GMPC Policy on Ethical Approval for Research Involving Animals

All studies that are reporting experiments on animal subjects must be reviewed and approved by an ethics committee prior performing the study. All research procedures must be carried out according to the national and institutional regulations. Authors must include full information about housing and husbandry condition of animals and pain management in their manuscript. When using animal subjects’ authors should ensure compliance with '3 Rs': (i) replacement of animals by alternatives wherever possible; (ii) reduction in number of animals used; (iii) refinement of experimental conditions and procedures to minimize the harm to animals and/or they should refer to the Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Bred, Supplied, or Used in Scientific Purposes, American Association for Laboratory Animal Science or EU regulations on animal research. If the ethical approval is not required to carry out the study by national laws, authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee explaining why the ethical approval was not required. In this case, the authors have to refer to the ethical approval as “not required” in the ethical statement. For reporting studies using live animals, GMPC endorses the ARRIVE guideline. Authors and reviewers must use the ARRIVE guidelines (https://arriveguidelines.org) to ensure that studies are reported in enough detail to add to the knowledge base. To promote compliance with these guidelines, we request that authors submit an ARRIVE checklist that indicates where information related to each item of the guidelines can be found. This enables readers and reviewers to scrutinize the research adequately, evaluate its methodological rigor, and reproduce the methods or findings.

Last updated: 04-Feb-2025