Q: What are the submission guidelines regarding experimental work?
I received this comment from the journal editor: "Can you indicate whether all experimental work carried out for this submission has followed all necessary guidelines? Please specify details." How should I reply to this? What does "guidelines" stand for?
It is difficult to answer this question without knowing your field of study, the topic of your paper, and the kind of experiments you have conducted. Basically, you might be expected to give a declaration that all the experimental work was carried out following the necessary guidelines. Here are few things you could do:
• First of all, go through the “Instructions for authors” page of the journal very carefully. This page will definitely mention all the guidelines that authors need to follow in their experimental work.
• On the journal website, check if there is a separate section on “guidelines for submission.”
• If your experiment uses animals, you would be expected to follow a specific set of regulations. In many cases, different countries have different government policies on animal testing.
• In case you have conducted a clinical trial, you will have to declare that your experiments followed the ethical requirements for clinical trials.
• Besides, you will have to ensure that you protect the rights and respect the confidentiality of enrolled subjects and disclose conflicts of interest if any.
You can go through this article to understand some of the best practices in the field of academic publishing.
This content belongs to the Journal submission & peer review Stage