Conflict of Interest, Human and Animal Rights Policy



1. Conflict of Interest

Journal for Veterinary Medicine, Biotechnology and Biosafety requires authors to declare all competing interests related to their work. All submitted manuscripts must include a "Competing Interests" section at the end of the manuscript, listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). If the authors have no competing interests, the statement should read: "The authors declare that they have no competing interests."

Editors may request additional information regarding competing interests. Editors and reviewers must also declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process if such interests exist.

Competing interests can be financial or non-financial. A competing interest exists when the interpretation of data or presentation of information by authors may be influenced by their personal or financial relationships with other people or organizations. Authors must disclose any financial competing interests, as well as any non-financial competing interests that might cause them embarrassment if they become public after the article's publication.

Authors from commercial organizations sponsoring clinical trials must declare them as competing interests upon submission. They must also follow the Good Publication Practice (GPP) guidelines for pharmaceutical companies, designed to ensure that publications are produced in a responsible and ethical manner. These recommendations also apply to any companies or individuals working on industry-funded publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations (CROs), and communications companies.


2. Human and Animal Rights

All research must be conducted within an appropriate ethical framework. If it is suspected that the work was not conducted within such a framework, editors may reject the manuscript and/or contact the author's(s') ethics committee. In rare cases, if the editor has serious concerns about the ethics of the research, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained.

Research involving humans, human materials, or human data must be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must be approved by an appropriate ethics committee. Submitted research must be approved by an ethics/bioethics committee.

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting (e.g., as a technical advance or case report) must provide a clear justification in the manuscript as to why the new procedure or tool is considered more appropriate than standard clinical practice for the patient's clinical needs. Such justification is not required if the new procedure is already approved for clinical use at the authors' institution. Authors are expected to obtain ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a new procedure or tool, unless a clear clinical benefit based on clinical need was evident prior to treatment.


3. Informed Consent

All individuals have individual rights that cannot be violated. For example, individual research participants have the right to decide what happens to identifiable personal data collected, what they said during an study or interview, and any photograph taken. This is especially true for images of vulnerable people or the use of images in sensitive contexts. In many cases, authors must obtain written consent to use images.

Personal data of research participants should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or genetic profiles, except where this information is necessary for scientific purposes and the participant has given written informed consent for publication. In some cases, full anonymity is difficult to achieve; a detailed description of individual participants may lead to the disclosure of their identity.

Informed consent for publication should be obtained if there is any doubt. Masking the eye area in photographs of participants is insufficient protection of anonymity. Exceptions where consent is not required: images such as X-rays, laparoscopic images, ultrasound images, brain scans, or pathology specimens (provided there is no identifying information).


4. Experimental Research on Animals

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines and must be approved by the appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing compliance with guidelines (e.g., Directive 2010/63/EU in Europe) must be included in the manuscript.

Field studies and other non-experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international instructions. We recommend that authors follow the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the IUCN Policy Statement.

For livestock trial studies, authors are encouraged to follow the regulations of the State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection.


5. Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is the unethical act of copying someone's previous ideas, processes, results, or words without clear attribution to the author and source. Self-plagiarism occurs when an author uses a significant portion of their own previously published work without appropriate citation.

Journal for Veterinary Medicine, Biotechnology and Biosafety is categorically against any form of plagiarism. All manuscripts are checked using Turnitin software. Manuscripts in which plagiarism is detected at the initial stages are rejected outright.

Types of Plagiarism:

  • Full Plagiarism: previously published content without any changes to the text.
  • Partial Plagiarism: a mixture of several different sources with paraphrasing.
  • Self-plagiarism: reuse of one's own previously published research.

6. Actions in Case of Plagiarism Detection

If plagiarism is detected in an article, the journal will establish a Fact-Checking Commission (FCC). The editorial office may take the following measures:

  1. Informing the management of the institution or organization to which the author(s) belong(s).
  2. Removing the PDF copy of the manuscript from the website and disabling all links. The term "Plagiarism" is added to the title.
  3. Blocking the author's account and banning them from publishing for a period of 5 years or permanently.
  4. Placing the list of violating authors on the journal's website.