ASN Journal Policies

ASN Policy on Scientific Misconduct Registry, Data Sharing, and Adherence Policies Format and Process Policies
Authorship Policies Declaration Policies Publication Policies

 

ASN Journals and Equality

The ASN family of journals fully supports ASN’s efforts to achieve equality to reduce the adverse impact of racism, especially on health and in health care. ASN journals are working to improve equity in the following ways and will continue to identify other avenues to reduce systemic racism: 

  1. Diversifying the editorial board and addressing difficulties in recruiting board members from diverse populations to better address and reflect diverse populations;
  2. Creating collections of original content highlighting systemic racism and care disparities; and
  3. Soliciting invited articles on:
    • Health care crises around the globe, including a focus on patient voices; and
    • Special series addressing racism in health care, as well as institutional, educational, and professional settings.
  4. Making all articles freely accessible to researchers in developing countries through the Health Inter Network Access to Research Initiative (HINARI)

To help support this important goal, authors, editors, and readers are encouraged to share their ideas about additional opportunities for inclusion with Shari Leventhal, Executive Editor at sleventhal@asn-online.org.

 

ASN Policy on Scientific Misconduct

ASN journals uphold the highest standards of peer review and academic publishing. The work of authors and reviewers contributes to the common aim of understanding the latest advances in basic, clinical, and translational research. In very rare instances, editors receive notification or allegations of misconduct related to studies submitted to ASN journals, and the process for responding to such notification is detailed below.

Concerns raised before publication: If a reviewer or a concerned coauthor raises a question about a manuscript that is undergoing peer review and the Editor-in-Chief agrees, the journal will notify the author(s) and request a response to the reviewer’s concerns. (Such concerns include but are not limited to questions regarding plagiarism, duplicate publication, access to data, and integrity of data or undeclared conflicts of interest.) In most instances these concerns are readily addressed and resolved and involve honest errors or differences in interpretation, rather than any intent to deceive.

If the authors do not respond satisfactorily (or at all) to the concerns raised, or if the Editor-in-Chief is presented with evidence that indicates serious concerns regarding the conduct of the study, then the Editor-in-Chief will notify the Chair of the ASN Publications Committee and will determine a course of action, in part determined by applicable laws, which may include any or all of the following:

  1. Rejecting the manuscript;
  2. Prohibiting future submissions from the authors of the manuscript for a specified period;
  3. Obtaining an advisory opinion from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE);
  4. Reporting their concerns to the authors’ institutions;
  5. Reporting their concerns to the funding agency; and or
  6. Reporting their concerns to the Office of Research Integrity or other authorized investigative agency.

If the matter has been deemed serious enough to warrant the attention of the publications committee, the Chair will keep the ASN President informed of all developments.

Concerns raised after electronic and/or print publication: If questions are raised by a reader regarding a published study and the Editor-in-Chief agrees, then the journal will notify the author(s) and request a response to the stated concerns. (Such concerns include but are not limited to questions regarding plagiarism, duplicate publication, access to data, and integrity of data or undeclared conflicts of interest.) In most instances these concerns are readily resolved and involve honest errors or differences in interpretation, rather than any intent to deceive.

If the authors do not respond satisfactorily (or at all) to the concerns raised, or if the editors are presented with evidence that indicates serious concerns regarding the conduct of the study, then the Editor-in-Chief will notify the Chair of the publications committee and determine a course of action, in part determined by applicable laws, which may include any or all of the following:

  1. Reporting their concerns to the authors’ institutions;
  2. Prohibiting future submissions from the authors of the manuscript for a specified period;
  3. Obtaining an advisory opinion from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE);
  4. Reporting their concerns to the funding agency;
  5. Reporting their concerns to the Office of Research Integrity or other authorized investigative agency;
  6. Publishing a statement of concern in the journal;
  7. Issuing a retraction; and/or
  8. Notifying any other publication involved (in the case of duplicate publication or plagiarism).

