1.Overview

2.Studies involving humans

3.Studies involving animals

4.Studies involving cell lines

5.Consent for publication

6.Availability of data and materials

7.Competing interests

8.Authorship

9.Citations

10.Multiple, duplicate, concurrent publication/simultaneous submission

11.Plagiarism and other fraud

12.Misconduct

13.Peer review and confidentiality

14.Corrections and retractions

15.Appeals and complaints

16.Editorial responsibilities

17.Biosafety and biosecurity

1. Overview

MRE Press follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

Submission of a manuscript to Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content and that the manuscript conforms to the journal’s policies.

Ethics approval

Research involving human subjects, human material or human data must be performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. and must be approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study was granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to the Editor on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.

Retrospective ethics approval

If a study was not granted ethics committee approval prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained, and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. The decision as to whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor's discretion.

Clinical trials

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice to meet the patient’s clinical need, and should obtain ethics approval and informed patient consent for participation in the study.

In case of clinical trials, which are defined as "any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes", the trial registration number (TRN) and date of registration should be included in the last line of the manuscript abstract. Suitable publicly available registries are those listed on the ICMJE website.and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.For clinical trials that have not been registered prospectively, MRE Press encourages retrospective registration to ensure the complete publication of all results. In such cases, the TRN, date of registration and the words 'retrospectively registered' should be included in the manuscript.

Consent to participate

Research that is performed on humans should follow international and national regulations in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, or any other relevant set of ethical principles. For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. Manuscripts reporting studies on vulnerable groups (for example unconscious patients), where there is the potential for coercion (for example prisoners) or where consent may not have been fully informed, will be considered at the Editor’s discretion. In the case of articles describing human transplantation studies, authors must include a statement declaring that no organs/tissues were obtained from prisoners and must also name the institution(s)/clinic(s)/department(s) via which organs/tissues were obtained.

3. Studies involving animals

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines (e.g. the revised Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 in the UK and Directive 2010/63/EU in Europe) and/or ethical approval (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate) must be included in the manuscript. This also applies to field studies and other non-experimental research on animals. For experimental studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also document informed consent from the client or owner and adherence to a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care. If a study was granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons for the exemption). The Editor will take into consideration animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research. When rodents are used as in vivo cancer models, the tumor burden should not exceed the recommendations of the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee guidelines.

4. Studies involving cell lines

The authors are strongly encouraged to submit a detailed methodology stating the maintenance and culture of cell lines according to international guidelines on good cell culture practice ( fundamental techniques, mycoplasma contamination, passage number, etc.).

Furthermore, information regarding misidentified or cross-contaminated cell lines must be provided and cross-checked from the International Cell Line Authentication Committee and ExPASy Cellosaurus databases in order to exclude their contamination with other cell lines or their incorrect identification.

If a cell line has previously been reported to be contaminated or misidentified, an STR profile of the cell line used in the study must be available for evaluation by the journal’s editor.

5. Consent for publication

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, date of birth or hospital numbers, images or statements should not be included in a manuscript unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) has provided written informed consent for publication. A statement must be included in the manuscript declaring that the patient, or parent, guardian or next of kin (in case of deceased patients) provided written informed consent for the publication of any associated data and accompanying images. The consent form that will be treated confidentially must be made available to the Editor if requested, and will be treated confidentially.

For case reports or other studies in which case details, personal information or images are included that may enable an individual to be identified, the individual or a parent, guardian or next of kin must consent to its publication, and this consent should be declared in the manuscript. Authors should disclose to patients that personally identifiable material would be available via the Internet under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 as well as in print after publication (http://www.icmje.org).

Publication without written consent may be considered if all identifying information is removed, public interest considerations outweigh the potential harm, it is impossible to obtain permission and a reasonable individual would be unlikely to object to publication. The final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.

For datasets containing clinical data, authors have an ethical and legal responsibility to respect participants’ rights to privacy and to protect their identity. Ideally, authors should gain informed consent for publication of the dataset obtained from participants at the point of recruitment to the trial. If this is not possible, authors must demonstrate that publication of such data does not compromise anonymity or confidentiality or breach local data protection laws, for the dataset to be considered for publication. Authors must consider whether the dataset contains any direct or indirect identifiers and consult their local ethics committee or other appropriate body before submission if there is any possibility that participants will not be fully anonymous. Authors must state in their manuscript on submission whether informed consent was obtained for publication of patient data. If informed consent was not obtained, authors must state the reason for this, and which body was consulted in the preparation of the dataset.

