Editorial Policies

Editorial policies
In brief
Bangladesh Journal of Pain endorses the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) Policy Statement on Geopolitical Intrusion on Editorial Decisions. Bangladesh Journal of Pain also endorses the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.
Submission of a manuscript to a Bangladesh Journal of Pain implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content and that the manuscript conforms to the journal’s policies.

Ethical issue and consent statement Ethics approval: Research involving human participants, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to the Editor on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. In rare cases, the Editor may contact the ethics committee for further information.

Retrospective ethics approval: If a study has not been granted ethics committee approval prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review.

New clinical tools and procedures: Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice to meet the patient’s clinical need. Such justification is not required if the new procedure is already approved for clinical use at the authors’ institution. Authors will be expected to have obtained ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a novel procedure or tool where a clear clinical advantage based on clinical need was not apparent before treatment.

Consent to participate
For all research involving human participants, informed consent to participate in the studyshould be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. For manuscripts reporting studies involving vulnerable groups (for example, unconscious patients) where there is the potential for coercion (for example prisoners) or where consent may not have been fully informed, manuscripts will be considered at the editor’s discretion and may be referred to an internal editorial oversight group for further scrutiny. Consent must be obtained for all forms of personally identifiable data including biomedical, clinical, and biometric data. In case of articles describing human transplantation studies, authors must include a statement declaring that no organs/tissues were obtained from prisoners and must also name the institution(s)/clinic(s)/department(s) via which organs/tissues were obtained. Documentary evidence of consent must be supplied if requested.

Research involving human embryos, gametes, or stem cells: Reports involving human embryos, gametes, stem and other basic science research are beyond the scope and hence will not be considered for peer review or editorial process.

Research involving animal or plant: are also beyond the scope of the journal.

Research in complementary and alternative medicine: should follow the standard guidelines as per original work involving human. Ethical clearance, clinical trial registration number, ethics statement,
appropriate guidelines, biosafety statement etc. The research work must comply with the current
international and national standards for such work (such as the Declaration of Helsinki or relevant Governmental regulations). Appropriate techniques with justification must present during randomization, blinding, using and preparation of placebo or shams procedure etc.

Consent for publication:

For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to an individual person, written informed consent for the publication of these details must be obtained from that person (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18). The consent must be for publication of their details under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (such that they will be freely available on the internet). If the person has died, consent for publication must be obtained from their next of kin. The manuscript must include a statement that written informed consent for publication was obtained. Authors can use consent form from their own institution or region if appropriate. The consent form must state that the details/images/videos will be freely available on the internet and may be seen by the general public. The consent form must be made available to the Editor if requested, and will be treated confidentially. In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required. The final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.
Trial registration
BJPain supports initiatives to improve reporting of clinical trials. This includes prospective registration of clinical trials in suitable publicly available databases. In line with ICMJE guidelines, the journal requires registration of all clinical trials that are reported in manuscripts submitted to its journals. The trial registration number (TRN) and date of registration should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract. The data base registration could be from any sites approved by WHO (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform). Bangladesh Journal of Pain usually does not consider any clinical trial that have been registered retrospectively. However, in case of retrospective registration it may be decided by the editors for final decision but the statement must be present in abstract and also in methods. Similarly, systematic review and meta-analysis need to be registered in PROSPERO data base (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/). The registration number and date of registration should be included as the last line of the manuscript abstract.
Availability of data and materials
Submission of a manuscript to Bangladesh Journal of Pain implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality. However, the journal encourages authors to deposit their data set in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible.

Standards of reporting
BJPain advocates transparent reporting of biomedical and biological research. Following reporting system and checklist must be followed whenever appropriate:
• Randomized controlled trials (CONSORT) and protocols (SPIRIT)
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) and protocols (PRISMA-P)
• Observational studies (STROBE)
• Case reports (CARE)
• Qualitative research (COREQ)
• Diagnostic/prognostic studies (STARD and TRIPOD)

Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest exists if authors or their institutions have financial or personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their actions. Financial relationships are easily identifiable, but conflicts can also occur because of personal relationships, academic competition or intellectual passion. A conflict can be actual or potential, and full disclosure to the Editor is the safest course. Failure to disclose conflicts might lead to publication of a statement as an error or even to retraction. All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘competing interests or conflict to interest’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). All authors are required to provide a signed statement of their conflicts of interest as part of the author statement form.