
Research Approvals
All research reports submitted for consideration of publication in IJPR must include statement(s) of proof that the appropriate approvals were obtained from the relevant authority or research ethics committee of the university or local governing body. Any manuscript describing a study that used human subjects must include a statement affirming that the experiments were performed with prior informed consent — written or verbal, as appropriate — from each participant.
All personal information must be anonymized prior to publication, unless a record of explicit consent from the involved patient(s) has been provided.
Informed Consent to Participate
For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants — or their parent or guardian, in the case of children under 16 — and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.
Consent for Publication of Individual Patient Data
For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants, written informed consent for publication must be obtained from the participants — or their parent or legal guardian, in the case of children under 16 — and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. The consent form must be made available to editors on request, and will be treated confidentially. Where images are entirely unidentifiable and no identifying details of individuals are reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required; the final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the editor.
Patient Privacy
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information — including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers — should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable patient be shown the manuscript before it is published.
Authors should identify individuals who provided writing assistance and disclose the funding source for that assistance. Identifying details should be omitted where they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, and informed consent should be obtained wherever there is any doubt — for example, masking the eye region in a photograph is inadequate protection of anonymity. Where identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that the alterations do not distort scientific meaning, and editors should note this. When informed consent has been obtained, this should be indicated in the published article.
Human and Animal Rights Statement
When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Declaration of Helsinki. If doubt exists as to whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
This statement follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals."
This page covers informed consent, patient privacy, and consent for publication. For the underlying Good Clinical Practice, ethics-committee approval, and ARRIVE reporting requirements for studies on human and animal subjects, see the Human & Animal Health Policy.
Last updated on