If either animal studies or human studies are to be described in manuscript, following information should be addressed by the authors: In case of animal studies, the permission/ approval of institutional or national authorities on the care and use of animals must be stated by the authors. In addition, all the experimental procedure using animals should be approved by authorizing body (the authors could provide a specific approval/ethics number). In human studies, the approval of local/national ethical committee should be stated with the specific name of the approving authorities. All the participating subjects should provide the informed consent form and this should be stated in the manuscript. Any inhumane procedures in submitted papers will definitely result in disapproval of the paper with no exceptions.

For the policies on research and publication ethics not stated in these instructions, 'Guidelines on Good Publication’ (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines, Committee on Publication Ethics) can be applied.