Journal of Atrial Fibrillation

Editorial Policy

INFORMED CONSENT

Applicable if your manuscript discloses patient identification, for example in Case Reports

Informed consent is the primary documents authors have to submit in order to publish names, initials or photographs for publication. Respecting the right to privacy of the patient any patient identifying information like name, initials or hospital number should not be published in written description, photographs and any identifiable material unless the information is essential for scientific purpose and this must be done only after receiving the informed consent from the patient (or parent or guardian.). Authors explicitly agree to show the manuscript to be published to the patient before signing in the informed consent form.

As a guidance the following sample Informed Consent form can be used. Sample Informed Consent

It is important that authors submit this form together with the manuscript prior to review.

ETHICS OF HUMAN AND ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS

Whenever a human subject is involved, their must be proper indication that the informed consent and the protocol has been approved by the Institutional Ethics Review Committee. This information is mandatory for all human clinical studies. Authors must be prepared to submit a copy of ethics approval if requested by JAFIB.
If animals are involved the information on animal welfare ( such as species, number, gender, age, weight, housing conditions, welfare, training and the fate of the animal at the end of the experiment) and steps taken to ameliorate the non-human primates research must be submitted. These details should be included in the Methods section of the article.
Manuscript describing work with animals will be accepted only if the procedures followed in clearly described and is in accordance with the legal requirement of the country in which the work was done and to all institutional guidelines. A brief description about the institutional and/or licensing committee approval of the experiment should be included in the article end.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE

JAFIB requires all authors to disclose any and all potential, perceived or actual conflicts of interest which may include but are not limited to specific financial interest, relationship and affiliations that are relevant to the topic(s) discussed in the manuscript that is been submitted. This can also include employment / affiliation, grants/funding, speaker agreement, consultancy, honoraria, stock ownership or option, expert testimony, royalties, or patent received or pending. This policy is not a deterrent for the authors from publishing their work. However, it is the responsibility of the journal to provide scientific integrity to the reviewers and readers. Any disclosure will be published with the accepted article. If no conflicts are disclosed, a statement to that effect will be published in the article.

Each manuscript can use initials for authors to detail the conflict of interest statement. JAFIB does not publish research funded by tobacco industry.