Research Ethics Policy


Human Research

For all manuscripts reporting data from studies involving human participants, a formal review and approval, or formal review and waiver by an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee is required, and should be described in the Methods section. For investigators who do not have a formal ethics review committee (institutional or regional), the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki must be followed (as revised in Fortaleza 2013), available at: https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/.

For investigations done in humans, the Methods section must state the manner in which informed consent was obtained from the subjects (i.e. oral, or written), and whether participants received a stipend.

Clinical Trial Registry:  When publishing clinical studies, IER aims to comply with the Recommendations of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) on trials registration (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/the-ictrp-search-portal). Therefore, authors are requested to register the clinical trial presented in the manuscript in a public trials registry, and include the trial registration number in the Methods Section.

Data Sharing

According to ICMJE’s data sharing statement policy, the manuscript submitted to IJO meets the following data sharing statements:

Whether individual deidentified  participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared (“undecided” is not an acceptable answer)?

 What data in particular will be shared?

 Whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.)?

 When the data will become available and for how long?

 By what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism)?

Animal Research

If experimental animals were used in the research, IER requires that authors confirm adherence to the ARVO Statement for the Use of Animals in Ophthalmic and Vision Research in the Methods section of their manuscript.