The research described in papers submitted to any of the MSP publications that involve the use of human beings, including healthy volunteers, should be conducted according to high standards of safety and ethics. We expect that all studies adhere to the requirements of the U.S. Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (45 CFR, Part 46), and support the general ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

In particular, protocols involving human subject studies must be reviewed and approved by a research ethics committee (IRB) prior to starting the study, and participants must provide written informed consent.These two statements must be affirmed in the Methods section of the manuscript. Clinical trials must be registered in an English language public database. The clinical trial number and registry site must be reported in the Methods section of the manuscript. Manuscripts that report on clinical trials may not be sent out for peer review and will not be published until registry information is provided.

A statement of protocol involving animals research should be approved from an IACUC or equivalent must be included in the Methods section of the paper. The description of animal procedures in the manuscript should be sufficient to permit readers to evaluate the quality of the data presented and to replicate the experiments, if needed. Studies involving surgeries or other painful procedures must include an explanation of steps taken to mitigate pain and distress, including the types and dosage of anesthetics and post-operative analgesics that were used. Curarizing agents are not anesthetics; if these were used, evidence must be provided that anesthesia of suitable grade and duration was employed. Authors may want to review guidelines provided by the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research (National Academy of Sciences).

Editors/Associate Editors reserve the right to judge the appropriateness of the use of animals and humans in experiments submitted for publication and will refuse papers in which evidence of the adherence to these principles is not apparent. Differences of opinion will be adjudicated by the Publications Committee.