Informed Consent Policy

The right of an individual is one of the main rights. It also includes the right to access personal data that we disclose while participating in a survey or trial, or the right of an individual to their image, and thus to the photographs that contain this image. This is particularly important for patients (especially minors). Authors of articles have to obtain written consent for the publication of such sensitive data.

 

Informed Consent to Publication

Patients enjoy an inalienable right to privacy. Identifying information, including names, initials, medical history numbers should not be published in written reports, photographs/figures unless such information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (their parent or guardian) has expressed an informed consent to its publication. No formal consent is required for the use of fully anonymised images that cannot be the basis for the identification of a specific person – e.g. X-ray, ultrasound, laparoscopic and endoscopic images, pathology slides, and recordings of organ functions, provided that they do not contain any identification and are not accompanied by text that enables to identify the given person.

Informed consent requires for this purpose that a patient identifiable via the data provided in the manuscript be shown the respective manuscript. Authors are obliged to notify the patients that information that might enable their identification will be available online and that the article may be used, in whole or in part, also in other publications of Medical Communications Sp. z o.o. (in print, in digital formats and any other forms) or of other Publishers – licensees, including in foreign language editions.

A patient’s written consent must be archived either with the journal and/or the authors as stipulated by local regulations of law. It is the general practice in journals published by Medical Communications Sp. z o.o. that written consents should be stored by the authors, and copies of such consents or proofs that they were obtained should be submitted to the publisher on request.

Masking a patient’s eye region in a photograph is deemed insufficient to protect their identity. Authors covering any physical features of a patient that could render them identifiable are bound to ensure the Editors that such alterations do not affect scientific results. In case where a written consent has been obtained, this should be indicated in the published article (usually in the Materials and methods sub-section).