Research Ethics

Research involving human participants must have been approved in advance by an appropriate institutional review board or research ethics committee. The manuscript must state the name of the approving body and the approval reference number, and confirm that the research was conducted in accordance with recognized ethical standards for human research.

Where research involves identifiable individuals — including case reports and any image that could identify a patient — the manuscript must confirm that informed consent was obtained, and state this in the manuscript. Identifying details should be omitted unless essential to the scientific content, in which case explicit consent to publish those details is required.

Research involving animals must have been approved by an appropriate institutional animal care and use body, and the manuscript must state the approving body, approval reference, and confirm that the research followed applicable standards for the humane treatment of research animals.

Research using patient or participant data must comply with applicable data-protection requirements at the researchers’ institution and jurisdiction, independent of anything MPJ itself requires for publication.

The submission process requests a statement of ethics approval (or an explanation of why it does not apply, for research that does not involve human or animal subjects) as a required field, not an optional one.