JNIDS complies with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. Submission of a manuscript to JNIDS implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content and that the manuscript conforms to the journal’s policies.
Ethics and Consent
Ethics approval
Research involving human participants, human materials, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have received approval from a recognized ethics committee (EC)/institutional review board (IRB). A statement detailing this, including the name of the EC and the reference number (where applicable), must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted a waiver or exemption by an EC, this should also be stated in the manuscript as well as the name of the EC that gave the waiver. Documented evidence of EC approval or waiver should be readily available if requested by the Editor-in-Chief. JNIDS will usually not accept retrospective EC approval i.e. ethics approval obtained only after a study had commenced. A manuscript may be rejected if any of these ethical processes is breached.
Consent to participate
For all research involving human participants, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants or their legally authorized representatives (for example, in an unconscious patient). In the case of minors, assent must be obtained if the minor is capable of providing assent. In addition, informed consent must be obtained from the parent or legal guardian of the minor. A statement regarding informed consent or assent plus parental consent must be written in the manuscript. For manuscripts reporting studies involving vulnerable groups where there is the potential for coercion (for example, prisoners) or where consent may not have been fully informed, manuscripts will be considered at the Editor-in-Chief’s discretion. Informed consent must be obtained for all forms of personally identifiable data, including biomedical, clinical, and biometric data or images. The Editor-in-Chief may request for documentation in the case of identifiable images. Informed consent may not be applicable to retrospective studies provided there is an EC approval.
Sex and Gender in Research
Authors are advised to comply with the ‘Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines’ and to indicate sex and gender considerations where relevant. To avoid confusion, authors should be deliberate in their use of the terms sex (a biological attribute) and gender (socio-culturally construed identities or roles). Where applicable, authors should highlight if sex and/or gender differences are expected and provide disaggregated data by sex and/or gender. If a sex and/or gender analysis was not conducted, the rationale should be provided in the Discussion section.
Research Involving Animals
Any research involving vertebrate animals or other invertebrate animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. Authors are advised to make reference to appropriate ethical guidelines for conducting research in animals.
Research Involving Plants
Authors conducting laboratory or field research involving plants must comply with the relevant institutional, national, and international guidelines and legislation.
Biosafety and Biosecurity
Where applicable, JNIDS expects manuscripts submitted to its journal to report research that must have been conducted in compliance with relevant institutional biosafety and biosecurity protocols and in accordance with national or international recommendations regarding biosafety and biosecurity.
Clinical Trial Registration
JNIDS is committed to initiatives to improve reporting of clinical trials. Clinical trials that are reported in manuscripts submitted to JNIDS should be registered in suitable publicly available databases in accordance with ICMJE guidelines. This applies to all phases of clinical trials. The World Health Organization defines a clinical trial 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". Health-related interventions include any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome (for example drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes). Health outcomes include any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) will not require registration.The trial registration number (TRN) and date of registration should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract.
Reporting New Clinical Tools, Devices and Procedures
Authors reporting the use of a new clinical tool, device or procedure must provide give a justification in the manuscript for the use of the new instrument as against the standard clinical practice unless the new instrument or procedure has been approved by an appropriate regulatory body. In all cases of new instruments and procedures, EC approval and informed consent will apply.
Availability of Data and Materials
JNIDS recommends that all datasets on which the conclusions of the manuscript are made should be available to readers in the main manuscript or as additional supporting files, without a breach of participant confidentiality. Where there is a well-established norm for data sharing, JNIDS encourages data deposition in publicly available repositories.
Correction and Retraction of Articles
Corrections may be made to a published article with the authorization of the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief will decide the magnitude of the corrections. Minor corrections are made directly to the original article. However, in cases of major corrections, the original article will remain unchanged, while the corrected version will also be published. Both the original and corrected version will be linked to each other. A statement indicating the reason for the major change to the article will also be published. When necessary, retraction of articles will be done according to Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) retraction guidelines.