If your work involves live subjects (human or animal) you must provide an appropriate ethical statement when submitting your paper. The most suitable location for this is normally the methods section of the manuscript. However, to preserve anonymity in double-blind peer reviewed journals please do not add the ethical statement to the manuscript, instead you should declare it in the Mandatory Author Declaration.

Our editorial team checks all ethical statements are appropriate for the study being reported. Any manuscript submitted without a suitable ethical statement will be returned to the authors and will not be considered further until an appropriate and explicit statement is included.

Authors should include the following points in the ethical statement (if applicable) when submitting a paper:

• The institutional or national research ethics committee /review board that approved the research must be named. Include the approval number/ID if one was given. If the research received a waiver of approval from the ethics committee/review board or did not require approval for some other reason please state this and explain why.
• For investigations involving animal experimentationyou should state which institutional and/or national animal care and use guidelines were followed.
• For investigations involving human participants:
  • You should state that the research was conducted in accordance with the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinkiand in accordance with local statutory requirements.
  • You should state that all participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) gave written informed consent to participate in the study
  • For research which involves identifiablehuman subjects (including donors of cells or tissues) you must include a statement confirming that consent was given for publication by all participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16). In order to protect participant anonymity, authors do not need to send proof of this consent to us. Where a donor has deceased prior to the research and is therefore unable to grant consent but is still identifiable (e.g. HeLa cells), their origin and lack of consent should be acknowledged.
• Articles relying on clinical trials should quote the trial registration number at the end of the abstract.

Double-Blind Peer Reviwed submissions

• In double- Blind Peer Reviwed journals please do not add the ethical statement to the manuscript, instead please complete the relevant section on the submission system. This information is not shared with reviewers and therefore does not need to be anonymised.
• If a reviewer feels they need to see an ethical statement, they are advised to contact the journal to discuss.

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Participant consent to publish

Researchers should not generally publish or share identifiable individual data collected in the course of research without specific consent from the individual (or their representative).

Informed consent to publish should be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) for all research involving identifiable human subjects. This requirement also applies for deceased persons, in which case consent should be given by the next of kin. Authors are required to attest that consent has been obtained and that any identifiable individuals are aware of intended publication. Examples of identifying information are descriptions of individual case histories, photos, video, x-rays, or genetic pedigrees.

In order to protect participant anonymity, authors do not need to send proof of this consent to us. A statement confirming that consent was obtained for all identifiable individuals should be declared in the Mandatory Author Declaration.