6. Availability of data and materials

Submission of a manuscript to MRE Press implies that the materials included in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be made freely available to any researchers who wish to use them for non-commercial purposes, while preserving any necessary confidentiality and anonymity.

For MRE Press journals, it is strongly encouraged that all datasets on which the conclusions of a manuscript depend should be available to readers, unless they are already provided as part of the submitted article. Where datasets are included in the study, authors should include an “Availability of data and materials” section in the article, stating where the data supporting their findings may be found. Authors who do not wish to share their data must state this fact, and also provide an explanation as to why the data are unavailable.

Availability of data and materials statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

Authors are encouraged to deposit their datasets in publicly available repositories, where available and appropriate. Publicly available datasets must be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI). We leave the selection of the repository is left entirely to the author’s discretion, although note that the data must be freely available to readers. A list of recommended repositories is featured below; consulting the Registry of Research Data Repositories (http://www.re3data.org/) may also be useful in this regard.

MRE Press supports the prospective registration of systematic reviews and encourages authors to register their systematic reviews in a suitable registry (such as PROSPERO), including the registration number as the last line of the manuscript abstract. Authors of systematic reviews should also provide a file describing all details of the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook

Statistical methods

Authors should provide information on the statistical methods and measures used in their research, including the name, version and supplier of the statistical software used, and the P-value considered to be significant.

Cell line authentication

If cell lines are used in a research article, authors are encouraged to include the following information in their manuscript:

Further information is available from the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC). We recommend that authors check the NCBI database and Cellosauru ExPASy for misidentification and contamination of human cell lines.

14. Corrections and retractions

Authors are obliged to notify the relevant journal Editor if they find that a published manuscript contains an error, plagiarism or fraudulent data. Changes to published articles that affect the interpretation and conclusion of the article, but do not fully invalidate the article, will, at the Editor’s’ discretion be corrected via publication of an erratum, correction, retraction or notice of concern at the earliest possible date. Authors are encouraged to contact the journal Editor to discuss the most appropriate course of action.

If the scientific information in an article is substantially undermined, it may be necessary for published articles to be retracted. MRE Press will follow the COPE guidelines in such cases. Retraction articles are indexed and linked to the original article.

15. Appeals and complaints

MRE Press adheres to COPE guidelines regarding appeals to editorial decisions and complaints. Where an author believes that an editor has made an error in declining a paper, they may submit an appeal. The appeal letter should clearly state the reasons why the author considers the decision to be incorrect and provide detailed, specific responses to any comments relating to the rejection of the review. Further advice from members of the journal’s Editorial Advisory Panel and external experts will be sought regarding eligibility for re-review.

16. Editorial responsibilities

The editor of a journal has complete responsibility and authority to accept a submitted paper for publication or to reject it. The editor may confer with associate editors or reviewers for an evaluation to use in making this decision.

An editor should give prompt and unbiased consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, judging each on its merits without regard to race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy of the authors, and respecting the intellectual independence of the authors. Situations that may lead to real or perceived conflicts of interest should be avoided.

The editor and the editorial staff should not disclose any information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than reviewers and potential reviewers. Unpublished information, arguments or interpretations disclosed in a submitted manuscript should not be used in an editor's own research except with the consent of the author.

An editor presented with convincing evidence that the substance or conclusions of a published paper are erroneous should promote the publication of a correction or retraction.

17. Biosafety and biosecurity

The research submitted to Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry should follow the items of relevant institutional and national and/or international biosafety and biosecurity protocols or policies.

The WHO information DURC for life sciences research has remind researchers of the dual-use concerns related to their work and take actions to reduce the bio-risk of their work. For any manuscript we suspect with a potential dual use risk, the editor will keep the right to ask authors to provide details about how such a risk has been minimized and how it matches their institutional and funder’s requirements, as well as national and/or international biosafety and biosecurity protocols or policies. The editor may ask the authors to revise their manuscript before the journal peer review process, if we believe that the manuscript needs to undergo peer review specifically to assess the dual use risk.