What ethical standards should my research follow?

Obtaining Ethical Approval: For empirical research with human or animal study participants, researchers must submit their research protocol for ethical approval prior to conducting their research. Usually this ethical approval is granted by ethical review committees at the authors’ institutions, but we understand that in some cases approval may be granted by other bodies, such as the administration at the hospital where the research was conducted. Your manuscript should state what ethical approval was obtained and why it was sufficient. You can temporarily replace the name of the institution that granted ethical approval with [Blinded] if doing so is necessary to protect your anonymity during peer review.

Obtaining Informed Consent: For empirical research with human or animal study participants, researchers must gain informed consent prior to conducting their study. There should be a section in your manuscript explaining how informed consent was requested and obtained. Please see the APA Ethics Code, Section 8 for informed consent requirements.   

Anonymizing Participant Information: Upon publication, Sage Open articles are free for anyone in the world to read online and share in news outlets or on social media. Make sure you have appropriately anonymized your data and gained permission from your study participants to publish images, interviews, and personal data online. We recommend blurring participant faces in images as a best practice. Be careful when writing about individuals within small communities. Consider whether members of those communities can discern the identities of your study participants with the information you have provided.

For more information, please see our in-depth Author Guidelines: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/sgo/help/authorguide