Submitting your article

Ethics

All authors should be aware of RCNi's ethical guidelines before submitting an article.

RCNi journals require authors to observe the following ethical guidelines:

Conflict of interest

All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships that could inappropriately influence, or bias, their work. These include, but are not limited to, employment, consultancies, honoraria and paid expert testimony. RCNi also requires all authors to acknowledge all funding sources that supported their work and to disclose any commercial associations that could pose a conflict of interest or financial bias, for example, by using medical writing services funded by a pharmaceutical company. If the article is accepted for publication, the editor will determine how any conflict of interest should be disclosed. 

Informed consent and patient details

Studies involving patients require ethics committee approval and informed consent and this should be documented in the article.

Publication of personal information about a person requires their consent. This includes photographs, case studies and other information and it is good practice to obtain consent even if the material is anonymised because it could cause embarrassment or distress.

Particular care should to be taken when publishing material and photographs of children, even when you have the parents’ permission, because this could cause distress in later life. Refusal is always respected, no matter what the age of the child. Those who do consent should be offered the option of having their names included. If you are planning to use photographs of a child, young person or other individual, please send a signed consent form. Contact administration manager Helen Hyland, at helen.hyland@rcni.com, who will email you one. The form should be signed by both the child and parent or guardian if the child is under the age of 16 years.

Human and animal rights

If your work involves experimentation on human subjects, you should indicate that the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) Ethical Principles.

If the work involves animal experiments, you should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed and that your work complies with national legislation for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, for example, those detailed here.

 


 

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