Publication Ethics and Editorial Policies

Publication ethics and research integrity help to ensure the accuracy and trustworthiness of an article. They cover a broad range of subjects including authorship, ethical approval for the study, conflicts of interest, availability of data, peer review amongst other topics.

Karger Publishers is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Karger journals aim to adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. Below is guidance for authors when preparing their manuscript and details about our Editorial policies relating to research integrity and publication ethics.

Manuscripts may be rejected if the editors believe that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework, and concerns raised after publication may lead to a correction, retraction, or expression of concern in line with COPE guidelines.

Studies Involving Human Subjects, Identifiable Materials or Data

Manuscripts presenting research based on human subjects, materials or data must contain a Statement of Ethics outlining the steps taken to ensure compliance with internationally-accepted standards for ethical research practice and reporting.

Studies must have been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee and with appropriate participants’ informed consent in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration. In the manuscript, authors should specify the name of the ethics committee or other relevant authority who approved the study protocol and provide the reference number where appropriate. If ethics approval was not required, or if the study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that made that decision). Note if authors are submitting to a journal with a double blind peer review policy, the Ethics Statement should be anonymized where appropriate.

For all research involving human subjects, written informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent/legal guardian where appropriate) and a statement detailing this should appear in the manuscript. For studies involving vulnerable participants or participants at risk of potential coercion, detailed information regarding the steps taken to ensure informed consent must be provided. If consent was not obtained, please specify why this was not obtained and whether this was approved by the ethics committee.

Identifying Participant Information

In line with the ICMJE recommendations on the protection of research participants, authors must avoid providing identifying information unless strictly necessary for the submission and participants’ identifiable attributes must be anonymized in the manuscript and its supplementary files, if any. If identifying information is necessary, authors must confirm that the individual has provided written consent for the use of that information in a publication and clearly state this in the statement of ethics.

Research Using Cell Lines

The source of all cell lines used in a study must be detailed in the methods section of the manuscript. An appropriate statement of ethics must be provided for studies using or creating de novo cell lines. Research involving human embryonic stem cells, embryonic germ cells or induced pluripotent stem cells should comply with the ISSCR 'Guidelines for the Conduct of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research' or an equivalent set of guidelines or applicable regulations.

Additional Requirements for Case Reports

Manuscripts reporting a case report must include a statement detailing that written informed consent for publication was obtained and from whom (e.g. “Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for publication of this case report and any accompanying images.”). If the patient has died, consent for publication must be obtained from their next of kin. If the patient described in the case report is a minor or vulnerable, then consent for publication must be obtained from the parent/legal guardian. The completed consent form must be made available to the Editor if requested and will be treated confidentially. If consent to publish any directly or indirectly identifiable data or images has not been obtained, we will not consider the manuscript for publication.

Additional Requirements for Clinical Trials

In accordance with the ICMJE recommendations, all clinical trials should be registered in a publicly available registry approved by the WHO or ICMJE and the clinical trial number must be clearly stated in the manuscript. Manuscripts reporting clinical trials must adhere to the relevant reporting guidelines for their study design, such as CONSORT for randomized controlled trials, TREND for non-randomized trials, or other relevant reporting guidelines as detailed on the Equator network website.

Karger follows the WHO definition of clinical trials "A clinical trial is 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 [...] Interventions include but are not restricted to drugs, cells and other biological products, surgical procedures, radiologic procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, process-of-care changes, preventive care, etc. This definition includes Phase I to Phase IV trials.”

Studies Involving Animals

Manuscripts presenting research involving animals must contain a Statement of Ethics outlining the steps taken to ensure compliance with internationally-accepted standards for research practice and reporting.

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must have been approved by the authors' Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) or equivalent ethics committee and must follow internationally recognized guidelines such as the ARRIVE guidelines. In the manuscript, authors should specify the name of the ethics committee or other relevant authority who approved the study protocol and provide the reference number where appropriate. Please note if authors are submitting to a journal with a double blind peer review policy, the Ethics Statement should be anonymized where appropriate.

If ethics approval was not required, or if the study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript, including the name of the ethics committee that made that decision. Additional information on welfare and the steps taken to minimise suffering is expected for studies reporting the death of a regulated animal as a likely outcome or planned endpoint. Other types of studies including field studies and non-interventional research on animals must comply with local or international guidelines, and where appropriate must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee.

