67-4

75/90

sibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-con-tributors.html)ʼ. The ICMJE recommends that authorship is based on four criteria: making a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpre-tation of data for the work; drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; approving the final version of the manu-script for publication; and agreeing to be held accountable for all aspects of the work. Any contrib-utor who has met all four criteria should be an author on the manuscript. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria should not be authors of the manuscript but may be included in the Acknowl-edgements section instead.Image integrityAuthors may digitally manipulate or process images, but only if the adjustments are kept to a minimum, are applied to the entire image, meet community standards, and are clearly described in the manuscript. All images in a manuscript must accurately reflect the original data on which they are based. Authors must not move, remove, add or enhance individual parts of an image. The editors reserve the right to request original, unprocessed images from the authors. Failure to provide requested images may result in a manuscript being rejected or retracted.Reproducing copyrighted materialIf a manuscript includes material that is not under the authorsʼ own copyright, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) to reproduce it.If a manuscript includes previously published material, the authors must obtain permission from the copyright owners and the publisher of the orig-inal work to reproduce it. The authors must cite the original work in their manuscript.Copies of all reproduction permissions must be included with the manuscript when it is first submitted.Availability of data and materialsAuthors must disclose the source of publicly avail-able data and materials, such as public repositories or commercial manufacturers, by including acces-sion numbers or company details in their manu-script, as appropriate.Authors may make their own data and materials available by linking from their manuscript to rele-vant community-recognized public databases or digital repositories. All data sets must be made available in full to the editors and reviewers during the peer review process, and must be made publicly available by the date of publication. Authors commit to preserving their data sets for at least three years from the date of publication in the journal.The journal encourages authors to grant reason-able requests from colleagues to share any data, materials and experimental protocols described in their manuscript.Animal/human experimentationAuthors of manuscripts describing experiments involving humans or materials derived from humans must demonstrate that the work was carried out in accordance with the principles embodied in the World Medical Associationʼs (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma. net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-eth ical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-hu man-subjects/), its revisions, and any guidelines approved by the authorsʼ institutions. For Japanese research institutions, the applicable statute is the Ministry of the Environmentʼs notification ʻCriteria for the Care and Keeping of Laboratory Animals and Alleviation of their Sufferingʼ. Where relevant, the authors must include a statement in their manuscript that describes the procedures for obtaining informed consent from participants regarding participation in the research and publica-tion of the research.Authors should respect the privacy of patients and their families. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential, but patient data should 395