Research and Publication Ethics to Consider

Ethical approval is required for all research performed on vertebrates and protected invertebrates (for example, octopuses).

Ethical approval for the work needs to be obtained from the institution’s Animal Ethics Committee (must be local to where the research took place).

If such a committee does not exist you must comply with institutional, national and international guidelines. BMC Series journals will not consider manuscripts that do not have sufficient ethical approval for animal studies.

Where possible, follow the 3Rs principles – Replacement (can this study be done without animals), Reduction (can this study be done with less animals) and Refinement (can the suffering of the animals be reduced).

Similarly to work involving animals, all work involving participants must be approved by a local Ethics Committee, sometimes referred to as an Institutional Review Board (IRB). 

All work involving humans must also be performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, which was developed by the World Medical Association outlining the minimum ethical standards for research on human participants.

All manuscripts which feature human participants or human data must contain a statement on ethics, including the name of the Ethics Committee which approved the study and the reference number. Any exemptions, granted by the Ethics Committee, must also be detailed in the manuscript.

Manuscripts lacking this data will be not be considered by the BMC Series journals.

- The authors carried out a study that included household surveys

- Research has been conducted in accordance to the Declaration of Helsinki

- The authors did not seek any ethical approval as they believed following the guidelines was sufficient

Is this sufficient? 

For the answer click here.

- The authors carried out a study that included observing patients in numerous Ethiopian hospitals and two Nigerian hospitals

- Research has been conducted in accordance to the Declaration of Helsinki

- The authors sought and received ethical approval from a hospital’s Institutional Review Board based in Ethiopia

- The authors did not seek any other ethical approval as they believed that ethical approval from one location was sufficient

Is this sufficient? 

For the answer click here. 

If you study involves humans, in anyway, you need to get their informed consent before you start the study.

Informed consent - permission granted in full knowledge of the possible consequences, typically that which is given by a patient to a doctor for treatment with knowledge of the possible risks and benefits.

Informed consent, ideally, should be written (signed form from each participant) but in some instances verbal consent is permissible. For example, illiterate participants. The type of consent received should be agreed upon with the Ethics Committee.

Taking part in a survey/questionnaire can often be considered as a form of consent, assuming the nature of the research has been explained.  Again, this should be agreed upon with the Ethics Committee.

Journals will ask you to state in your manuscript that informed consent was obtained.

Manuscripts which do not have the required informed consent will not be considered.

Informed consent is required to include any images or identifiable details.

Journals, including the BMC Series, will ask for a comment concerning consent to publish any identifiable information.

What constitutes identifiable information?

1) Combination of indirect identifiers 

• Place of treatment
• Sex
• Household/Family composition
• Age/Year of birth

2) Images of an individual (black bars over the eyes are not enough to hide identify)

3) Direct quotes from the individual (“The head surgeon was very rude during my presentation to the group on a rare measles case”).

Any manuscript submitted to a BMC journal must be original and the manuscript, or substantial parts of it, must not be under consideration by any other journal. 

In any case where there is the potential for overlap or duplication we require that authors are transparent. Authors should declare any potentially overlapping publications on submission. Any overlapping publications should be cited. 

Table 1. Generally permissible and non-permissible forms of duplicate/overlapping publication

Authors should be aware that replication of text from their own previous publications is text recycling (also referred to as self-plagiarism), and in some cases is considered unacceptable.

Where overlap of text with authors’ own publications is necessary or unavoidable, duplication must always be reported transparently and be properly attributed and compliant with copyright requirements. 

In collaboration with COPE, BMC has created guidelines for Editors on how to deal with text recycling which provide further detailed information on when text recycling is or is not considered acceptable.

- Researchers have published an article reporting the primary outcomes of a large trial

- They now want to publish another article reporting the secondary outcomes

- The methods used are the same

How can they report the methods in their new paper?

For the answer click here. 

Authorship provides credit for a researcher’s contributions to a study and carries accountability. Authors are expected to fulfil these criteria (adapted from McNutt et al., 2018). 

Common issues include:

• Authorship disputes
  • Being unable to agree upon who should be an author
• Gift authorship
  • Including someone who took little or no part in the research
• Ghost authorship
  • Leaving out someone who did take part

- A paper is submitted to a journal with the corresponding author listing three authors

- When revisions are submitted, the corresponding author leaves one author off

- The Editor pauses the peer review process and asks the corresponding author why one of the authors has been removed

- The corresponding author says that the co‐author was added on by accident and isn't an author

- The Editor asks the authors to complete an Authorship Change Form including:

        * New authorship list and author contributions section

        * Reason for the change

        * Signatures from all authors that they agree to the change

- The authors cannot agree among themselves on who should be listed as authors

Can the Editor resolve this issue on behalf of the authors?

For the answer click here.