The corresponding author is required to declare upon submission whether they or their co-authors have any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, that might compromise the perception of the authors as impartial, or would embarrass the journal if they were to come to light after publication and had not been declared. Such financial interests might include commercial or other sources of funding for the author(s) or associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition.
A declaration of conflict of interest should be included with the manuscript on submission. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, this should be stated. If your manuscript is published, this information will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.
Referees are similarly requested to decline to review a manuscript if they have a potential or declared conflict.
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions or photographs unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication - a consent-to-publication form is available for download. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.
Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.
When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.