Ethics Policies

Experiments involving human subjects must conform with the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (United States Office of Science and Technology Policy) and in the Declaration of Helsinki and be approved by a local Institutional Review Board. Approval by the latter must be indicated in the text.

• Declaration of Helsinki. (Adopted in 1964 by the 18th World Medical Assembly in Helsinki, Finland, and revised by the 29th World Medical Assembly in Tokyo in 1975.) In: The Main Issue in Bioethics. Revised Edition. Andrew C. Varga, ed. New York: Paulist Press, 1984.
• Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects; Notices and Rules. Federal Register. Vol. 56. No. 117 (June 18, 1991), pp 28002–28007.
• Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) Human Subject Protections. (hhs.gov/ohrp)

Patients in figures should preferably be unrecognizable. Authors are responsible for obtaining patient permission for use of the material from all recognizable participants in photographs, videos, or other information that may be published in StemJournal or on the journal’s website. A statement that permission was granted by the patient must accompany the figure legend. Do not use study participants' names, initials, or hospital numbers anywhere in the manuscript (including figures).

StemJournal supports the appropriate and responsible use of animals as experimental subjects. The U.S. Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (PHS Policy) and the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (NIH Guide) should guide all animal research. Compliance with these guidelines as well as protocol approval by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee should be specified in the text of the manuscript.
 
We recommend following the ARRIVE reporting guidelines when documenting animal studies [PLoS Bio 8(6), e1000412, 2010]:

• Kilkenny C, Browne WJ, Cuthill IC, Emerson M, Altman DG (2010) Improving Bioscience Research Reporting: The ARRIVE Guidelines for Reporting Animal Research. PLoS Biol 8(6): e1000412. (doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000412)

Other references include:

• Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW) PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, 2015 (revised March 2015). (grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/olaw.htm)
• Guidelines for the Care and Use of Mammals in Neuroscience and Behavioral Research.National Research Council (US) Committee on Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Neuroscience and Behavioral Research. Washington, DC; 2003. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK43327)

StemJournal affirms that misconduct, in the form of fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism, jeopardizes the success of the entire scientific endeavor. However, the primary responsibility for considering and resolving allegations of scientific misconduct must be pursued within the individual academic communities and institutions where the scientific work is carried out.
 
Every author of articles or abstracts submitted for publication assumes full responsibility, within the limits of his or her professional competence, for the accuracy of the report. In the case of multiple-authored papers, each author should have made a significant intellectual or practical contribution to the scientific work.
 
To be considered as an author of an article, the following criteria must be met:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
• Final approval of the version to be published; and
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Authors submit articles with the understanding that reports must not have been submitted elsewhere. After acceptance, any additions or deletions to the list of authors must be approved by the Editor-in-Chief, and all authors on the manuscript must also sign off on the changes. Please contact the Editorial Office (stemjournal@iospress.com) for more information.

Questions raised about the conduct of experiments or their presentation will be evaluated preliminarily by the Editor-in-Chief and, if appropriate, in consultation with the Associate Editor handling the review of the manuscript. If deemed appropriate, the matter will be referred to the institution where the scientific work in question was performed. The Journal expects that the matter would be reviewed in accordance with institutional procedures for handling allegations of misconduct. At all stages, every effort should be made to ensure that the process is fair and just, both for those who are accused of misconduct and for those who have raised the issue of scientific misconduct. In the event that a published article or abstract is to be retracted, a statement of retraction will be published in StemJournal.