Ensuring that the studies published in our journals are conducted in a fair and ethical manner is one of our major missions. We publish across multiple research areas, many of which have their own standards and methods of governing research practice.
When reporting experiments with human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation. For manuscripts reporting medical studies involving human participants, authors are required to provide a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study and confirming that the study conforms to recognized standards, for example:
Declaration of Helsinki
US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects
European Medicines Agency Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice
These standards encourage authors to conduct studies in a way that ensures adequate steps have been taken to minimize harm to participants, to avoid coercion or exploitation, to protect confidentiality, and to minimize the risk of physical and psychological harm.
If the editors or referees doubt whether the research was conducted in accordance with ethical standards, they may ask the authors to explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. The Editorial Board has the right to reject any studies not meeting the criteria.
One of our main principles in studies involving human subjects is to ensure that a patient’s right to privacy has not been infringed without prior informed consent. Authors are encouraged to follow the ICMJE guidelines for reporting on human subjects. For publication of material that contains detailed patient information about a living individual, it is compulsory for a signed patient consent form to be obtained. Any identifier that might reveal a patient’s identity must be removed (from X-rays, MRIs, charts, photographs, etc.). Written informed consent is required from any potentially identifiable patient or legal representative and should be presented in either the Materials and Methods section or the Acknowledgments.
Research involving animals should be conducted with the same rigor as research involving humans. When reporting experiments on animals, authors are asked to indicate whether the institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
Where animals are used in research we expect them to have been treated in a humane manner and complying with the ARRIVE guidelines and the Consensus Author Guidelines For Animal Use developed by the International Association of Veterinary Editors. Our editors and referees also handle submissions involving these guidelines. Editors may ask authors to describe in their manuscripts how discomfort, distress, and pain were avoided and minimized, and to confirm that animals did not suffer unnecessarily at any stage of an experiment. Editors may request that reviewers comment on the standard of experimental reporting, experimental design, or any other aspects of the study reported that might cause concern. If concerns are raised or clarifications are needed, they may need to request evidence of ethical research approval or question the authors.
Animal ethics-based criteria for manuscript rejection are:
Manuscripts and authors that fail to meet the aforementioned requirements,
Studies that involve unnecessary pain, distress, suffering, or lasting harm to animals.
The Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association (www.wma.net) is about "Ethical Principles Regarding Medical Research on Humans" (revised in October 2013). In its first article, it was stated that it was prepared as a declaration that "It includes ethical principles regarding medical research on humans, including identifiable human material and data." The declaration states that "Medical research on humans should conform to generally accepted scientific principles; it should be based on a thorough knowledge of the scientific literature, other relevant sources of information, adequate laboratory facilities, and, where relevant, animal testing." The design and implementation of any trial involving humans should be clearly stated and justified in the trial protocol. The trial protocol should be submitted to the relevant research ethics committee for evaluation, interpretation, guidance, and approval before the trial begins." statements are included.
Based on this requirement, all clinical studies, both interventional and non-interventional, including clinical drug and medical device studies, are submitted for publication in the Journal of Tuberculosis and Thorax; all kinds of research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require data collection from the participants using surveys, interviews, focus group work, observation, experiments, interview techniques, all kinds of studies using identifiable human biological material and data, private or sensitive data within the scope of the Personal Data Protection Law Any research on data that is accepted as legal is subject to the approval of the Ethics Committee. Articles that require "Ethics Committee approval" are specified in the TR Dizin criteria. If deemed necessary, in addition to the relevant statement, an Ethics Committee decision or an equivalent official letter may be requested from the authors.
In case reports, in manuscripts reporting the results of experimental studies on humans, it should be stated that after the nature of the procedures applied to the people who were studied, their consent was obtained with an "informed consent form". In studies conducted on animals, the ones that were made to avoid pain, suffering, and discomfort should be clearly stated in the article. It is necessary to obtain permission from the owners for the use of scales, surveys, and photographs belonging to others, to document this situation, and to state that copyright regulations are complied with for intellectual and artistic works.
Ethics Committee approval and/or whether legal/special permission is required should be stated in the article. If it is necessary to obtain these permissions, it should be clearly stated from which institution, on what date, and with which decision number or permission number it was obtained. If the study requires the use of healthy/sick volunteers and animal subjects, it should be declared that the study was carried out in accordance with the international declaration, guidelines, and relevant national legal regulations. It is the authors' responsibility to protect the confidentiality of patients' identities. For photographs that may reveal the identity of the patients, signed permission from the patient or their legal representatives should also be sent with the article.
The publication and publication processes of the journal have been shaped in accordance with the guidelines defined by the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).
Retrospective Ethics Committee approval is not required for articles that used research data before 2020, were produced from master's/doctoral studies (must be specified in the article), that were applied for and accepted for publication in the journal in previous years, but have not yet been published.
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