Ethical issues
Authorship and contributorship
Authorship should be based on the criteria defined by the International Committee ofMedical Journal Editors recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/icmjerecommendations.pdf).

Complaints and appeals
The Editorial Board (EB) will discuss in detail all the complaints and appeals on the decisionof rejection of a submitted manuscript or any concerns or allegations regarding misconduct,
and will decide accordingly. An independent panel of international experts, including
renowned journal editors and directors of academic departments, may be consulted if theseissues arise.

Conflict of interest - competing interests
It is the authors' responsibility to fully disclose in the cover letter any financial interests(shareholding or employment by industry, etc.) relative to the work under consideration.
Any conflict should be stated in the manuscript before the Reference section. Authors
should acknowledge any source of funding provided for the submitted subject matter (i.e.
grants, financial support for presentations at meetings, etc). For clinical trials, theregistration number, if available, should be included. Authors should state that thesubmitted manuscript has not been previously published and is not currently underconsideration by another journal. Previous publication of an abstract as an oral presentationor scientific exhibit, either in print or electronically, does not preclude submission of an
original article for publication. Any potential overlap with prior publications should be clearlystated by the authors to avoid redundant publications. Advertisements will be kept out of
the main text body of the journal and it is the Editor's responsibility that the editorial
decisions will not be influenced by advertisers and sponsors. Special issues follow theroutine editorial process and are by no means influenced by advertisers. The EB retains theright to refuse any advertisement for any reason.

Data sharing and communication
The EB may permit the use of figures or text for scientific reasons. Audits of rejection rates,
review of completion time and other data, such as the impact factor of the journal, will beregularly published. Premature publication in the mass or social media is not advised until
the article has appeared electronically in public.

Patient data
It is the authors’ responsibility to protect patient anonymity. All identifying data (name,identification numbers, initials) must be removed from text, images and tables. If it ismandatory for a patient’s face to be included in the manuscript, the eyes should be
sufficiently masked. If there is a possibility that a patient may be identified from a
photograph or relevant legend and text, the patient’s written consent should be submitted.

Research ethics and compliance
The HJR follows the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors(www.icmje.org). It is the authors’ responsibility to confirm that any experimental
investigation on human subjects reported in a submitted manuscript has been performed
with the subjects' informed consent and following the approval of the appropriate
institution review board. For prospective clinical studies with human subjects, the authors
are required to confirm that both an appropriate institution review board approval andinformed consent have been obtained. For retrospective clinical studies, the authors arerequired to confirm than an institution review board waiver of informed consent has beenobtained. For clinical studies involving human subjects with no access to ethics review
committees, the authors should confirm that they followed the principles outlined in theHelsinki Declaration (World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: ethical principles for
medical research involving human subjects. JAMA 2013; 310(20): 2191-2194). Authors may
be asked to document the above at any time point.
Prospective studies with human subjects are required to provide both an appropriate
institution review board approval and informed consent. Retrospective studies are required
to provide an institution review board waiver of informed consent. Authors may be asked to
document the above at any time point.
For studies involving animals, the authors should indicate whether the procedures followed
the local regulatory principles on animal experimentation. In this case, the following
statement needs to be added in the text: “All applicable international, national, and/ or
institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed”.

Permissions and plagiarism
Figures and images should have not been previously published. For the use of any figures
already published elsewhere by one of the authors or by means of another publication, theauthors are required to obtain written permission from the copyright owner(s) and tosubmit the evidence in the submission process. Disclosure should be made at the time ofsubmission, accordingly.
Plagiarism will not be accepted in any case. Dedicated software will be used on this purpose.
All submissions will be first screened by a similarity detection software before being

assigned for peer review. If the overall text similarity index is >20%, or the duplication rate is>5%, the manuscript is returned to the authors without peer review. The similarity reportwill be included in the editor's message. In cases of plagiarism, citation manipulation, data
and results fabrication, or any suspicion of research misconduct, the EB will follow theguidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics(https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines human subjects). The EB reserves theright of rejecting submissions if there is any doubt about whether the procedures describedabove have been followed accurately.

Options for publication, post-publication discussions and corrections
All manuscripts are subjected to blind peer review after being initially assessed for quality by
the section editors. The section editors will first evaluate the possibility of duplicate
publications. Reviewers are selected for their known expertise, objectivity and provencommitment and professionalism. Reviewers should handle the material confidentially andare not allowed to share or copy. In case of major disagreement between two reviewers, themanuscript will either be assigned to a third reviewer, or the section editor will make adecision. The decision on acceptance or rejection is based solely on the reviewers’
evaluation, the importance of the manuscript and its relevance to the aims of the journal.
The EB will decide upon any letters to the editor commenting on prior publications.
Corrections on prior publications related to authors’ names, affiliations, major flaws or any
kind of errors will also be discussed by the EB and prompt changes will be published in asubsequent issue. The changes will be listed in the table of contents to ensure that they will
be linked to the initial publication to which they pertain in major databases such as PubMed.