Research, Data & Reporting Policies

Research Policy
Research, Data & Reporting Policies

Horizon of Public Health Sciences (HoPHS) requires research to be ethically conducted, transparently reported, and supported by data and documentation appropriate to the study design. These policies apply to original research and, where relevant, evidence-synthesis manuscripts submitted to the journal.

Ethics Statement Required When Applicable
Prospective Clinical Trial Registration
Required Data Availability Statement
Study-Specific Reporting Guideline
HoPHS policies are informed by internationally recognized standards including the ICMJE Recommendations, the 2024 Declaration of Helsinki, the EQUATOR Network, and, for applicable animal research, the ARRIVE Guidelines. Authors must also comply with relevant national, institutional, legal, regulatory, and professional requirements.
Human Participants
Ethical review is integral to human-subject research

Research involving human participants, identifiable human material, identifiable health information, or other human-derived data subject to ethical oversight must have been reviewed and approved, or formally exempted or waived where appropriate, by a competent independent ethics committee or institutional review board before the research was conducted.

Required ethics information

State the name of the approving ethics committee or review body, institution where relevant, approval or reference number, and approval date when available. The statement should appear in the manuscript and complete identifying details should also be provided in the Title Page when required for double-blind review.

Exemption or waiver

If formal ethics approval was not required, authors must state this explicitly and explain the basis. Where an ethics committee granted an exemption or waiver, identify the committee and provide the relevant determination or reference information where available.

Editorial review remains independent. Ethics committee approval does not prevent HoPHS editors from assessing whether the reported research appears ethically appropriate, sufficiently transparent, and consistent with the journal's publication standards. Supporting ethics documentation may be requested during editorial review.
Informed Consent
Participation and publication consent are distinct requirements

Authors must describe the informed-consent process for research participation when consent was required. Consent should be voluntary, appropriately documented, and obtained from participants or legally authorized representatives in accordance with the approved study protocol and applicable ethical and legal requirements.

Consent to participate

State whether informed consent was written, electronic, witnessed, verbal where ethically permitted, waived by the ethics committee, or otherwise handled under the approved protocol. Research involving persons unable to provide consent must report the legally authorized consent and assent process where relevant.

Consent for publication

Separate consent for publication is required when an individual could reasonably be identified from photographs, clinical details, quotations, pedigrees, combinations of characteristics, or other published material. Nonessential identifying information should be removed.

HoPHS may request confirmation that appropriate consent documentation has been obtained and retained. Authors should not submit unnecessary documents containing participant identities unless specifically requested through a secure editorial process.
Privacy & Sensitive Data
Protect participants while preserving scientific meaning

Personal, health, genomic, geographic, qualitative, administrative, or linked data may create re-identification risks even when direct identifiers have been removed. Authors must use appropriate safeguards and comply with the consent, ethics approval, data-use agreements, applicable privacy law, and institutional data-governance requirements.

Data sharing should never require public disclosure of information that would violate participant privacy, informed consent, community agreements, contractual restrictions, Indigenous or community data governance, legal obligations, or legitimate security protections. Appropriate controlled-access mechanisms may be used instead.
Animal Research
Applicable animal studies must meet ethical and reporting standards

Because HoPHS is a public-health journal, animal research will be considered only when it has a clear and substantive relationship to public-health science and falls within the journal's stated scope. Where animal research is reported, authors must state that relevant institutional and national standards for the care and use of animals were followed.

Ethical oversight
Identify the relevant animal ethics committee, institutional approval, permit, or equivalent oversight mechanism, together with approval details where applicable.
ARRIVE reporting
In vivo animal experiments should be reported according to the current ARRIVE guidelines. Authors may be asked to provide the appropriate reporting checklist during editorial assessment or revision.
Clinical Trials
Prospective registration is required

HoPHS requires prospective public registration of clinical trials at or before the time of first participant consent for enrollment. For this policy, a clinical trial includes prospective assignment of individuals or groups to a health-related intervention to evaluate its effect on a health outcome.

Trials should be registered in a publicly accessible registry that meets recognized international standards, such as a WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) primary registry or ClinicalTrials.gov. The registry name and registration number must be provided at submission and should be reported in the manuscript and at the end of the abstract.
Prospective registration
Registration should occur before enrollment of the first participant. Ethics approval alone does not substitute for trial registration.
Registration consistency
Authors are responsible for explaining material discrepancies between the registered protocol, prespecified outcomes, data-sharing plan, and the submitted manuscript.
Late or retrospective registration
Retrospectively registered trials may be considered ineligible for publication. Any exceptional consideration requires full explanation of the delay and remains at the editor's discretion.
Reporting Standards
Report research according to the study design

Authors must identify and use the current reporting guideline appropriate to their study design. Reporting checklists and flow diagrams may be requested during submission, technical screening, peer review, or revision. The EQUATOR Network should be consulted when authors are uncertain which guideline applies.

CONSORT · Randomized trials STROBE · Observational studies PRISMA · Systematic reviews / meta-analyses PRISMA-ScR · Scoping reviews COREQ / SRQR · Qualitative research STARD · Diagnostic accuracy TRIPOD · Prediction models CHEERS · Economic evaluations SQUIRE · Quality improvement ARRIVE · In vivo animal research
Use of a reporting guideline does not substitute for sound study design or appropriate statistical analysis. Authors should report deviations from prespecified methods and explain important protocol changes transparently.
Data Availability
Every research manuscript must explain where its supporting data can be found

Every manuscript reporting original research or evidence synthesis must contain a Data Availability Statement. The statement should describe whether supporting data and related research materials are publicly available, available under controlled conditions or on reasonable request, subject to restrictions, obtained from a third party, or not newly generated for the study.

