Informed Consent Policy

Informed consent is a pre-requirement for any research that involves human participants. According to this policy, the participant of the research must be informed of all the aspects of the trial which must be proceeded only after the voluntary confirmation of willingness of the participant in question and the significance of the research for medical advancement and societal welfare.

The concept of informed consent has been integrated in “The Principles of Nuremberg Code”, “The Declaration of Helsinki” and “The Belmont Report”. The policies and postulates that come under this concept are mentioned below:

1. The names and other identifications of the participant must not be published in any section of the manuscript including supplementary information. In the incident of requirement of publishing content such as clinical images and videos that can help identify the participant, informed consent letter must be attained from the said participant and included in the “Methods” section of the manuscript. It must be noted that the use of colored bars/ shapes to obscure eye/facial features of the subjects is not acceptable as anonymity.
2. In the case of human transplant research, organs/tissues must not have been obtained from prisoners and any manuscript found to have violated the policy will not be processed. Any scientific paper on this research must include a statement of confirmation that the organs/tissues have not been procured from prisoners. Respecting the organ donor’s privacy is imperative and the details of the institution through which organs/tissues were obtained must be provided.
3. All researches involving human subjects, human data and human material must be approved by an ethical committee and a detailed statement of the same including the name of the committee must appear in all articles reporting the research. On the occurrence that an exemption from requiring ethical approval has been provided to the research, a statement informing the same must be included in the manuscript publishing the research. If these guidelines are considered violated, the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to reject such manuscripts.
4. Authors researching and reporting new techniques or tools in a clinical procedure must give a valid justification of the necessity of the new procedure over the existing usual methods. This will not be required if the new procedure has already been approved by the author’s institution. For a novel procedure, approval from an ethical committee and informed consent of the patient are expected for any experimental use of the procedure on them.
5. For research involving human subjects, informed consent from the participants or their legal guardians (in case the participant is a minor) is absolutely necessary and a statement informing the same must appear in the manuscript.
6. For publishing any images, details or videos related to the participants, written informed consent from the involved parties or their legal guardian (in case the participant is a minor) must be issued and published in the manuscript.
7. All contributors who do not meet the specifications for authorship must be credited in the “Acknowledgement” section along with their contribution that can be technical help, writing assistance or any sort of support during the course of research.

The journal follows all guidelines issued by COPE which states that written confirmation from all related authors must be given stating that they agree to any proposed changes in authorship of submitted/published manuscripts. The corresponding author must ensure that all authors confirm and agree with the proposed changes. The publication or the Editor-in-Chief will not bear any responsibility of authorship disputes. The authorship of the published manuscript can only be modified through publication of a request letter.