Conflict of Interest

Karger endorses the ICMJE recommendations on the ‘Disclosure of Financial and Non-Financial Relationships and Activities, and Conflicts of Interest’. This states that “The potential for conflict of interest and bias exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients' welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.”

What to Declare

When submitting a manuscript, authors must declare any activity or relationship that could be perceived as a conflict of interest in the Conflict of Interest statement. All forms of support and financial involvement (e.g. employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership and options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, royalties) that occurred within the previous three years should be declared, regardless of their potential relevance to the paper. The role of the funder(s) in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; any restrictions regarding the submission of the report for publication should be declared. If the funder(s) had no role in any of the above, this should be clearly stated in the manuscript’s Funding Sources statement. Nonfinancial relationships (personal, political, or professional) that could be perceived as potentially influencing the writing of the manuscript should also be declared.

Note if authors are submitting to a journal with a double blind peer review policy, the Conflict of Interest statement should be anonymized where appropriate.

Editors and reviewers must declare any relationship or activity that could be perceived as potentially interfering with a full and objective evaluation of a manuscript. For more detail on what should be declared by Editors and Reviewers see our Peer Review page.

Funding Sources

Authors must give full details about the funding of any research relevant to their study, including sponsor names and explanations of the roles of these sources in the study design, execution and analysis, and manuscript conception, planning, writing and decision to publish. If the sponsor or funder had no role in any of the above, please state this in the funding statement. Please ensure to include any support that could be perceived as a potential conflict of interest in the Conflict of Interest Statement, in line with the below policy. It is strongly advised to write out the funding body in full and add the grant number in brackets. Multiple grant numbers should be separated by commas and spaces.

Authorship and Contributorship

When submitting a manuscript the names and affiliations of all individuals who are authors of the manuscript must be provided. The affiliation listed for an author in a manuscript must be the affiliation where the author was based when the work described in the manuscript was carried out. When preparing the author list, authors can refer to the ICMJE which provides four criteria for authorship and recommends that all individuals who meet all of these criteria be listed as an author. As outlined by the ICMJE, these authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work but are not intended be to used as a means to disqualify an individual from authorship. Contributors to the study who do not fulfil the criteria for authorship but whose contribution should be recognized should be credited in the Acknowledgement section.

Every manuscript must contain an Author Contribution Statement. In this, the contributions of each person named as an author must be detailed. This statement must contain the full name of each author as it appears in the author list. Note if authors are submitting to a journal with a double blind peer review policy, the Author Contributions statement should be anonymized.

The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is a useful structure to refer to when preparing the Author Contribution Statement. Follow the link to find out more about the 14 contributor roles and their definitions according to CRediT. Example Author Contribution Statement using CRediT roles from Rivera et al., Glomerular Dis 2022. doi: 10.1159/000526868.

“Frederick B. Rivera, MD, and Pia Gabrielle I. Alfonso, MD: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, validation, writing - original draft, and writing - review and editing; Marie Francesca Mapua Ansay, MD: conceptualization, validation, and writing - review and editing; Jem Marie Golbin, MD: data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, validation, writing - original draft, and writing - review and editing; Gerard Francis E. Mangubat, MD; Rajiv Hans Solita Menghrajani, MD; Siena Placino; Marianne Taliño, MD; Deogracias de Luna, MD; Nicolo Cabrera, MD; Carlo Nemesio Trinidad, MD; and Amir Kazory, MD: conceptualization, data curation, methodology, validation, and writing - review and editing”

Group Authorship

For group authorship, the ICMJE recommends that:

"When a large multi-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. All members of the group named as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the final manuscript, and they should be able to take public responsibility for the work and should have full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of other group authors."

When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the submitting author should specify the group name in the manuscript file and enter the information of the group members who can take credit and responsibility for the work as authors in the submission system. The non-author group members should be listed elsewhere in the manuscript, typically in the Acknowledgements.

Data Availability

All journal’s data sharing policy strongly encourages authors to make all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to editors, reviewers and readers without unnecessary restriction wherever possible. Authors are required to provide a Data Availability Statement in their manuscript that details whether data are available and where they can be found. In cases where research data are not publicly available on legal or ethical grounds, this should be clearly stated in the Data Availability Statement along with any conditions for accessing the data. The decision to publish will not be affected by whether or not authors share their research data.

