Policies on Conflict of Interest, Human and Animal rights, and Informed Consent

Conflict of Interest

Rev Rene adopts a formal policy and requires a Conflict of Interest Declaration signed by the authors submitting the article. Conflicts can be: personal, commercial, academic, political and financial interest in the manuscript.

All authors and reviewers must disclose any conflict of interest that may have arisen during the development of the study.

Editors: The editor must not use unpublished information in his/her own research without the express written consent of the author. The editor should refrain from evaluating manuscripts in which he/she has any conflict of interest resulting from competitive or collaborative relationships or any other type of relationship or connections with any of the authors, companies or (possibly) institutions that are linked/connected to the articles. 

Reviewers: Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have any conflict of interest resulting from competitive or collaborative relationships or any other type of relationship or connections with any of the authors, companies or (possibly) institutions that are linked/connected to the articles. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal gain. 

Authors: All authors must disclose any type of conflict of interest existing during the development of the study. All authors must disclose in their manuscripts any financial or substantive/material conflict of interest that could lead to influencing the results or interpretations in their manuscripts. All sources of financial support for the project must be disclosed. 

Human and Animal rights

Research involving experiments on human beings must follow the World Medical Association's Ethical Principles (Declaration of Helsinki). The manuscript must also conform to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals (ICMJE) and include representative human populations (gender, age, and ethnicity) in accordance with these recommendations. The terms sex and gender must be used correctly.

The authors must include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained in experiments involving human subjects. Research subjects' privacy rights must always be observed.

All animal experiments must comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and be conducted in accordance with the U.K. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and associated guidelines, the EU Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific experiments, the National Institutes of Health guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals (NIH Publication No. 8023, revised in 1978), and other national guidelines and legislation. Authors must clearly state in the manuscript that these guidelines were followed. The sex of animals must be indicated, and where appropriate, the influence (or association) of sex on the results of the study. 

Informed Consent 

Studies with patients or volunteers require informed consent and approval from a Research Ethics Review Committee (ERC). The protocol number issued by the ERC must be informed in the body of the article under review, specifically, in the last paragraph of the Methods section. One copy of the approval granted by the ERC must be attached and sent through the OJS electronic system. Authors must obtain the appropriate consents, permissions and releases related with the details and information of a patient's case or images of patients, and of any other individuals contained in the submission file. Written consents must be retained by the author but must not be sent to the journal. If it is necessary to show the patient's face or if the patient can be recognized from the image, then the authors must send a document of proper consent obtained from the patient when submitting the article, informing that the image will be used exclusively for scientific purposes. Authors should provide copies of consents or evidence that such consents were obtained only if requested in exceptional circumstances (e.g. if any legal issue arises). Even if the authors have a written permission from the patient or close relatives, any patient's personal information may not be included in any part of the article or supplemental material (including all illustrations and videos). 

It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that:

The written consent form meets every requirement of all applicable data protection and privacy laws. Particular care should be taken in obtaining consent with respect to children (in particular when a child has special needs or learning disabilities), when an individual's head or face is shown, or when reference is made to a participant's name or other personal details.

Concerning studies involving children, if the parent or guardian disagrees about the use of a child's image, then this image must not be used. It is also important to ensure that only images of children in appropriate attire are used in order to reduce the risk of them being used inappropriately.

Even if consent has been obtained, attention must be taken to ensure that the individual's portrait and caption are presented in a respectful manner and that they do not adversely affect that individual.