If the matter has been deemed serious enough to warrant the attention of the publications committee, the Chair will keep the ASN President informed of all developments. 

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Authorship Policies

Authorship

ASN journals have adopted the criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) in the current update of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Authorship credit should be based on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work pre- and post-publication. The full text of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals is available at http://www.icmje.org/.

For author contributors, ASN journals have adopted this statement from the Annals of Internal Medicine: “When used, professional writing assistance must be acknowledged. If those assisting with the writing do not meet criteria for authorship their contributions should be noted in the acknowledgments.” This information is available at https://www.acpjournals.org/journal/aim/authors#preparing-manuscripts-for-submission.

Study Group Authors

If the author list includes study group(s), submitting authors must provide a list of the participating study group(s) and contributors in the manuscript and the online submission form. The list may contain a collaboration of individuals (e.g., investigators) and/or the name of an organization (e.g., a laboratory, educational institution, corporation, or department) and its members. If the list of group members’ names exceeds 4250 characters, the group members’ names will appear in the Supplemental Material but will be indexed in PubMed.

Authorship Contributions

 ASN strongly encourages submitting authors to include authorship contributions during submission by utilizing Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT). CRediT provides several benefits, including enabling visibility and recognition of the different contributions of researchers. Additional information is available at https://casrai.org/credit/.

ORCID

ASN strongly encourages every author to register for and use an ORCID iD (a persistent digital identifier) that distinguishes each researcher from others with similar names. An ORCID iD connects an author’s affiliations, grants, publications, peer review, and more to ensure recognition for all contributions. Authors can register directly through each journal’s submission system. Additional information is available at https://orcid.org/.

 

Registry, Data Sharing, and Adherence Policies

Requirement for Registration of Clinical Trials

A clinical trial is defined as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. As a condition of consideration for publication, ASN journals require registration in a public trial registry. Trials must be registered before the onset of patient enrollment. This policy applies to any clinical trial. Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g., phase 1 trials) are exempt. ASN journals do not advocate a specific registry, but registration must be with a registry that meets the following minimum criteria:

  1. Accessible to the public at no charge, searchable by standard electronic (internet-based) methods, open to all prospective registrants free of charge or at minimal cost, validation of registered information, and identification of trials with a unique number.
  2. Provide information on the investigator(s), the research question or hypothesis, methodology, intervention and comparisons, eligibility criteria, primary and secondary outcomes measured, date of registration, anticipated or actual start date, anticipated or actual date of last follow-up, target number of subjects, status (anticipated, ongoing, or closed), and funding source(s).

The registration number and the date of registration must be included within the “Methods” section of the manuscript.

Examples of registries that meet the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) approval are listed below. This registries list is current as of October 19, 2020 and is subject to change. ASN journals will also review articles registered elsewhere on a case-by-case basis.

  1. www.anzctr.org.au
  2. www.clinicaltrials.gov
  3. www.ISRCTN.org
  4. www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/index/htm
  5. www.trialregister.nl
  6. https://eudract.ema.europa.eu/ (new registrations after June 20, 2011)

Data Sharing

ASN journals subscribe to the ICMJE Data Sharing policy for clinical trials. For more information, see http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishingand-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html.

All manuscripts that report the results of clinical trials must contain a data sharing statement with the following information:

  1. Whether individual deidentified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared;
  2. What data in particular will be shared;
  3. Whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.);
  4. When the data will become available and for how long; and
  5. By what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism).

All submitted manuscripts that report systems-level analyses (‘-omics’) must deposit data in a publicly accessible archiving site and provide appropriate links and dataset identifiers in the Methods section. Examples include:

  1. For DNA-based assays, such as GWAS (SNP array), whole-exome sequencing (WES), or whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data, including primary genotype data and genome-wide statistics:
  2. For RNA-based assays, such as genome-wide gene expression data (array-based, RNA-seq-based, other), including primary data and summary statistics
  1. For proteomic data: PRoteomics IDEntifications database (PRIDE) (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/archive/).

