ASN Journal Policies

Disclosure and Declaration Policies Publication Policies
Data Sharing Policies ASN Policy on Scientific Misconduct

   

Disclosure and Declaration Policies

Authors and Contributors

With regard to authorship credit, 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; AND
  2. drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  3. final approval of the version to be published.”

Note the full text of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

In addition, with regard to contributors, ASN journals have adopted the following statement of editorial policy from the Information for Authors of the Annals of Internal Medicine:

“Medical writers and industry employees can be legitimate contributors, and their roles, affiliations, and potential conflicts of interest should be described when submitting manuscripts. These writers should receive acknowledgment on the byline or in the Acknowledgments section in accord[ance] with the degree to which they contributed to the work reported in the manuscript. The Editors consider failure to acknowledge these contributors ghostwriting, and ghostwriting is unacceptable.”

Letters of Permission to Reprint

Letters granting permission to reprint must be included from the publisher and author of all previously printed or adapted material. They should be uploaded during the submission process.

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

For all clinical experimentation described in the manuscript, Kidney360 requires that authors state in the Methods section their adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki. A statement that informed consent was obtained must also appear in the manuscript. Also specify the name of the institutional review board or equivalent that approved the study. Find the full text of the Declaration of Helsinki here.

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. The Declaration of Istanbul is available here. If this study is related to clinical organ transplantation, please include the following wording in the Methods section of the manuscript:

“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’.”

Animal Experimentation

For all animal experimentation described in the manuscript, Kidney360 requires that authors state in the Methods section their adherence to the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals or the equivalent. Find the full text of these NIH guidelines here. 

Requirement for Registration of Clinical Trials

As a condition of consideration for publication, Kidney360 requires registration in a public trials’ registry. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrollment. This policy applies to any clinical trial starting enrollment after January 1, 2006. For trials that began enrollment before this date, Kidney360 requires that they had been registered by April 1, 2006. We define a clinical trial 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.

Studies designed for other purposes, such as to study pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g., phase 1 trials) are exempt.

We do not advocate one particular registry, but registration must be with a registry that meets the following minimum criteria:

  • 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
  • identification of trials with a unique number

An acceptable registry also includes 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 should be included within the Methods section of your manuscript submission.

  

Data Sharing Policies

Data Sharing

Datasets from systems-level analyses need to be deposited in appropriate publicly accessible archiving sites. Examples such as genomics, metabolomics and proteomics are provided here.

  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: European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA), The Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP);
  2. For RNA-based assays, such as genome-wide gene expression data (array-based, RNA-seq-based, other), including primary data and summary statistics: European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO);
  3. For proteomic data: PRoteomics IDEntifications database (PRIDE).

Access to included datasets should be made available to reviewers at the time of first submission. Appropriate links and dataset identifiers should be specified in the Methods section in the main text of the manuscript.

Cell lines

Authors must describe the source of all cell lines utilized. Authors are also encouraged to include information regarding authentication of cell lines and testing for mycoplasma contamination.

Antibodies

A description of all antibodies used should be included in the Methods, 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 should be described.

Data Sharing Requirements for Clinical Trials

Kidney360 follows the guidance from ICMJE for data sharing and will require the following as conditions of consideration for publication of a clinical trial report:

  1. As of 1 July 2018 manuscripts submitted to Kidney360 that report the results of clinical trials must contain a data sharing statement as described below.
  2. Clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after 1 January 2019 must include a data sharing plan in the trial's registration. The ICMJE's policy regarding trial registration is explained here. If the data sharing plan changes after registration this should be reflected in the statement submitted and published with the manuscript and updated in the registry record.

Data sharing statements must indicate the following:

  • whether individual deidentified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared
  • what data in particular will be shared
  • whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.)
  • when the data will become available and for how long
  • by what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism)

 

Publication Policies

Embargo Policy

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, on radio or television, or in electronic form or be released by the news media until after 5 p.m. ET on the day the article appears in the Early Access page on the Kidney360 website or on the day of issue publication, whichever comes first. 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 cfeheley@asn-online.org. 

Transfer of Copyright

ASN requires authors of submitted papers to assign to ASN copyright of their published contributions. Kidney360’s author copyright license form provides details of the policy. This is done through eJournalPress and will guarantee that each author understands and consents to our publication policy. This completed form is required by every author prior to manuscript acceptance. If a coauthor is unable to complete the form due to extenuating circumstances, please email vramsey@kidney360.org.

Duplicate Submission/Redundant Publication

Manuscripts submitted to Kidney360 nor any significant part of it may be under consideration for publication elsewhere or have appeared elsewhere in a manner that could be construed as a prior or duplicate publication. Abstracts for scientific meetings are not considered previous publication but should be cited in the Acknowledgments section. If a manuscript with related content (e.g. from the same study with identical primary exposure and/or outcome) is under consideration for publication elsewhere, has been published, or is available elsewhere, please clarify this in a cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief during initial submission include related materials during your file upload. Should there be doubt concerning such previous publications, all related manuscripts submitted for publication at other journals should be included with the submitted paper.

Preprint Policy

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 any associated accession numbers or digital object identifiers (DOIs);
  2. Versions of a manuscript that have been altered as a result of the peer review process may not be deposited;
  3. The preprint version cannot be indexed (e.g.,in MEDLINE or PubMed);
  4. On publication, authors are responsible for updating the archived preprint with a DOI and link to the published version of the article.
  5. The preprint server should meet NIH standards for interim research product repositories as available here.

Letters to the Editor

Kidney360 does not publish “letters to the editor”. However, the editors take all inquiries seriously and always request a detailed response from the authors. The editors will publish a correction as appropriate. Comments and concerns should be emailed to Virginia Ramsey, Kidney360 Managing Editor at vramsey@kidney360.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 our 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 our process for responding to such notification is detailed in the “ASN Policy on Scientific Misconduct”.