Ethics

Guidelines
Research submitted to the Journal of Radiation Oncology Informatics (JROI) must comply with internationally-accepted standards for research practice and reporting. Submissions that violate these standards can result in immediate rejection. Issues discovered after publication may lead to a correction, retraction, or expression of concern.

Human Subjects Research
Researchers submitting studies involving human participants must meet the following requirements:

• Obtain prior approval for human subjects research by an institutional review board or an equivalent ethics committee
• Declare compliance with ethical practices upon submission of a manuscript
• Report details on how informed consent for the research was obtained (or explain why consent was not obtained)
• Submit, upon request from the journal, documentation from the review board or ethics committee confirming approval of the research.
• Confirm that an identified individual has provided written consent for the use of that information

Animal Research
• Studies involving animals must be conducted according to internationally-accepted standards.
• Authors must obtain prior approval from their Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee or an equivalent ethics committee.
• The name of the ethics committee, as well as relevant permit numbers, must be provided at submission.

Competing Interests
A competing interest is anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to JROI.
Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person.
Declaring all potential competing interests is a requirement at JROI and is integral to the transparent reporting of research. Failure to declare competing interests can result in immediate rejection of a manuscript. If an undisclosed competing interest comes to light after publication, JROI reserves the right to issue a public notification to the community and/or remove the published manuscript.
Acknowledgement
The JROI ethics guidelines follow very closely the publishing guidelines of plosone.org, which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.