Animals 

For all animal studies, authors must state adherence to the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals or the equivalent. For the full text of the NIH guidelines, see http://oacu.od.nih.gov/regs/guide/guide.pdf. Authors reporting animal studies are encouraged to refer to the ARRIVE guidelines: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/3rs-resources. For studies that report several experimental series, inclusion of a supplemental table summarizing key features of all experimental series is encouraged. The table should list the series, animals used, the intervention, the sample size, outcome measures, whether there was experimenter or observer blinding, and figure and table numbers for results.

Antibodies 

A description of all antibodies used must be included in the Methods section, providing the source and catalog/clone number for commercial antibodies or a description/reference to a description of the generation of custom antibodies. Steps to verify specificity must be described.

Cell lines 

Authors must describe the source of all cell lines utilized. As appropriate, include information regarding authentication of cell lines.

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Declaration Policies

Institutional Review Board or Ethics Committee Oversight 

For all clinical experimentation, indicate approval by an Institutional Review Board or equivalent Ethics Committee with oversight authority for the protection of human research subjects within the Methods section. If the study is deemed exempt from Institutional Review Board or Ethics Committee approval, provide the reason for exemption.

Declaration of Helsinki 

ASN journals require that authors state in the Methods section adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki. For the full text of the Declaration of Helsinki, see https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/.

Declaration of Istanbul 

The purpose of the Declaration is to combat organ trafficking, transplant tourism, and transplant commercialism and to encourage adoption of effective and ethical transplantation practices around the world. ASN journals require that studies related to clinical organ transplantation, include the following wording in the Methods section: “The clinical and research activities being reported are consistent with the Principles of the Declaration of Istanbul as outlined in the ‘Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism.’” The Declaration of Istanbul is available at https://doi.org/10.2215/CJN.03320708.

Organs from Executed Prisoners 

ASN journals do not accept manuscripts whose data derive from transplants involving organs obtained from executed prisoners.

 

Format and Process Policies

Formatting 

For original research manuscripts, ASN journals will consider initial submissions that are not formatted according to the journal’s specifications. Invited material should adhere to the formatting requirements indicated in the submission invitation. The editors recommend downloading the latest style list from EndNote to ensure proper reference formatting. Additional formatting information is available in “Author Resources” on each journal’s website.

Style Guide 

ASN journals generally follows the AMA style guide, which includes updated nomenclature for kidney function and disease, as developed during KDIGO’s Consensus Conference on Nomenclature for Kidney Function and Disease. See details here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.kint.2020.02.010.

Permission Requests 

Letters granting permission to reprint figures or other copyrighted material must be included from the source publisher for all previously printed or adapted material. Permissions must be uploaded as Supporting Documents when the manuscript is submitted through the journal’s submission system. Any permission requests for a figure or other material from an article published within an ASN journal can be submitted online using the link for the Copyright Clearance Center on the referenced article page. Any questions about permissions can be sent to Shari Leventhal, ASN Executive Editor, at sleventhal@asn-online.org.

Checklists 

ASN journals expect authors to adhere to established guidelines for reporting of preclinical and clinical research. Adapted versions of the checklists noted below are available in “Author Resources” on each journal’s website.

  • CHEERS Checklist for Economic Evaluation of Health Interventions
  • CONSORT Checklist for Clinical Trials*
  • COREQ Checklist for Reporting Qualitative Studies
  • PRISMA Checklist for Systematic Reviews and meta-analysis
  • SQUIRE Checklist (Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence)
  • STROBE Checklist for Observational Studies
  • TRIPOD Checklist for Prediction Model Development and Validation

*Randomized Controlled Trials: ASN journals encourage authors submitting reports of randomized controlled trials to review the CONSORT Statement (http://www.consort-statement.org/). The same considerations apply for secondary analyses of randomized trials that are analyzed by treatment arm. Authors preparing reports of randomized clinical trials are expected to include a CONSORT flow diagram (http://www.consort-statement.org/consort-statement/flow-diagram) as the first figure in the manuscript.

