Research Ethics Policy

GI Publisher journals reserve the right to reject any submission that involves unethical conduct in human or animal research.

Human Research

The article should incorporate a statement confirming the acquisition of ethical approval for studies involving human subjects (or a declaration stating that ethical approval was not necessary and the reasons behind it), 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. It is mandatory for all clinical trial papers to incorporate the registration numbers of the studies.

When recognized 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 recognized 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 licenses, 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.