Research ethics policy
Research Ethics Policy
The Journal of Ayurveda and Holistic Medicine (JAHM) is committed to ensuring that all research published in the journal is conducted in accordance with applicable ethical, institutional, national, and international standards.
JAHM requires authors to demonstrate appropriate ethical oversight for research involving human participants, human data or biological materials, animals, and other research requiring ethical or regulatory approval.
Research Involving Human Participants
Research involving human participants, identifiable human data, or identifiable human biological material must receive prior approval from an appropriately constituted Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC), Institutional Review Board (IRB), or equivalent competent ethics body, as applicable.
Research involving human participants should be conducted in accordance with applicable national ethical requirements and internationally accepted ethical principles, including the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki - https://www.wma.net/policies-
The manuscript should report, as applicable:
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Name of the approving Ethics Committee/IRB;
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Ethics approval/reference number;
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Date of approval, where applicable; and
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Informed-consent procedures.
Where a study has been formally exempted from ethics review, the authors should state the basis for the exemption and provide supporting documentation when requested by the journal.
Informed Consent and Participant Protection
Voluntary and appropriately documented informed consent must be obtained from research participants unless the requirement has been formally waived by an appropriate Ethics Committee/IRB in accordance with applicable regulations.
Additional safeguards are required for research involving children, adolescents, individuals with impaired decision-making capacity, and other vulnerable populations.
Authors must protect participants' privacy, dignity, confidentiality, and personal information throughout the research and publication process.
Separate and appropriate consent for publication must be obtained where an individual could be identified from case descriptions, photographs, clinical images, pedigrees, or other published information.
Clinical Trial Registration
Clinical trials must comply with applicable requirements for prospective registration in a recognized public clinical-trial registry.
Clinical trials conducted in India should comply with applicable Clinical Trials Registry–India (CTRI) https://ctri.nic.in requirements. Trials conducted outside India should be registered with an appropriate recognized public registry, as applicable.
The trial registration number and registry should be reported in the manuscript.
Animal Research
Research involving animals must receive prior approval from an appropriate Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC), Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), or equivalent competent authority, as applicable.
Animal research must comply with applicable institutional and national animal-welfare requirements. Research conducted in India should comply with applicable CCSEA requirements- https://ccsea.gov.in
Researchers should follow the principles of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement (3Rs) and take appropriate measures to minimize unnecessary pain, suffering, distress, and use of animals.
Animal studies submitted to JAHM should be reported in accordance with the applicable ARRIVE guidelines.
Research Data, Privacy and Confidentiality
Research data must be collected, managed, stored, shared, and reported responsibly.
Authors must protect confidential and personally identifiable information and comply with applicable ethical approvals, informed-consent conditions, institutional policies, and data-protection requirements.
Public sharing of participant-level data should occur only when ethically and legally permissible and when appropriate safeguards for privacy and confidentiality are in place.
Ethical Documentation and Journal Oversight
JAHM may request supporting documentation at any stage of editorial assessment, peer review, or post-publication investigation, including:
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Ethics Committee/IRB/IAEC approval documents;
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Informed-consent or consent-for-publication documentation;
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Clinical-trial registration records;
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Study protocols;
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Relevant regulatory approvals; and
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Other documentation necessary to establish ethical compliance.
Failure to demonstrate appropriate ethical approval or compliance may result in rejection of a manuscript or appropriate post-publication action, in accordance with JAHM's publication-ethics policies.
Retrospective ethics approval will not normally be accepted where prior approval was required.
Compliance with JAHM Publication Ethics Policy
This Research Ethics Policy should be read together with the JAHM Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement, which provides detailed requirements concerning human and animal research, informed consent, vulnerable populations, privacy and confidentiality, clinical-trial registration, research integrity, authorship, conflicts of interest, data integrity, and publication misconduct.
In cases not specifically addressed in this policy, JAHM will apply relevant institutional, national, and internationally accepted ethical standards and the journal's established publication-ethics procedures.