Examples of Data Availability Statements

• The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name e.g “figshare”] at http://doi.org/[doi], reference number [reference number]
• Publicly available datasets were used in this study. These can be found in [repository name e.g “figshare”] at http://doi.org/[doi], reference number [reference number]
• All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article. Further enquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
• All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article and its supplementary material files. Further enquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
• All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article. Further enquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
• The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available due to [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC e.g. their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants] but are available from [e.g. the corresponding author [author initials] OR Data sharing committee [PROVIDE CONTACT DETAILS including email address] upon reasonable request]
• The data in this study was obtained from [third party source] where [RESTRICTIONS/LICENCE] may apply. Datasets may be requested from [source contact information]

Note if authors are submitting to a journal with a double blind peer review policy, the data availability statement should be anonymized where appropriate.

Definition of Research Data

This policy applies to the research data that would be required to verify the results of the research reported in articles. Research data includes data produced by the authors (“primary data”) and data from other sources that are analysed by authors in their study (“secondary data”). Research data includes any recorded factual materials that are used to produce the results in digital and non-digital forms. This includes, but is not limited to, tabular data, code, images, audio, documents, video, maps, raw and/or processed data.

Policy Exceptions

This policy does not require public sharing of quantitative or qualitative data that could identify a research participant unless participants have consented to data release. The policy also does not require public sharing of other sensitive data, such as the locations of endangered species. Alternatives to public sharing of sensitive or personal data include:

• Depositing research data in controlled access repositories
• Anonymizing or deidentifying data before public sharing
• Only sharing metadata about the research data
• Stating the procedures for accessing your research data in the article and managing data access requests from other researchers

Embargoes

Embargoes on data sharing are permitted but should be clearly stated in the data availability statement, including the reason for embargo, date of the end of the embargo period and how and where the data can be accessed following the end of the embargo period. Please note that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely must be made available to editors and reviewers if requested to facilitate the review process.

Data Repositories

The preferred mechanism for sharing research data is via public data repositories. Authors are encouraged to select a data repository with data curation procedures, that issues a persistent identifier, preferably a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and has established a robust preservation plan to ensure the data is preserved in perpetuity. Additionally, we highly encourage researchers to consider the FAIR Data Principles when depositing data. Authors are encouraged to deposit their research data in a repository that has been widely adopted within their research community, suitable repositories per each area and data type can be searched using the FAIRsharing database tool or via Repository Finder.

If no such database is available authors may use a general data repository. Examples of general data repositories include:

Figshare
Dryad
Zenodo
Open Science Framework

If authors are submitting an article to a journal with a double blind peer review policy, they should deposit their data in a repository that allows them to temporarily preserve anonymity such as Figshare (“private sharing link”) or Dryad (“private for peer review”).

Data and Software Citation

The journal encourages authors to cite any publicly available research data or software used in their reference list. References to datasets (data citations) and software code must include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI). Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite (e.g. author(s), title, publisher (repository name), DOI) and follow journal style. References to software, when they appear in the reference list should include the minimum information recommended by the FORCE11 Software Citation Implementation Working Group (e.g. creator(s), software title, publication venue (repository name), date the software was published, identifier (DOI, if available)) and follow journal style.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)

If a Large Language Model (LLM), or other generative AI-based tools, has been used as part of this study or manuscript, the use must be clearly declared in the manuscript Methods section or Acknowledgements section, if the article type does not include a Methods section. Generative AI tools should not be listed as an author of the work, in line with our Authorship and Contributorship policy. Any software used must be cited in the references in line with our software citation policy. Authors are responsible for guaranteeing the accuracy and originality of the content of their manuscript. The manuscript must include detail on how the accuracy of any generative AI-based outputs was verified. Authors are encouraged to include the original input prompts and outputs from the tools used as supplementary material. Failure to comply with the above will be considered a violation of our Editorial Policies and may result in the rejection of a manuscript or post-publication notice, in line with our policy on Misconduct.

Data Licensing

The journal encourages research data to be made available under open licences that permit reuse freely. The journal does not enforce particular licenses for research data, where research data are deposited in third party repositories. The publisher of the journal does not claim copyright for research data.

Reproducibility

Availability of Materials

The Methods section of the article must contain sufficient information to allow a reader to replicate the study. Karger encourages authors to use protocols.io as an open access repository for their detailed methodology. For protocols registered in protocols.io cite the record in your methods section and include the full record and DOI in the references. Karger supports the inclusion of Research Resource Identifiers in the methods section, for further information see the Resource Identification Portal. Supplier and catalogue numbers should be included for any chemicals, reagents, antibodies (etc.) used in the study.

