Informed consent

Innovative Biosystems and Bioengineering (IBB) is committed to apply informed consent under research ethics, based on Declaration of Helsinki: Statement of Ethical Principles for Medical Research and ICMJE's Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be documented in the paper.

Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable patient be shown the manuscript to be published.

Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication.

Non-essential identifying details should be omitted. Informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained. If identifying characteristics are de-identified, authors should provide assurance, and editors should so note, that such changes do not distort scientific meaning.

Patient identifiers will not be published in IBB, unless written informed consent is given and the content is essential for the scientific purpose and merit of the manuscript.

Photographs of subjects showing any recognizable features must be accompanied by their signed release authorizing publication, as must case reports that provide enough unique identification of a person (other than name) to make recognition possible.

The journal requires at the point of submission that a consent form has been completed for any case report or clinical image in which an individual or a group of individuals can be identified.

When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article. A statement addressing informed patient consent must be included as part of the manuscript in the section "Materials and methods" under the subheading "Informed consent".

Completed consent forms are not to be submitted to the journal. Completed forms should be held by the treating institution according to locally approved procedures. The consent form should be made available to the journal editor if specifically requested.

If the patient or relatives of a deceased patient cannot be traced and consent cannot be obtained, the case report can only be considered for publication if it is sufficiently anonymised.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject papers for which the ethical aspects are, in the Board’s opinion, open to doubt.