Ethics
1. General Requirement：Authors should guarantee the originality and integrity of the article, which does not involve plagiarism, confidentiality, multiple submission and authorship dispute. Experimental materials, methods and data should be authentic. Ghost writing, multiple submission and redundant publishing is prohibited, including publishing the same content in different languages. Once any academic misconduct is verified, the journal will immediately reject the manuscript and notify the authors’ institutes. Please refer to the Publishing Ethics Statement and Policcy for Academic Misconduct in “Ethic Guideline” of this website.
2. Plagiarism Test: All manuscripts would be tested by plagiarism testing systems developed by CNKI, Wanfang and Chaoxing. Manuscripts with a repetition rate greater than 20% will be rejected. Before submission, authors can take a third-party pre-test through "Wanfang Data plagiarism detection system", which will be charged by the Wanfang company. Please refer to the Instruction of Plagiarism Pre-test in “Ethic Guideline” of this website.
3. Authorship: The order of authors and institutes shall be collectively determined before submission and shall not be changed thereafter. Those who are named as authors should directly participate in the research and writing work or have an important guiding role (such as graduate tutor). Other contributors can be listed in “acknowledgement” while “gift author” is strictly prohibited. Authors should be responsible for the manuscript. Complete information of all authors should be provided in the submission system. The authors should specify their contribution at the end of the article and submit the Authors Contribution Form (template can be downloaded from “Template Download” of this website) along with the manuscript. Please refer to the Instruction for Authorship in “Ethic Guideline” of this website.
4. Recommendation of Institutes: Submission of the article shall be reviewed and approved by the first author’s institute, and a recommendation letter shall be provided (template can be downloaded from “Template Download” of this website). The recommendation letter should be stamped (the title shall be identical to the first author’s institute). It must prove that the submitted manuscript does not involve multiple submission, authorship dispute, confidentiality, data fraud, etc.
5. Human Trials: The ethical issue of the study must comply with common principles of medical ethics. When research participants are humans, the author should explain whether its procedure complied with the ethical standards formulated by relevant committee (institutional, regional or national) responsible for human trials. The approval document of the committee should be submitted (the approval number should be included in the article). Consent letter from research participants or their relatives must be obtained but not submitted to the editorial office. Clinical trials must include the Universal Trial Number (UTN) obtained from one of the Primary Registries in the WHO Registry Network. The UTN shall be included in the abstract or the main body of the full text.
6. Animal Experiments: For research articles involving laboratory animals, it is necessary to provide the Production License, Use License and Quality Certificate and the certificate of approval by the ethic review committee of the institute (preferably the animal welfare ethic review table). The authors shall indicate in the article the serial number of the license/certificates/approval letter (the information on which shall be consistent with the producer, animal strain, user and research project) and indicate the variety, strain, sex, day or month age, weight, quantity, feeding conditions, feedstuff and source, modeling method and time, starting and ending point of the experiment, method of execution and other necessary information. The whole process should comply with relevant standards and norms of animal welfare ethics at home and abroad. Please refer to the Instruction of Laboratory Animal Welfare and Ethics in “Detailed Instruction” of this website.
7. Conflicts of Interests: All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing/ personal status/ affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization/ employer) may affect the authors' decision, work or manuscript. When a product is involved, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest against competitive products. Authors are also required to disclose the information under a subheading of Competing Interest at the end of the article. The author should state “there is no conflict of interest” even if there isn’t any conflict except for government funding project that has been disclosed in the manuscript. If there is no other competing interest, it can be declared that "there is no conflict of interest". Authors should also submit the Statement of Competing Interests (template can be downloaded from “Template Download” of this website) along with the manuscript.