Ethical Guidelines

The following documents are provided to inform authors, editors, reviewers, and readers of Optica Publishng Group's ethical policies and guidelines. Our journals are members of COPE, and submissions are screened for plagiarism using Similarity Check. Any questions may be addressed to the Optica Publishing Group Editorial Ethics subcommittee at ethics@optica.org.

  1. Guidelines of Optica Publishing Group Concerning Ethical Practices in the Publication of Research (PDF)
  2. Guidelines of Optica Publishing Group on the Use of Humans and Animals in Research:

    It is the expectation of Optica Publishing Group that research using animals and human subjects reported at the meetings and in the publications of the Society will have been conducted in accordance with internationally recognized principles regarding the ethical conduct of biomedical research. Authors must include a brief statement within the manuscript identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee (i.e. Institutional Review Board, Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee) that approved the experiments. Experiments involving animal subjects are expected to be consistent with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (published by U.S. National Academy of Sciences, ISBN 0-309-05377-3). Experiments involving human subjects are expected to conform to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. For such experiments, authors must also include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

  3. Optica Publishing Group Plagiarism Policy: Editorial on Plagiarism (PDF), published February 2013
  4. Conflicts of Interest Policy. Basic guidelines for disclosing conflicts of interest are included in the Guidelines of Optica Publishing Group Concerning Ethical Practices in the Publication of Research. Our journal, Biomedical Optics Express, has implemented a more formal policy for managing potential conflicts of interest.