Información para bibliotecarios/as

Ethics

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):

The editors of JGNS adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct. Charges of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, duplicate and redundant publication will be managed according to COPE Guidelines.

Plagiarism:

As defined by the World Association of Medical Editors, plagiarism is the use of others' published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source. The intent and effect of plagiarism is to mislead the reader as to the contributions of the plagiarizer. This applies whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, Institutional Review Board applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format (print or electronic).

Plagiarism is scientific misconduct and will be addressed as such. When plagiarism is detected at any time before publication, the JGNS Editorial Office will alert the author, asking her or him to rewrite or quote exactly and to cite the original source. If the plagiarism is extensive (i.e., >25% of the original submission), the editors will take appropriate action to notify both readers and the author’s employers of the infraction.

Self-Plagiarism:

JGNS actively checks accepted manuscripts for self-plagiarism prior to publication. Self-plagiarism is not a tolerated practice. Manuscripts containing high-levels of self-plagiarism (>25% of the original in question) will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief for originality. Authors found to have self-plagiarized will be asked to rewrite those portions of their accepted manuscripts and or to quote exactly and cite the original source.

Human Subjects:

Manuscripts that involve research conducted on human subjects must follow the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki and include a statement in the Methods section stating that the experimental protocol and informed consent were approved by the Institutional Review Board, and that all subjects gave informed consent. If IRB approval or patient consent was not sought or obtained, authors should include an explanation in the Methods section. Authors should indicate the mechanism used for reviewing the ethics of the research conducted in their cover letter

Animal Subjects:

Manuscripts that report animal experiments must include a statement in the Methods section stating that the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board and that the animal care complied with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council. Washington: National Academy Press, 1996). Authors should indicate the mechanism used for reviewing the ethics of the research conducted in their cover letter.

Note: Though not required at the time of submission, authors should be prepared to provide evidence of IRB/Ethics Committee adherence if requested by the Editor.

Patient Consent:

It is the policy of the Journal that no identifiable protected health information of any person may be included in any manuscript submitted to or published by JGNS. This policy includes, but is not limited to any identifiable protected health information subject to applicable laws and regulations concerning the privacy and/or security of personal information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and other U.S. federal and state laws relating to privacy and security of personally identifiable information, the European Union Directive 95/46/EC and member state implementing directives, Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, India's Information Technology Act and related Privacy Rules (collectively referred to herein as “PHI”).

The PHI identifiers that must be fully anonymized and de-identified include:

  • Names;
  • All geographic subdivisions smaller than a State, including street address, city, county, precinct, zip code, and their equivalent geocodes, except for the initial three digits of a zip code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census:
    • The geographic unit formed by combining all zip codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; AND
    • The initial three digits of a zip code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000;
  • All elements of dates (except year) for dates directly related to an individual, including birth date, admission date, discharge date, date of death; and all ages over 89 and all elements of dates (including year) indicative of such age, except that such ages and elements may be aggregated into a single category of age 90 or older;
  • Telephone numbers;
  • Fax numbers;
  • Electronic mail addresses;
  • Social security numbers;
  • Medical record numbers;
  • Health plan beneficiary numbers;
  • Account numbers;
  • Certificate/license numbers;
  • Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers;
  • Device identifiers and serial numbers;
  • Web Universal Resource Locators (URLs);
  • Internet Protocol (IP) address numbers;
  • Biometric identifiers, including finger and voice prints;
  • Facial images or any comparable identifying physical marks, tattoos, or characteristics; and
  • Any other unique identifying number, code, or other “unique characteristic” associated with the individual which would make it identifiable to the individual, or the author has actual knowledge that the information about the subject could be used alone or in combination with other information to identify the individual.

Authors should pay close attention to images that contain identifiable individual patient characteristics or data such as eyes, date of birth, case number, initials, birthmarks, etc. Prior to submission of any manuscript, the author(s) shall take all steps necessary to ensure that (1) there is no PHI contained in any text, data, or images in the manuscript; and (2) all pre-existing PHI, if any, has been fully anonymized and de-identified.

As a condition of submission, all authors must warrant that he or she has obtained, prior to submission, written releases from patients whose names or likenesses are submitted as part of the work. Should the Journal or Publisher request copies of such written releases, authors shall provide them in a timely manner. In addition to the foregoing requirements, each author must ensure that:

  • Each authorized individual, or the individual's legal guardian or other person with legal authority to act on the individual's behalf who may be identified in any video, recording, photograph, image, illustration or case report (or in any other identifiable form) relating to a proposed manuscript is made aware in advance of the fact that such photographs are being taken or such video, recording, photograph, image, illustration or report is being made, and of all the purposes for which they might be used, including disclosure to and use by JGNS and any affiliated publication. Such an individual, legal guardian or person with legal authority must give his/her explicit written authorization in writing. If such authorization is made subject to any conditions (for example, adopting measures to prevent personal identification of the person concerned), JGNS must be made aware in writing of all such conditions.
  • Particular care should be taken where children are concerned (in particular where a child has special needs or learning disabilities), where an individual's head or face appears, or where reference is made to an individual's name or other personal details.
  • In the case of a child, if parents or guardians disagree on the use of the images (in any form) of that child, then authorization should be deemed not to have been given and those images should not be used.
  • It is important to ensure that only images of children in suitable dress are used in order to reduce the risk of images being used inappropriately.
  • Even if authorization has been obtained, care must be taken to ensure that the portrayals and captioning of any individual are respectful and could not be seen as denigrating that individual.

Clinical Trials Registration:

In line with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations, JGNS requires that all clinical trials (regardless as to country of origin) be registered in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of submission to the Journal. According to the ICMJE, a clinical trial is any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome.

More information regarding Clinical Trial Registration.

Data Availability:

JGNS encourages all authors, when ethically possible, to make publicly available all data underlying their manuscript. Please consider including a Data Availability Statement in the Methods section of your manuscript that indicates whether the data is publicly available and, if so, provide a full reference to the location of the including a DOI if available following journal reference style. For reference formatting information, see the Reference section of this document. Important note: this data should not be submitted as part of the manuscript or as supplementary digital content. Rather, the data should be hosted on a data repository that is publicly accessible, either through a third party or through the author’s institution. If you are unsure which repository is most appropriate, we recommend speaking to your institutional librarian or co-authors for guidance. Authors may also find the following resources helpful in identifying a third-party data repository: FAIRsharing.org and/or re3data.

The following article types are relevant for Data  Availability Statements:

  • Research—Human—Clinical Studies
  • Research—Animal
  • Research—Laboratory
  • Research—Human—Study Protocols
  • Research—Human—Clinical Trials
  • Review (Systematic Reviews and Metanalyses)
  • Special Article (when appropriate)

Management of Misconduct:

According to the definition of authorship established in the “ICMJE Recommendations”, each person who appears as the author of a manuscript is responsible for all its content and must collaborate in any investigation that originates due to errors, omissions, or breaches of the ethics of scientific publications, either during the review process or after the manuscript has been published. For the management of these situations, the Journal adheres to the indications established by the "Committee on Publication Ethics" (COPE). If there is a concern for possible ethical misconduct, the editorial board may do any one or more of the following

  • request for confirmation of data
  • request for re-writing
  • rejection of a paper
  • referral to the institute the author is affiliated with
  • retracting a paper
  • naming and shaming

How these can be used in specific cases can be seen from the COPE flowcharts. See http://www. publicationethics.org/.

In the event that misconduct has been proven against the ethics of publications, the author(s) of the article will be unable to submit new articles to the journal and a journal declaration of retraction of the paper will be published on the website.