Peer Academics publishes research involving people, personal data, human material, and animals only where it was approved before it began and conducted to recognized ethical standards. The journal does not grant ethics approval, cannot approve research retrospectively, and will not publish work that should have been reviewed and was not.
When a declaration is required
An ethics declaration is required — and the manuscript is returned before review without one — where the research involved:
- human participants, including interviews, surveys, questionnaires, experiments, observation, ethnographic fieldwork, and educational or workplace interventions;
- personal data about identifiable people, whether collected directly or obtained from records, registries, administrative data, platforms, or archives;
- human tissue, biological samples, or genetic data;
- live vertebrates or cephalopods, in the laboratory, on farms, or in the field;
- vulnerable participants — children, people who cannot consent for themselves, patients, prisoners, refugees and migrants, employees, or students taught by the researcher — which the editor examines with particular care.
What to state
In the Ethics approval and consent declaration described in Manuscript Structure, give the full name of the approving committee or authority, the institution it belongs to, the approval or protocol reference number, and the date of approval, together with how consent was obtained. Report the same facts in the Methods. Because review is double-anonymous, the committee name and reference number are removed from the anonymous manuscript and written instead as approval "by the research ethics committee of the authors' institution (details withheld for anonymous review)"; the full text goes on the title page. See the Author Guidelines.
Approval must predate data collection. Where you consider that approval was not required, do not simply write "not applicable": state who decided that, on what basis — the national law, institutional rule, or exemption category relied on — and, where a committee issued the exemption, its reference. In disciplines that have no formal committee for the work in question, including much humanities and legal scholarship, say so plainly and describe how ethical standards were assured: consent, anonymization, data protection measures, archival access conditions, and the professional code of conduct you followed.
Human participants
- Research with human participants must conform to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association, as most recently revised, and to the law of the country where the research was carried out.
- Informed consent is required from every participant or their legally authorized representative; the rules are set out in Informed Consent. Where a committee waived consent, state that the waiver was granted, by whom, and why.
- Personal data must be handled lawfully. The journal is governed by Romanian law and by Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR); do not submit personal data that is not necessary to the article, and see Research Data before depositing anything.
- Clinical trials must have been registered prospectively, before the first participant was enrolled, in a publicly accessible registry. Give the registry name, the registration number, and the date in the abstract and in the Methods. Retrospective registration must be disclosed and explained; the editor decides whether the trial can be considered.
- The editor may ask for the relevant reporting checklist for your design.
Animal research
- Work on animals must have been approved by the competent institutional body and, where the law requires it, licensed by the national authority. State the approving body, the reference number, and the licensing authority.
- Report compliance with the applicable national legislation and, for research in the European Union, with Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes.
- Report the study in accordance with the ARRIVE guidelines (version 2.0). The editor may ask for the completed checklist at any stage.
- Show how replacement, reduction, and refinement were applied, and describe species and strain, number and sex of animals, source, housing and husbandry, anesthesia and analgesia, humane endpoints, and the method of euthanasia.
- Field research must state the permits obtained, including permits for protected species and for access to protected or private land, and how disturbance was minimized.
Verification and consequences
An editor or a reviewer may ask you to produce the approval letter, the license, or the committee's decision. Supply it, redacted of personal data, within the period the editor sets. If you cannot, or if the declaration turns out to be inaccurate, the editor may decline the manuscript. Where the work has already been published, the matter is handled under Publication Ethics and may lead to an expression of concern, a correction, or a retraction, and to notification of the authors' institution. Serious concerns are decided by the Editor-in-Chief, who may take independent advice.
If you are unsure whether your study needs approval, resolve it with your institution before you submit, not after. Questions about the journal's requirements go to [email protected].