All studies published in CJOT involving human or animal subjects must be approved by appropriate ethics committees. When reporting studies on human beings, authors must state that the protocol for the research project has been approved by a suitably constituted Ethics Committee of the institution within which the work was undertaken and that it conforms to the provisions of the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013, available at: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/. For prospective studies involving human participants, authors are expected to mention about approval of regional/ national/ institutional or independent Ethics Committee or Review Board, obtaining informed consent from adult research participants and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial. All investigations on human subjects must include a statement that the subject gave informed consent. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the ‘Methods’ section. The age beyond which assent would be required could vary as per regional and/ or national guidelines. Ensure confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants’ names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects being recognized (or an eye bar should be used).

When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institution’s or a national research council’s guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human and animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. Animal experimental procedures should be as humane as possible and the details of anesthetics and analgesics used should be clearly stated. The ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Humans for studies involving experimental animals and human beings, respectively.

CJOT will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable and retains the right to reject any manuscript on the basis of unethical conduct in either human or animal studies.