The Journal is committed to promoting transparency, reproducibility, and responsible research practices. In accordance with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the FAIR Data Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), authors are responsible for ensuring the accuracy, integrity, and proper management of all data underlying their published research.
Authors must ensure that the collection, storage, analysis, and reporting of research data comply with applicable ethical standards, legal requirements, institutional policies, and data protection regulations, including requirements related to privacy, confidentiality, and informed consent, where applicable.
The Journal encourages authors to make research data openly available whenever possible by depositing datasets in appropriate, trusted, and publicly accessible repositories. Authors should provide a Data Availability Statement within their manuscript indicating whether the underlying data are available and, if so, where and how they can be accessed.
Where data cannot be shared due to ethical, legal, contractual, privacy, confidentiality, or other legitimate restrictions, authors must clearly state the reasons for the restriction in the Data Availability Statement and, where feasible, describe the conditions under which access may be granted.
The Editors reserve the right to request access to the underlying data, supporting documentation, or other research materials during the peer-review process or after publication to verify the validity, integrity, and reproducibility of the reported findings. Authors are expected to retain original research data and related records for a reasonable period following publication and to make them available upon justified request, subject to applicable legal and ethical constraints.
Failure to comply with the Journal’s requirements regarding data integrity, availability, or transparency may result in editorial actions, including manuscript rejection, publication of a correction or expression of concern, article retraction, or other measures deemed appropriate by the Editors.