Informed Consent Policy

All individuals have individual rights that are not to be infringed. Individual participants in studies have, for example, the right to decide what happens to the (identifiable) personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview, as well as to any photograph that was taken. This is especially true concerning images of vulnerable people (e.g. minors, patients, refugees, etc) or the use of images in sensitive contexts. In many instances authors will need to secure written consent before including images or hide the identities as per international publication ethics and best practices.

Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers, biometrical characteristics (such as facial features, fingerprint, writing style, voice pattern, DNA or other distinguishing characteristic) and other information) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scholarly purposes and the participant (or parent/guardian if the participant is a minor or incapable or legal representative) gave written informed consent for publication. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve in some cases. Detailed descriptions of individual participants, whether of their whole bodies or of body sections, may lead to disclosure of their identity. Under certain circumstances consent is not required as long as information is anonymized and the submission does not include images that may identify the person.

For studies involving human subjects and volunteers, please indicate in the manuscript, in a section preceding the References, the following statement or an analogous statement that applies to your situation: “All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 Human research: Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013.

Informed consent should be  obtained from all patients for being included in the study.” If any identifying information about participants is included in the article, the following sentence should also be included: “Additional informed consent was obtained from all individuals for whom identifying information is included in this article.” If you have not included or cannot include this statement in your manuscript, please provide the reason or an alternative statement here and in the manuscript.