Studies using patients or other volunteers require their informed consent and the approval of a relevant ethics committee. The existence of these documents must be noted in the article and referred to in the text of the study. If the authors want this documentation to be part of the article, they must provide the following at the request of the journal: the consent of the patients or volunteers (or their legal representatives) with the publication of photographic documentation or consent with the printing of materials contained in other studies, textbooks or periodicals. These consents must be in accordance with the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR, 2016/679) and with legislation in the country of the author of the article. These signed consents do not have to be sent to the editors of the Ortodoncie journal; however, they must be made available by the author on request. If informed patient consents are not available, all documentation must be removed from the article before submitting it to the Ortodoncie journal.
Author’s responsibilities
- It is the duty of the author to inform, in advance, patients (or their legal representatives), whose documentation the author plans to use for scientific purposes or for the purposes of publication, for what purpose the documentation is obtained, in which form, and where and when it will be used.
- The author must obtain written consent of patients (or their legal representatives) to publication if the article includes their photographic or any other documentation containing their personal data. If the patient or legal representative does not agree with the publication of the documentation, it must not be used in the article, even if the photographs are anonymised. It is also necessary to ensure that any photographic documentation is properly maintained, is of sufficient quality and does not reduce the dignity of patients in any way. Authors should use photographic documentation only directly related to the subject of research, which is necessary to illustrate the problem or to understand the study.
- If the patient or legal representative has any conditions for allowing publication, for example, the anonymisation of photographs, the authors must ensure this is arranged in such a way that it does not jeopardise the informative value of the photographs in terms of their relevance to the article.
- The documentation must not include a patient’s full name, initials, health insurance or identity card numbers, date of birth or other data that could make identification possible.
- Tables, graphs or pictorial documentation that is part of material already published elsewhere (studies in journals, textbooks, etc.) must be supported by written consent to their reproduction by the owner of the rights to these materials (journal, publisher, etc.).
- These consents must be provided by the author to the Ortodoncie journal upon request.
· Contrariwise, written consent is not required when using documentation from which individuals cannot be identified, such as X-rays, CT slides, or histological images, unless they contain labels identifying the patient.
