To ensure that the research that TUP published is conducted in an ethical manner, especially research involving human subjects or animal participants, all submissions should conform to high ethical standards. The Editorial Office reserves the rights to reject any manuscripts that fail to meet the requirements of research ethics, even if the authors have obtained ethical approval or are exempt from ethical review by the ethics committee.
Published research involving humans should ensure that patients’ privacy has not been violated without prior consent. TUP will not request the authors for or archive informed consent. The Editorial Office reserves the right to request that the author provide the original informed consent form or relevant certificates, especially when there is a suspicion of misconduct on research ethics.
Consent to participate
For all published research involving human participants, consent to participate should be obtained in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. In general, the participants were adequately informed and provided written consent prior to the commencement of the research. If the research participants are incapable of providing informed consent, written consent should be obtained from a legally authorized representative.
Consent to publish
For submissions that include any information that might identify an individual, authors should obtain written informed consent to publish from individual participants (or their parents/guardians if the participant is not an adult or unable to give informed consent). Identifying information includes (but is not limited to) photographs, videos, individual clinical data, written descriptions and any other details that might identify the participant. A statement to confirm that consent to publish has been obtained must be included within the manuscript.
TUP supports the comprehensive and transparent reporting of biomedical and biological research, as well as research involving biological applications. When preparing their manuscripts, authors are encouraged to follow the minimum reporting guidelines available on the EQUATOR Network. Specific requirements may differ on the basis of the journal; please consult the journal’s Submission Guidelines. For example, some reporting guidelines that TUP encourages journals and authors to reference are as follows:
Randomized trials: CONSORT
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: PRISMA
Study protocols: SPIRIT, PRISMA-P
Case reports: CARE
Animal preclinical studies: ARRIVE guidelines
For research involving humans (human participants, human tissue, human material, or human data), authors must obtain approval from the institutional ethics committee prior to the commencement of the research. Research must also conform to international and local ethical or legal standards.
Authors should provide evidence that they obtained ethical and/or legal approval prior to conducting the research at submission. Manuscripts should include the name of the local ethics committee that approved the research (exempted from ethical review) and the approval number. Authors also need to state how the study conforms to recognized standards (e.g., the Declaration of Helsinki released by WMA, or the Ethical Review Methods for Biomedical Research Involving Humans released by National Health Commission of China) in the manuscript. The Editorial Office reserves the right to require the author to provide the original ethical review document for the editorial department’s review.
All clinical trials reported in TUP journals should be prospectively registered in public trials registry before or at the first participant is enrolled. As ICMJE recommends, TUP journals accept publicly accessible registration in any registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) that includes the minimum acceptable 24-item trial registration data set or in ClinicalTrials.gov, which is a data provider to the WHO ICTRP.
The reporting of clinical trials also needs to follow the CONSORT guidelines. Manuscripts should include the clinical registration name, registration identification number, registration date, name of the register, and URL for the registry in accordance with journal instructions.
For research involving animals, authors should adhere to international and local guidelines, e.g., the ARRIVE guidelines 2.0, and indicate whether standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
They must obtain approval from the relevant institutional ethics committee prior to the commencement of the research. Authors should provide evidence that they obtained ethical and/or legal approval prior to conducting the research at submission. Manuscripts should include the name of the ethics committee and the approval number.
For published research involving the collection of biological samples (cultivated or wild), samples or fossils, authors should follow the authors’ institutional guidelines and national/international regulations. Authors should also comply with local laws. All such samples must be collected in an ethical and equitable way and, in accordance with relevant applicable laws, comply with local legislation, and the manuscript should include a statement of appropriate permissions granted and/or licenses.
The manuscript should include the Ethical Statement of appropriate permissions granted. Voucher specimens must be deposited in an accessible herbarium or other public collection providing access to deposited material. Information on the voucher specimen and who identified it must be included in the manuscript. Editors reserve the rights to reject any manuscript that cannot meet these requirements.
