Ethical principles and policies regarding research involving humans and animals

The Editorial Board of the “Collection of Research Papers of the National Mining University” adheres to high standards of academic integrity and bioethics. For the publication of research results involving humans, animals, their biomaterials, or confidential data, obtaining a positive conclusion from the Ethics Committee is a mandatory requirement.

Research involving human participants. Authors whose research involves working with humans (experiments, clinical trials, surveys, psychological testing, etc.) must: adhere to the principles of the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki; obtain informed consent from all adult participants or from legal representatives of minors/incapacitated persons; submit to the editorial office a copy of the approval from of the local Ethics Committee (Bioethics Committee) of the institution where the research was conducted.

Research involving animals. Work with laboratory animals must be based on the principles of humane treatment (“3Rs”: Replacement, Reduction, Refinement):research must comply with the provisions of the Law of Ukraine “On the Protection of Animals from Cruelty” and the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals Used for Research and Other Scientific Purposes; the text of the article must indicate methods of anesthesia and euthanasia protocols, if any were used; Approval from the Bioethics Commission on the appropriateness and humaneness of the research methods is mandatory.

Personal and confidential data. When using personal data subject to the Law of Ukraine “On Personal Data Protection” and international standards (GDPR), authors are required to:ensure complete anonymity of data (removal of full names, exact dates of birth, addresses or identification numbers); if anonymity is not possible, obtain written consent from the data subject to disclose information for scientific purposes.

Submission and verification procedure. When submitting a manuscript via email to the journal, the author must confirm in the Cover letter that an ethics approval is available.The “Materials and Methods” section (or a separate “Ethical Approval” block) must clearly indicate the name of the committee, the protocol number, and the date of the meeting at which the study was approved.The editor or reviewer has the right to request a scanned copy of the original Ethics Committee opinion for verification. The absence of such confirmation is an absolute groundfor rejection of the article.

Given the technical focus of the journal, these requirements apply to:

• occupational health and ergonomics research (if measurements of employee health indicators are carried out);
• sociological and economic surveys of enterprise personnel;
• environmental research concerning local communities or ecosystems involvingbiological objects.