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Publication Policies

Duplicate Submission or Prior Publication 

During submission, authors must state that neither the manuscript nor any significant part of it is under consideration for publication elsewhere or has appeared elsewhere in a manner that could be construed as a duplicate or prior publication of the same, or similar, work. Abstracts for scientific meetings are not considered previous publication but should be cited in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript. Should there be doubt concerning prior publications, the title page and abstract of such material and of related manuscripts submitted for publication at other journals must be included with the submitted manuscript. Posting of un-refereed manuscripts to a community preprint server by the author will not be considered prior publication; see the “Preprints” section below for additional information.

Image Forensics 

ASN journals require that images submitted and published in CJASN, JASN, or Kidney360 be as close as possible to the original images, with minimal processing. Image forensics programs are used to detect selective processing. For guidance on image integrity, ASN journals encourage authors to review Nature Research’s editorial policies: https://www.nature.com/nature-research/editorial-policies/image-integrity. Prior to publication, all images are screened for potential manipulation and any findings are reviewed by the editors. The respective journal will contact authors directly should image manipulation concerns arise.

Plagiarism 

ASN journals utilize Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate, to screen for potential plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) prior to manuscript acceptance. The respective journal will contact authors directly should plagiarism concerns arise.

Preprints 

Posting of un-refereed manuscripts to a community preprint server by the author will not be considered prior publication, provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. During submission, authors must acknowledge preprint server deposition and provide associated accession numbers and/or digital object identifiers (DOIs); and
  2. The preprint server should meet NIH standards for interim research product repositories as available on the NIH website: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-17-050.html.

Kidney360 accepts preprint manuscript submissions directly from medRxiv and bioRxiv. Authors do not have to spend time reloading manuscript files and reentering author information during submission. Authors can visit https://www.medrxiv.org/submit-a-manuscript or https://www.biorxiv.org/submit-a-manuscript to submit their preprint transfers to Kidney360.

Copyright 

ASN journals require authors of all submitted manuscripts to assign copyright of their published contributions. The author copyright license form provides policy details. After submission of an article, each author will receive an email with a link to a copyright form. Each author must sign and date the form and submit it electronically. ASN journals recognize that for US Government employees, work created within the scope of their employ is in the public domain, and copyright transfer is not required for such work.

Embargo 

All information regarding the content and publication date of accepted manuscripts is strictly confidential. Information contained in or about accepted articles may not appear in print or electronic format, nor on the radio, television, or social media, or be released by the news media until after 5:00 PM EST on the day the article appears in the Early Access page on the journal’s website. This policy is not meant to inhibit the presentation of the work to, or its discussion among, other researchers. For information about publication dates for specific articles, contact Christine Feheley at 202-640-4638 or email cfeheley@asn-online.org.

Kidney360 Fees 

The only fee for Kidney360 is a $1,500 Article Processing Charge, which is applied to the following article types: Original Investigation, Innovative Technology and Methodology, and Brief Communication. For more information, see https://kidney360.asnjournals.org/content/accepted-manuscripts#APC%20Table.

Payment 

Within 48 hours of receiving the page proofs, authors of articles in each of the three journals will receive an email from aubilling.djs@sheridan.com with a link to the online billing and reprint ordering system. The author must log into this site to review the publication charge estimate and provide payment information for all applicable charges (purchase order or credit card information). At this stage, the author can also order reprints. For questions regarding the estimate or ordering reprints, contact aubilling.djs@sheridan.com or call 802-882-1655. Pricing includes the purchase of reprints by the author(s) for personal use only. Nonauthors can purchase reprints via Sheridan Content Services by contacting: Contact Marcus Glover by phone at 800-635-7181 (x 8065) or email at marcus.glover@sheridan.com.

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