Publication Ethics Policies

All submitted papers are assessed by independent experts in the field. These reviewers are asked to judge the validity, significance, and originality of your work and to ensure that the research has followed relevant good practice guidelines. The editorial and publication process follow the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), Council of Science Editors (CSE), and COPE International Standards for Editors and Authors Guidelines (http://publicationethics.org).

Policies on Conflict of Interest, Human and Animal rights, and Informed Consent

All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest. The authors should describe also the role of sponsor(s), if any, in any of the stages from study design to submission of the manuscript for publication. They should also state if the sponsor(s) had no such involvement. Please ensure that this information is accurate and in accordance with your funder’s requirement.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should declare these as competing interests on submission. They should also adhere to the Good Publication

Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies, which are designed to ensure that publications are produced in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines also apply to any companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations and communications companies.

Human and animal rights

All researches must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. Ethics approval for all studies must be obtained before the research is conducted.

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an Ethics Committee, sometimes referred to as an Institutional Review Board (IRB). A statement detailing this, including the name of the Ethics Committee, the reference number and date of approval.

If a retrospective (“non-interventional”) study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript.

In such cases the acceptance of paper submission is at the Editor’s discretion.

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice to meet the patient’s clinical need. Such justification is not required if the new procedure is already approved for clinical use at the authors’ institution.

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. Manuscripts reporting experiments using animals must include a statement giving assurance that all animals received human care and that study protocols comply with the institution's guidelines. Studies involving animal experiments should conform to the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines (http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines), developed by the National Centre for the

Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to improve standards and reporting of animal research.

Clinical trials

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org) defines a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns human participants to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between an intervention and a health outcome. Interventions include but are not limited to drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, process-of-care changes, and the like. Authors of manuscripts reporting clinical trials must submit a proof of institutional review board approval from all participating centers, the original approved protocol, patient information sheet and statistical analysis plan, and all subsequent amendments to either document. All these documents must be in English language. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. Failure to do so will prevent entry to the peer review process. For definitions and further information, please see the section http://www.icmje.org/ recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html found in ICMJE’s Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

Informed consent

For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or guardian in the case of children under 18 years) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. Details that might disclose the identity of the subjects under the study should be omitted. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects being recognized. If the participant has died, then consent for publication must be sought from the next of kin of the participant. This documentation must be made available to Editors on request, and will be treated confidentially. In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required. The Ethical Committee approval is needed including the reference number and date of approval.

Journal Policies

Editorial Independence

Acta Biomedica (ActaBiomed) is published by Mattioli1885. Mattioli 1885 grants editorial freedom to the Editor of the journal.

Open Access Policy

All research articles published in ActaBiomed are freely accessible online in PubMed. The authors retain the copyright of published work.

Authors

It is the responsibility of the Authors of an article published in ActaBiomed to have contributed in a meaningful and identifiable way to the design, performance, analysis, and reporting of the manuscript.

Authors must obtain ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a novel procedure or tool where a clear clinical advantage based on clinical need was not apparent before treatment.

The corresponding author, on behalf of all the other Authors, must declare the existence or otherwise of financial connections (consultancies, ownership of shares, patents, etc.) that might constitute a potential conflict of interest in relation to the subject matter of the article.

Without these declarations the paper submission will not accepted.

ActaBiomed permits only one corresponding author per manuscript submission. This Author is solely responsible for all correspondence with the ActaBiomed and will receive all emails regarding forms, authorship issues, manuscript files, etc.

For more information: Guidelines for Authors

At this time, no advertising for the Journal is permitted.

Publishing Schedule

The Journal has adopted a continuous publication model. The articles are published online as the final and complete version. All articles will be assigned to one of 6 bimonthly issues each year, with the exception of a Supplement at the Editor’s discretion: Issue no. 1: February 28; Issue no. 2: April 30; Issue no. 3: Jun 30; Issue no. 4: August 31; Issue no 5: October 31; Issue no 6: December 31

Privacy Statement

The company Mattioli 1885 S.r.l. guarantees that the personal data collected will be processed in a lawful, correct, transparent manner and only for the purposes for which they were collected and, in any case, in compliance with EU Reg. N. 679/2016 and of the Legislative Decree n. 101/2018, as well as any other provision on the subject

(Last update version: 11 October 2022)