Ethical Oversight

Description 

This policy applies to research involving humans, identifiable clinical information or medical images, animals, biological materials, ionizing or non-ionizing radiation, hazardous materials, environmental sampling, and dual-use risks. It is particularly relevant to JFU’s coverage of medical physics, nuclear physics, biophysics, environmental physics, and instrumentation. 

Authors remain responsible for compliance with the ethical, safety, institutional, and legal requirements that governed the work. 

Policy 

  1. Research involving humans, identifiable data, or medical images must have prior approval or a documented exemption from an appropriately constituted ethics committee. 
  2. The manuscript must identify the approving body, approval or exemption number where issued, and the consent process. If details cannot be disclosed for a legitimate reason, the basis must be explained to the editor. 
  3. Informed consent for research does not automatically include consent to publish identifiable information. Separate consent for publication is required where a person could reasonably be identified. 
  4. Research involving animals must comply with applicable institutional and national standards and report the approving body, approval number where issued, species, welfare measures, and humane endpoints where relevant. 
  5. Work involving radiation, lasers, biological, chemical, electrical, mechanical, or fieldwork hazards must comply with applicable approvals, permits, safety procedures, and exposure limits. 
  6. Required permits for collection, access, transport, export, or use of environmental samples, biological materials, protected locations, or controlled materials must be disclosed. 
  7. JFU may reject work that it considers unethical or unsafe even when formal approval is reported. Retrospective ethics approval is not normally acceptable. 
  8. Research involving vulnerable populations, confidential clinical data, or sensitive locations requires enhanced protection and minimization of identifiable information. 
  9. Methods with material dual-use or security risks may be referred for specialist assessment, redacted where scientifically defensible, or declined when publication would create disproportionate harm. 

Technical Operational Steps 

  1. Authors complete an ethics, consent, safety, and permits declaration at submission and upload supporting documentation when requested. 
  2. The Journal Office screens the manuscript for human, animal, clinical-image, radiation, environmental, biosafety, and other ethical or safety implications. 
  3. The handling editor checks consistency among the methods, ethics statement, consent statement, permits, and supporting documents before a final decision. 
  4. Missing or inconsistent information is requested from the authors. Review may be paused until the issue is resolved. 
  5. Reviewers are instructed to identify ethical, safety, privacy, consent, and permit concerns without seeking unnecessary personal information. 
  6. The editor may obtain confidential advice from an ethics, safety, clinical, legal, or subject specialist. 
  7. Suspected fabricated, inappropriate, or retrospectively obtained approval is handled under the Misconduct Policy and may be referred to the responsible institution. 
  8. The final article includes all applicable ethics approval, consent, animal welfare, permit, and safety statements. 
  9. Post-publication ethical concerns may lead to correction, expression of concern, retraction, removal in exceptional cases, or notification of the responsible authority.