Ethical rules

Experimental work with humans or animals

Experimental work with humans or animals must be approved by the adequate(s) Ethical Committee of the institution(s) in which the work was done. The use of approval code(s) is highly recommended and may be solicited during editorial process. Human studies will also include a statement regarding informed consent. Studies including livestock or pets should provide a similar owner statement. Studies considering either free-range wild animals or wild animals in controlled environments (e.g.: zoological centers, wildlife recovering centers) also need to include approval by competent organisms.

The use of human images needs to be supported by consent of publication signed for person present in the image, parent or legal guardian, if children less than 18 or under legal age of majority (if higher than 18) of residence country, or next of kin if the person died. In addition, children older than 14 years should provide a signed informed assent. If images are entirely unidentifiable and no details on individuals are included within the article, consent for publication of images may not be required. Nevertheless, final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.

Ethical rules of the journal
Additionally, the submission to the journal implies the adherence to journal ethics in publishing:

• The authors should declare any potential financial or non-financial conflict of interests. A conflict of interest is present when interpretation of results may be influenced, or may be perceived as potentially influenced, by personal or financial relationships. If the authors have doubts about consideration of specific themes as a conflict of interests, please contact to the journal for clarification prior to text submission. If no conflict of interest is present, this finding should be reported in the section “Conflict of Interests” (see below).
• Funding information should be properly reported. If the work has been performed using own funds the sentence “No external financial support” or an express indication to internal economic support of affiliation institution should be reported on Funding section (see below).
• If multiple, redundant or concurrent publication is detected during or after revision process, the manuscript will be rejected or retracted if published. If retracted, a retraction note appears in the subsequent issue of the journal. Publishing the same manuscript in more than one journal, except in very specific circumstances, constitutes unethical behavior and is unacceptable. Abstracts, part of published lecture, academic thesis or electron pre-print do not qualify as multiple, redundant or concurrent publication, but need to be reported in first page of the manuscript (see below).
• The presence of errors that does not invalidate the study, may be solved by publication of erratum note by authors or (if applied) answering the letter(s) to editor which identified and report article errors. Major errors leading to an invalidation of study will result in authors self-retraction or journal article retraction. Note that new data obtained by either the same authors or other after article acceptance are not considered for erratum or retraction. Prior to any decision about retraction, the editor-in-chief will contact the authors to report detected mistakes.
• The detection of scientific misconduct as for instance fabrication or falsification of data will results in automatic rejection or retraction.
• The journal may revise the originality of the text. If plagiarism is detected, the manuscript will be immediately rejected. Note that previous publication of the manuscript in another language is considered as an unacceptable practice (self-plagiarism) and will also results in immediately rejection.