Openly available data
Identify the repository, dataset or record title where useful, persistent identifier or accession number, and any applicable license or reuse conditions.
Available on reasonable request
State who may request access, the responsible contact or access mechanism, and any legitimate conditions for release. “Available on request” should not be used when the authors do not have authority to provide the data.
Restricted data
Explain why data cannot be made openly available, such as privacy, consent, ethics, legal, community, security, or contractual restrictions, and describe any controlled-access pathway where one exists.
Third-party data
Identify the data source and explain how eligible researchers may obtain access when the authors are not permitted to redistribute the data.
No new data generated
For manuscripts such as certain reviews that do not generate new datasets, state this clearly and identify any supplementary extraction files, search records, analytical code, or other research materials that are available.
Data Sharing
As open as possible, as restricted as necessary

HoPHS encourages responsible sharing of the data, code, protocols, instruments, data dictionaries, analytical materials, and other resources needed to understand, verify, or reuse published research. Data sharing must remain consistent with participant consent, ethics approval, privacy, legal requirements, data-use agreements, and legitimate community or institutional governance.

What may be shared

Deidentified participant-level or aggregate data, data dictionaries, analysis code, questionnaires, protocols, statistical analysis plans, search strategies, extraction sheets, and other materials necessary to understand or reproduce the work.

When restriction is justified

Restrictions are appropriate when open release would breach privacy, informed consent, ethics conditions, Indigenous or community governance, legal requirements, security protections, contractual arrangements, or third-party rights.

Clinical Trial Data Sharing
Clinical-trial reports require a detailed data-sharing statement

Manuscripts reporting clinical-trial results must include a data-sharing statement consistent with ICMJE requirements. Trials beginning enrollment on or after 1 January 2019 should also have a data-sharing plan included in the trial registration, and material changes to that plan should be reflected in both the registry record and the submitted manuscript.

The clinical-trial data-sharing statement must specify:
Whether deidentified participant data will be shared Which specific data will be shared Whether a data dictionary is included Availability of protocol / statistical analysis plan When access begins How long access will remain available Who may receive access Permitted types of analyses Access criteria and mechanism

A statement of “undecided” is not acceptable for whether deidentified participant data will be shared. The data-sharing statement should accurately reflect the actual data-governance arrangements of the study.

Research Repositories
Use an appropriate trusted repository when data are shared

Where public or controlled data deposition is appropriate, authors should use a recognized domain-specific, general-purpose, or institutional repository that provides stable access, adequate metadata, an appropriate level of access control, and preferably a persistent identifier such as a DOI or accession number.

Preferred characteristics
Persistent identifiers; clear ownership and licensing; metadata; versioning where relevant; sustainable preservation; appropriate access controls; and a stable citation that can be included in the manuscript.
Examples
Appropriate options may include established institutional or disciplinary repositories and general-purpose services such as Zenodo, Dryad, Figshare, or the Open Science Framework, depending on the data type and governance requirements.
Personal websites, temporary file-transfer services, and links that do not provide durable preservation should not be used as the sole long-term location for research data supporting a published article.
Code, Instruments & Research Materials
Reproducibility extends beyond the primary dataset

When software code, statistical scripts, questionnaires, measurement instruments, protocols, search strategies, codebooks, or other materials are essential to evaluating or reproducing the work, authors should make them available where legally and ethically possible and identify their location in the manuscript.

If materials are proprietary, licensed, copyrighted, culturally restricted, or otherwise unavailable for open distribution, authors should state the restriction and explain how eligible researchers may obtain access where possible.
AI-Assisted Tools
AI use must be transparent, verifiable, and human-accountable

Authors must disclose material use of generative AI, large language models, machine-learning platforms, AI-assisted image tools, or comparable technologies in the production of submitted work. AI systems cannot be authors and do not replace human responsibility for scientific accuracy and integrity.

Writing or editorial assistance

Disclose the tool used and its purpose in the appropriate manuscript declaration or acknowledgment when AI materially assisted writing, language editing, summarization, translation, or content generation. Authors must verify all generated content and references.

AI used as part of research methods

If AI contributes to data collection, screening, coding, classification, statistical or computational analysis, prediction, image generation or processing, or another substantive research method, describe the tool, model or version where available, purpose, procedures, validation, and human oversight in sufficient detail for readers to understand and evaluate the method.

Participant data and AI systems

Identifiable, sensitive, confidential, restricted, or unpublished participant data must not be entered into external AI systems unless that processing is permitted by the approved research protocol, participant consent where applicable, data-governance arrangements, institutional policy, contractual obligations, and applicable law. Authors remain responsible for assessing privacy, retention, security, secondary-use, and cross-border data-transfer implications.

Editorial Verification
Supporting documentation may be requested

During technical screening, peer review, integrity assessment, or post-publication review, HoPHS may request documentation reasonably necessary to assess the reported research. Requests will be proportionate to the concern and should respect ethical, privacy, confidentiality, and legal constraints.

Ethics approval Trial registration record Protocol Statistical analysis plan Underlying data Analysis code Original figures / images Reporting checklist
Research Policy Check
Before submission
Ethics status stated Consent addressed where applicable Privacy protected Trial registered prospectively if applicable Reporting guideline applied Data Availability Statement included Repository identifier provided where relevant AI use disclosed where applicable
HoPHS Research Principle
Ethical research. Transparent reporting. Responsible data stewardship.

HoPHS supports research transparency and reproducibility while recognizing legitimate limits on data disclosure. Authors should provide sufficient information for readers to understand how the research was conducted, how evidence was generated and analyzed, what data and materials support the findings, and what ethical or governance conditions apply to their use.