Conflict of Interest Policy

Conflict of Interest, Human and Animal Rights, and Informed Consent

The International Journal of Modern Medicine and Natural Sciences (IJMMNS) follows the Recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Conflict of Interest

All authors must disclose any financial or non-financial relationships that could be perceived as influencing their work. These include employment, consultancies, honoraria, grants, stock ownership, patents, paid expert testimony, and personal, academic or political relationships within the 36 months before submission. Authors are encouraged to use the ICMJE Disclosure of Interest form. Every manuscript must include a "Conflict of Interest" statement before the References. If there is none, it should read: "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest." All funding sources and the role of each funder must be stated in a "Funding" section.
Reviewers must decline any manuscript where they have a conflict of interest. Editors and editorial board members who submit their own manuscripts are excluded from handling them; another editor manages those submissions independently.

Human Rights

Research involving human participants, human material or human data must be conducted in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. It must be approved by an institutional review board or ethics committee before the study begins. The Methods section must state the committee's name, the approval number and the date. If a study was exempt from approval, authors must explain why and provide the committee's exemption letter.
Clinical trials must be registered in a public registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov or a WHO ICTRP primary registry, before the first participant is enrolled. The registration number must appear at the end of the abstract. Authors are encouraged to follow the relevant reporting guidelines (CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, CARE). Manuscripts without adequate ethical approval will not be considered.

Animal Rights

Research involving animals must comply with institutional, national and international guidelines, such as the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals or EU Directive 2010/63/EU. It must be approved by an institutional animal care and use committee or an equivalent ethics committee, whose name and approval number must be given in the Methods. Authors should follow the ARRIVE guidelines and the 3Rs principle (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement). They must describe the anaesthesia, analgesia and euthanasia methods used to minimise pain and distress.

Informed Consent

Written informed consent must be obtained from all participants, or from a parent or legal guardian for minors and persons unable to consent. This must be stated in the Methods section. Patients have a right to privacy. Identifying details such as names, initials, hospital numbers or photographs must not be published unless they are essential and written consent for publication has been obtained. This applies to all case reports and clinical images. If an ethics committee waived consent (for example, for retrospective anonymised data), this must be stated. Authors must keep the consent forms and provide them to the editors on request.

Non-compliance

Suspected violations of these policies are investigated following COPE flowcharts. Depending on the outcome, the manuscript may be rejected, or a published article may be corrected or retracted.