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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 never be altered or falsified in an attempt to attain anonymity. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt.Authors of manuscripts describing experiments involving animals or materials derived from animals must demonstrate that the work was carried out in accordance with the guidelines approved by the authorsʼ institution(s), and this must be stated within the manuscript.Clinical trial registrationA clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human participants to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between an interven-tion and a health outcome. The journal adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) policy on Clinical Trials Registra-tion (http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/clini cal-trials-registration/), which recommends that all clinical trials are registered in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enroll-ment as a condition of consideration for publication. Manuscripts describing clinical trials must include the registration number of the trial and the name of the trial registry.The following items are to be stated in the Methods section: how informed consent was obtained from the study participants (i.e., oral or written), the approval number from the institutional review board or ethics committee, a registration ID for the trial, and the trialʼs start and end dates.Reporting guidelinesThe journal requires authors to follow the EQUATOR Networkʼs Reporting Guidelines (https:// www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/) for health research. Study types include, but are not limited to, randomized trials, observational studies, systematic reviews, case reports, qualita-tive research, diagnostic and prognostic studies, economic evaluations, animal pre-clinical studies and study protocols.Author competing interests and conflicts of interestIn the interests of transparency, the journal requires all authors to declare any competing or conflicts of interest in relation to their submitted manuscript. A conflict of interest exists when there are actual, perceived or potential circumstances that could influence an authorʼs ability to conduct or report research impartially. Potential conflicts include (but are not limited to) competing commer- cial or financial interests, commercial affiliations, consulting roles, or ownership of stock or equity. A Conflicts of Interest statement must be includes in the manuscript (see the ʻManuscript Preparationʼ section below for more details).Authors should list all funding sources for their work in the Funding section of their manuscript.ConfidentialityThe journal maintains the confidentiality of all unpublished manuscripts. By submitting their manuscript to the journal, the authors warrant that they will keep all correspondence about their manuscript (from the Editorial Office, editors and reviewers) strictly confidential.Self-archiving (Green Open Access) policySelf-archiving, also known as Green Open Access, enables authors to deposit a copy of their manu-script in an online repository. JMJ encourages authors of original research manuscripts to upload their article to an institutional or public repository immediately after publication in the journal.653