Research involving humans, identifiable human material or data must comply with applicable law and accepted ethical principles and must have approval, or a documented exemption, from an appropriately constituted ethics committee or institutional review board. The manuscript must name the body and provide the approval reference and date where available.
Prospective informed consent must be obtained when required. Vulnerable populations require appropriate safeguards. The journal may request protocols, consent forms or ethics documentation and may reject work where ethical approval is absent, retrospective approval is inappropriate, or participant protections are inadequate.
Animal research must have appropriate institutional approval and comply with relevant welfare standards. Authors should report measures to minimize suffering, justify species and sample size, and follow applicable reporting guidance such as ARRIVE.
Clinical case reports
JPSIM publishes clinical case reports that add to clinical knowledge. Because a case report describes an individual patient, the following rules apply in addition to the requirements above.
Consent for publication
Written informed consent for publication must be obtained from the patient before submission. Where the patient is a child, lacks capacity, or has died, consent must be obtained from a parent, legal guardian or next of kin. The consent should cover publication of the case description and of any images, in print and online, under the journal's open-access licence (CC BY 4.0), which allows anyone to read and reuse the article.
Wherever possible, the patient (or their representative) should be offered the opportunity to read the manuscript before submission. The signed consent form must be kept by the authors and must be provided to the journal on request. It is not published. The manuscript must include a statement such as: "Written informed consent was obtained from the patient (or parent/guardian/next of kin) for publication of this case report and any accompanying images."
If consent cannot be obtained, for example because the patient cannot be traced or has died with no identifiable relatives, the authors must explain this in the cover letter. The editor decides whether the report can be considered, and consent is never waived for a report that contains identifying images or details.
Anonymisation and patient privacy
Authors must remove information that could identify the patient. This includes names, initials, hospital or registration numbers, dates of birth, addresses, telephone numbers, and exact dates of admission, procedures or follow-up (use relative times, such as "day 3" or "six months later", instead). Ages, occupations and places should be given only as far as they are clinically relevant. Photographs, scans and other images must not show faces, eyes, name bands, tattoos or other recognisable features unless the patient has given specific written consent for that image. Image metadata and file names must also be checked.
Anonymisation does not replace consent: even with all identifiers removed, a patient may still recognise or be recognised from a distinctive case. Consent is therefore required for all case reports.
Ethics approval
Most case reports need no formal ethics committee approval, but the manuscript should say whether approval was sought or waived, and which body made that decision, according to the policy of the authors' institution. Reports of more than a small number of patients are case series and must meet the requirements for human research stated above.
Reporting guideline (CARE)
Case reports must follow the CARE (CAse REport) guidelines. Authors should complete the CARE checklist and structure the report to include the patient information, clinical findings, timeline, diagnostic assessment, therapeutic intervention, follow-up and outcomes, and the patient's perspective where available. A short statement of what the report adds to the literature (the learning point) is expected.
Editorial handling
Editors and reviewers will check that consent and anonymisation requirements have been met. The journal may return, or decline to consider, a case report that lacks a consent statement, contains identifiable details, or does not follow the CARE structure. Concerns about the consent or privacy of a published case report should be sent to editor@psimj.com and will be handled under the journal's Publication Ethics policy.