All individuals have rights that are not to be infringed upon. Individual participants in research studies have the right to decide how their personal identifiable information is used, as well as any interview materials or photographs. Identifying details such as personal names, dates of birth, biometrical characteristics (facial features, fingerprint, writing style, DNA or another distinguishing characteristic), geolocation information, and health status of research subjects should not be used without express permission by the subject in writing. Under some circumstances, consent is not required if the information is anonymized and the submission does not include images that can identify any individual. However, masking of the eye region in photographs of participants is inadequate protection of anonymity. Exceptions to the need for consent may include anonymized radiographic images, ultrasound images, or pathology slides.  

Consent and already available data and/or biologic material

Regardless of whether material is collected from living or dead subjects, written permission must be obtained from either the subject, or the family or guardian of the subject if written pre-mortem consent has not been provided.

Data protection, confidentiality and privacy

When biological material is donated or data are generated as part of a research project, authors should ensure, as part of the informed consent procedure, that the participants are made fully aware of what kind of information will be used, how it will be used, and for what purpose it will be used. In case of data acquired via a biobank/biorepository, a blanket consent whereby research participants consent to a broad range of uses of their data and samples, and where the research is evaluated by a human ethics committee may be considered “informed”. It is the author’s responsibility to check the specific biobank/biorepository policies or other types of data provider policies (in case of non-bio research) verify compliance with informed consent.

Consent to participate

For all research involving human subjects, freely-given, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18) and a statement to this effect should appear in any published paper. In the case of articles describing human transplantation studies, authors must include a statement declaring that no organs or tissues were obtained from prisoners and must also name the institution(s)/clinic(s)/department(s) via which organs or tissues were obtained.

Consent to publish

Individuals may consent to participate in a study, but object to having their data published in a journal article. Authors should make sure to also seek consent from individuals to publish their data prior to submitting their paper to a journal.

Summary of requirements

The above should be summarized in a statement and included in an appropriate section of a publication where data or information is used.

Natural and Life Sciences Communications publishes accepted manuscripts under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain the appropriate permissions from the original publisher to republish any previously published text, figures, tables, supplementary information, etc., in an Open Access journal under a CC BY license.

Natural and Life Sciences Communications uses Turnitin which is supported by Chiang Mai University to screen submitted content for originality. Each journal screens a proportion of submitted manuscripts. We will do a follow-up investigation if the software raises any concerns. Plagiarism is suspected when the percentage of similarity is higher than 25%. In such cases, the Editor-in-Chief will be informed. However, clear indications of plagiarism will result in immediate rejection. We expect that editors and reviewers will be vigilant in their evaluation of journal submissions and will notify the journal about any plagiarism identified.

Plagiarized content will not be considered for publication. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we may issue a correction or retract the paper, as appropriate. We reserve the right to inform authors' institutions about plagiarism detected either before or after publication

Duties of Authors

The author must ensure that the submitted paper or work has never been previously published. And must present accurate and true factual information derived from the research in the submitted paper without any manipulation or false presentation of the information.  

Duties of Editors

The editors must not reveal the identity of the author(s) and the reviewers to others during the assessment processes. The editors must not reject any paper simply because they have doubts or uncertainties about any part of the submitted paper. They must find concrete evidence to resolve doubts or uncertainties.  

Duties of the Reviewers

The reviewers must keep all the information of the submitted paper confidential and must not reveal any part of the submitted paper to anyone other than those involved in the review processes.Reviewers should evaluate submitted papers in disciplines in which they specialize, taking into account the intellectual content of the paper, data analysis, and the substantive content of the research article. They must refrain from using their own groundless, personal judgement to evaluate submitted papers. In the evaluation processes, the reviewers must point out potential studies that are significantly related to the submitted paper but that the author has failed to include or mention in his or her submitted paper. The reviewers are encouraged to inform the editors of any similarities between the submitted paper and other papers/studies.  

The journal will not accept articles that have been published previously (except in the form of an abstract) or those that are being considered for publication by any other journal.

The editor in chief is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal is meet the aim and scope of the journal. If the article meets the submission criteria of the journal, it will be sent to an academic editor. The academic editor is responsible for deciding which of the articles should be published after considering comments of at least two reviewers.