Pen Academic attaches great importance to ethical principles and the protection of privacy in all studies involving human participants. In scientific publications concerning human health and rights, it is an ethical and legal obligation to protect the private information of patients and to obtain informed consent.

Informed Consent

Authors are obliged to obtain written consent (explicit consent) from the relevant persons for the use of all patient data, clinical findings, images (photographs, radiological images, etc.) and personal health information included in their studies.

This consent must fulfil the following conditions:

• The purpose, scope and method of publication of the study must be clearly explained to the patient.
• It must be stated which aspects of the data will be published and with whom they will be shared.
• Patients must give consent on a voluntary basis and have the right to withdraw at any time.

It should be clearly stated in the article thatinformed consent has been obtained, but patient identity information should never be disclosed.

Protection of Confidentiality

No published content should contain personal identifying information that could lead to direct or indirect identification of the patient. Such information includes elements such as name, date of birth, facial photograph, address, patient number or organisation information.

If there are identifiable elements in clinical images or case narratives, they may be published only with the patient's consent. In such cases, the editor has the right to request the consent document.

Ethics Committee Approval

All studies containing patient data must be approved by an authorised ethics committee at local or national level and this must be clearly stated in the manuscript. Studies submitted without ethics committee approval will not be evaluated.

This policy aims to protect both the rights of patients and the ethical standards of scientific publishing. Our journal acts in line with national and international ethical principles (e.g. the Declaration of Helsinki) and does not allow the publication of studies that do not comply with these principles.