Conflict of Interest
A conflict of interest/funding statement, to be completed by all listed authors, will be required on acceptance of the manuscript. This will include details regarding any and all funding sources related to the study, as well as any and all financial, institutional, or personal relationships that have the potential or appearance of the potential to unduly influence the objectivity and integrity of the manuscript. Such sources include, but are not limited to: Consultancies, speaker fees, reimbursed travel, stock ownership, equity interest, and royalites from patents/licensing arrangements. The Co-Editors may choose to disclose an actual or potential conflict or elect not to publish the article due to a disclosed conflict. These include:
Human Subjects
All studies involving human subjects will be required to provide a statement affirming that approval was received from an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB) or that the study was exempt. For IRB approved studies, the approval number and date must be included in the statement. Furthermore, this information must be reported in the study methods. In addition, a description of procedures for subject assent/consent (if performed) must be included in the methods. For exempt studies, a justification of why the study is exempt must be provided. For all observational studies, the STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology) guidelines should be followed. For randomized controlled trials, the CONSORT (CONsolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) guidelines should be followed. For systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines should be followed.
Animal Rights
All studies involving animals will be required to provide a statement affirming that approval was received from an appropriate Institutional Animal Care and Review Committee (IACUC) or that the study was exempt. For IACUC approved studies, the approval number and date must be included in the statement. Furthermore, this information must be reported in the study methods. For exempt studies, a justification of why the study is exempt must be provided. All animal studies should follow the ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments).
