Ethics Policy

1.     Should any academic misconduct, including multiple submission, redundant publishing, plagiarism or data falsification be found, the editorial office will immediately reject the manuscript. We will send a notice to other relevant journals in this field and to the author’s institutes. Any submission from the first author and the corresponding author will be rejected for the next 2 years.

2.     For papers involving clinical trials of human studies or animal experiments, authors are required to provide proof of ethical review of the research proposal. If involved, informed consent letters should be signed by patients (subjects) or their families. Clinical trials should be registered according to relevant standard. If matters described above are involved，authors should make detailed statement in manuscripts.

3.     Those who are named as authors should directly participate in the research work, writing the manuscript or have an important guiding role, responsible for the entire content of the article as copyright owners. Other contributors of the paper (e.g., laboratory assistant) may be listed in acknowledgement. “Gift author” is strictly prohibited. The order and affiliation of authors should be determined upon submission, and should not be changed thereafter.

4.     All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing/personal status/affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization/employer) may affect the authors' decision, work or manuscript. When a product is mentioned, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest against competitive products.

5.     Authors should declare their contribution and conflict of interest in Authors Statement Form, which should be signed and submitted to the journal.