When conducting research and submitting papers for publication, Goa Medical College and Hospital, Bambolim Goa expects the highest ethical standards from its faculty and students.

Redundant or Duplicate Publication

Duplicate publications overlap substantially with publications already published, in press, or in electronic media submissions. (International Committee of Medical Editors. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html)

When the same manuscript is submitted to multiple journals at the same time, it is referred to as a duplicate submission. This violates international copyright laws, ethical conduct, and cost effective use of resources.(http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html)

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published or currently submitted elsewhere. Duplicate publication is a violation of the code of research ethics.

Conflicts of Interest

At the point of submission of manuscript for publication, research ethics dictate that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated – including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition.

If the manuscript is accepted, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a published statement.

Permissions to Reproduce Previously Published Material

Permission is required to reproduce material (such as illustrations) from the copyright holder. Articles cannot be published without these permissions.

Patient Consent Forms

The protection of a patient’s right to privacy is essential. Please collect and keep copies of patients’ consent forms on which patients or other subjects of your experiments clearly grant permission for the publication of photographs or other material that might identify them. If the consent form for your research did not specifically include this, please obtain it or remove the identifying material.

A statement to the effect that such consent had been obtained must be included in the ‘Methods’ section of your paper. If necessary the Editors may request a copy of any consent forms.

Ethics Committee Approval

All articles dealing with original human or animal data must include a statement on ethics approval at the beginning of the Methods section. This paragraph must contain the following information: the name and address of the ethics committee responsible; the protocol number that was attributed by this ethics committee; and the date of approval by the ethics committee.

In addition and as stated above, for studies conducted on human participants it must be mentioned early that written informed consent was obtained from the study participants (please also look at the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki). Similarly, for experiments involving animals researcher must state the care of animal and licensing guidelines under which the study was performed and report these in accordance with the ARRIVE (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) statement. If ethics clearance was not necessary, or if there was any deviation from these standard ethical requests, please state why it was not required. Please note that the research committee may ask you to provide evidence of ethical approval. If you have approval from a National Drug Agency (or similar) please state this and provide details, this can be particularly useful when discussing the use of unlicensed drugs.

Plagiarism

Research should be the original work of the author(s). Re-use of text, data, figures, or images without appropriate acknowledgment or permission is considered plagiarism, as is the paraphrasing of text, concepts, and ideas. All allegations of plagiarism will be investigated in accordance with COPE guideline