Ethics

1.Multiple Submission: In order to support the scientific ethics, and maintain the standard of the journal and the interests of readers, multiple submission or redundant publishing is strictly prohibited. If the article has been published in full-text (including journal papers, dissertations, conference papers), it cannot be submitted to this journal (including published in other languages, or the main data, figures or tables are the same as another article). If the article has been published in non-public materials or presented on academic conferences, it would not be regarded as multiple submission, but the author must make it clear when submitting.
2.Re-submission: Manuscripts are under processing if authors do not receive notice from the editorial office after submission. Authors must contact the responsible editor in advance if they want to re-submit the article to another journal. Withdrawal is not allowed if the manuscript is in the process of final review.
3.Plagiarism and Punishment: For all manuscripts, the editorial office will conduct academic ethics review (including repetition test and multiple submission test). Manuscripts shall be tested by the plagiarism detection system developed by CNKI and Wanfang upon receiving, after revision and before publication. If the repetition rate exceeds 8% or there is multiple submission (if there are duplicate check records from another journal within 1 month), the manuscript will be rejected. Once multiple submission is verified, the journal will publish an announcement and reject any submission from the first author of the article within 2 years. Once plagiarism is verified, the journal will reject the manuscript, publish an announcement and notify the authors’ institute. The editorial office will no longer accept submissions by the first author and the corresponding author.
4.Authorship: The order of authors shall be determined before submission and shall not be changed thereafter. The change of order could be made only if a consent letter from the author's institute is provided. An author should be a person who: (1) participates in topic selection, study design or data analysis and interpretation; (2) drafts or revises key theories or other main content of the article; (3) reviews and revises the paper according to comments from editors, discusses it in academic community, and finally agrees on publishing. All the three conditions must be met for the first author and the corresponding author. Those who only participate in obtaining funds, collecting data, or only managing the research team cannot be named as authors. At least one author should be responsible for each main conclusion in the article. For a collective piece of work, one person should be responsible for the paper. Other contributors to the paper may be included in acknowledgement. If there is any non-Chinese citizen among authors, a letter of consent for publishing from the author should be submitted. If the corresponding author of the manuscript is not the first author, it should be specially noted. Generally, there should be only one corresponding author which is collectively determined. Members of collaboration group should be listed at the end of the text before references. Authors should specify their contribution in the Authors Contribution Form and submit it along with the manuscript.
5.Recommendation: Please provide a Recommendation Letter from the authors’ institute, which should include the comments on the manuscript, and to certify that there is no multiple submission, no confidentiality, and no dispute of authorship.
6.Medical Ethics: The study must comply with common principles of medical ethics. When research participants are humans, the author should explain whether its procedure complied with the ethical standards formulated by relevant committee (institutional, regional or national) responsible for human trials. The approval document of the committee should be submitted. Consent letter from research participants or their relatives must be obtained but not submitted to the editorial office. When reporting animal experiments, the study should comply with guidelines published by relevant committee on animal rights, and the approval document should be submitted.
7.Trial Registration: Clinical trials must include the Universal Trial Number (UTN) obtained from one of the Primary Registries in the WHO Registry Network. The UTN shall be included in the abstract or the main body of the full text.
8.Conflict of Interests: All authors must disclose all potential conflicts of interest, i.e., when the financing / personal status / affiliation of the authors (or the authors' organization / employer) may affect the authors' decision, work or manuscript. When a product is involved, the author should also disclose whether there is a conflict of interest against competitive products. Authors should also submit Statement of Competing Interests along with the manuscript.