Research ethics

Terra Alimentaria is dedicated to publishing research that meets the highest ethical standards. Appropriate consents, permissions, and releases regarding personal information, human participants, and animal subjects are strictly required. Authors must ensure that all research is conducted responsibly, safely, and in compliance with relevant institutional, national, and international guidelines.

1. Human Research

Guidelines and Approvals

If the work involves human participants, living or deceased, including their data and/or biological materials (e.g., organs, tissues, or sensory panel evaluations), the author must ensure that all studies were performed in compliance with relevant laws, regulations, and institutional guidelines, and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) has/have approved them.

Authors must include a statement in the manuscript that confirms these requirements have been met. The statement must contain the date and reference number of the ethical approval(s) obtained. Research involving human participants must be carried out in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki and any other guidelines specific to the relevant discipline.

Informed Consent

Informed consent must be obtained for research with human participants, including their data or biological materials. Consent must be given without coercion, and the privacy rights of human participants must always be observed. Authors must include a statement in the manuscript confirming that they obtained informed consent from all participants (or their parent, guardian, or legal representative where applicable). Consent for publication must also be obtained.

Appropriate written consents, permissions, and releases must be obtained where an author wishes to include case details, videos, recordings, images, photographs, and illustrations of individuals in a Terra Alimentaria publication. Written consents must be retained by the author, and evidence that such consents have been obtained must be provided to the editorial office upon request.

For research where only verbal informed consent was obtained, authors must include justification for the absence of written consent, the name of the approving ethics committee, and a statement on how verbal consent was recorded. Authors should be aware that written consent is required for certain studies under national laws, including clinical nutrition trials, case studies, studies with vulnerable populations, and studies containing personally identifiable data.

Research with Vulnerable Populations

Authors must ensure that appropriate consents and safeguards are in place for research with vulnerable populations, including but not limited to children, refugees, Indigenous peoples, marginalized groups, persons with disabilities, older adults, and any persons lacking the capacity to consent.

In many countries, additional ethical approval is needed for research with those who lack the capacity to consent. It is the responsibility of the author to ensure that all laws are followed and that written consent was obtained from the participants’ Legal Representatives. Where possible, participants should also give their assent to be included in the research. A statement must be included in the manuscript detailing that the necessary safeguards were in place.

Human Biological Material

For all studies that use human organs or tissues, sufficient evidence must be provided that these were procured in line with the WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation. The source of the materials must be transparent and traceable. If a manuscript describes such research, authors must declare that autonomous consent free from coercion was obtained from the donor(s) or their next of kin, and that tissues were ethically sourced.

Exempt Studies

All studies involving human participants require an ethical statement (including consumer surveys, sensory evaluation studies, and case reports). If ethical approval is not required by national laws, or where a study has been granted an exemption from an ethics committee, the statement in the manuscript must explicitly explain why the study is exempt and confirm that appropriate protocols for protecting the rights and privacy of all participants were utilized (e.g., no coercion, full disclosure of risks, data anonymity).

2. Images, Videos, and Identifiable Information

Consent Requirements for Personal Information and Images

Appropriate written consents must be obtained to comply with all applicable Data Protection and Privacy Laws (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) when publishing identifiable images or information.

  • Each individual, or their Legal Representative, must give explicit written and fully informed consent.
  • Individuals should be made aware in advance of any photographs, videos, or recordings being made, and all purposes for which they might be used (including promotional use and discoverability via search engines).
  • If consent is made subject to any conditions (e.g., adopting measures to prevent personal identification), the journal must be made aware in writing of all such conditions. Individuals must be informed that consent cannot be revoked once the material has been published.
  • In the case of a child, if parents or guardians disagree on the use of images or reports of that child, then consent should be deemed not to have been given and those materials must not be used.
  • Even if consent has been obtained, care must be taken to ensure that the portrayal and captioning of the individual are respectful.

Identifiable Information

Care should be taken to de-identify participant-specific information.

  • Participants’ names, initials, social security numbers, dates of birth, or other personal identifying information must not be used.
  • Images of participants should only be used if the information is essential for scientific purposes and explicit permission has been given. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential.
  • If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, authors must provide assurances that such alterations do not distort scientific meaning.

Non-Identifiable Images

  • Formal consents are not required for the use of entirely anonymized images from which the individual cannot be identified (e.g., pathology slides, ultrasound images), provided they do not contain identifying marks. Although not strictly required, it is good practice to inform the patient/participant that their images will be used.
  • If consent has not been obtained, it is not sufficient to anonymize a photograph by using eye bars or blurring the face of the individual concerned. Full consent is required for such photographs.

3. Animal Research

Guidelines and Approvals

All animal experiments must comply with the ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines (or national equivalent) and must be carried out in accordance with relevant laws and associated guidelines for animal welfare. This includes guidelines from the National Research Council Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals or equivalent internationally recognized bodies.

Authors must ensure that the manuscript contains a statement confirming which guidelines have been followed. This statement must include the ethics committee approval number. If a study was granted exemption or did not require ethics approval, a detailed statement explaining the exemption must be included.

Reporting Sex and Species Data

The sex of animals, and where appropriate, the influence (or association) of sex on the results of the study should be explicitly indicated in the methodology and results sections.

Special Cases (Wildlife and Client-Owned Animals)

Where applicable, researchers are required to document informed consent from the client or owner in studies involving client-owned animals and adhere to best practices of veterinary care. For research on threatened and/or endangered species (e.g., novel food sources harvested from the wild), authors are advised to consult international best practice guidelines such as the IUCN Red List guidelines and must provide evidence of appropriate collection permits.