Image Presentation

Where authors include a representative image of an experimental group or outcome it is expected that no image enhancements or adjustments are applied to that image. Where necessary for clarity of interpretation, for example, image cropping or brightness adjustment, this must be applied equally to the whole image, be detailed in the Methods section of the article and the original images must be uploaded as supplementary material.

Images in submitted material may be subjected to investigation using image integrity software. Any concerns raised over inappropriate image modification will be investigated in accordance with COPE guidelines.

Statistics

Karger recommends following The SAMPL Guidelines when reporting statistical analyses. The sample size must be reported for each study in the methods section tables and Figure legends. Where statistical testing for the significance of an effect is carried out, a dedicated section for statistical methodology must be included in the Methods. This section should provide sufficient information that would allow, with access to the full data set, reproduction of the article's results. The choice of statistical tests and any post-hoc tests must be justified in this section. The threshold for significance, alpha, should be defined here as well as how multiple comparisons are adjusted for, where applicable. When reporting the results of statistical tests it is not sufficient to only report the p-value or that the p-value was <0.05. For example, if reporting the result of a Student’s t-test, it is necessary to report the degrees of freedom, t-statistic as well as the exact p-value.

Materials Design Analysis Reporting Framework

Karger Publishers endorses the Materials Design Analysis Reporting (MDAR) Framework for minimum reporting standards in the life sciences and encourages authors to consider all aspects of the MDAR Framework relevant to their study when submitting a manuscript. Authors are encouraged to submit a completed MDAR Checklist with their manuscripts.

Preprints

Preprints may be shared without restriction prior to publication in any Karger journal. The availability of a preprint should be declared in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and included in the reference list. For example, “A preprint version of this article is available on medRxiv [reference number]”. To cite the document, include the Digital Object Identifier and the document type (e.g., preprint, protocol) in the citation. Also list any information about the document version (e.g., most recent date modified), and if relevant, the date the document was cited and follow the journal’s style. Example: Bar DZ, Atkatsh K, Tavarez U, Erdos MR, Gruenbaum Y, Collins FS. Biotinylationby antibody recognition-A novel method for proximity labeling. BioRxiv069187v1 [Preprint]. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/069187. For further information please visit Open Science

Open Science

For further information please visit Open Science.

Misconduct

Karger takes seriously all allegations of potential misconduct and will follow relevant COPE Guidelines. Concerns regarding a published article should be raised to the Research Integrity and Publication Ethics team at publication.ethics[at]karger.com. All efforts will be made to resolve concerns raised about a published article without undue delay and an Erratum or Retraction will be issued, where necessary. An Expression of Concern may be published to inform readers of ongoing matters in line with COPE guidance. In cases of suspected research or publication misconduct, it may be necessary for the Editor or Publisher to contact and share submission details with third parties including authors’ institutions and ethics committees in line with COPE Guidelines. Advice may also be sought directly from COPE.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, whether intentional or not, is not tolerated in Karger’s journals. Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, copying or reusing text, ideas, images or data from other sources without clear attribution, and goes against the principle of academic publishing. Karger may subject any manuscripts to text overlap detection software (Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate) and if the software raises any concerns, there will be a follow-up investigation in line with COPE guidelines. At any stage of peer review, publication, or post-publication, if plagiarism is detected the manuscript may be rejected, corrected or retracted, as appropriate, and we reserve the right to inform the authors' institutions about any plagiarism detected. We expect that our editors and reviewers will inform the journal about any concerns related to plagiarism.

Errata and Retractions

Karger is committed to maintaining the accuracy and integrity of the scientific record. Retractions will be issued where required in accordance with COPE guidelines. Errors in an article that affect the interpretation or conclusion of the article, such as figures or results, or the article metadata, such as the author list, will be corrected through the publication of an Erratum. Please note that the corrections of other errors introduced by authors and missed during the final manuscript proofing stage may be declined. Authors should contact us to report errors in their articles. Please state the journal name, volume, issue and page numbers, the DOI number if the article has not yet been printed, as well as the article title and the nature of the error.

In the case of a publisher error that does not impact the article content, for example, an error in the pagination, the Version of Record will be republished accompanied by a Publisher’s Note to indicate the date and nature of the error that was rectified. A separate Erratum will not be published.

Neutrality

Karger Publishers remains neutral in cases of jurisdictional claims made or implied in published texts, maps or authors’ institutional affiliations.