Journal Policies

Research Ethics

Canadian Rheumatology Today reserves the right to reject any manuscript on the basis of unethical conduct.

Research involving human experiments should comply with the Tri-Council (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC) joint policy on research ethics, as well as all applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Any article involving human research must include a statement that ethical approval was obtained (or a statement that ethical approval was not required and why) as well as a statement that the participants gave informed consent before taking part (or a statement that consent was not required and why).

Where images include recognizable individuals, living or deceased, authors must ensure that consent for publication has been given. Patient privacy and anonymity should be prioritized and preserved.

Any research involving animal experiments must fully comply with relevant local, national, and institutional regulatory principles and licensing arrangements. Research should be developed in accordance with the recommendations of the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC).

Informed Consent

Individual participants in studies have the right to decide what happens to identifiable personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview, as well as to any photograph that was taken. This is especially true concerning images of vulnerable people (e.g. minors, patients, refugees, etc) or the use of images in sensitive contexts. In many instances authors will need to secure written consent before including images.

Identifying details of the participants that were studied should not be included in written descriptions unless the information is essential for scholarly purposes and the participant gave written informed consent for publication.

In cases where complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, informed consent for publication should be obtained if there is any doubt.

Data Privacy & Confidentiality

Information collected for research purposes is confidential, and must not be misused or wrongfully disclosed. Any data included in articles should be anonymized and non-identifiable to the greatest possible extent.

Research involving secondary use of previously collected data, which includes data originally collected for other research purposes as well as data collected for non-research purposes, must protect individuals' privacy and be non-identifiable. Consent for secondary use of data should be obtained whenever a possibility exists that individuals could be identified.

Intellectual Property

Canadian Rheumatology Today publishes exclusively original content that has not previously been published. Authors must disclose details of any related papers that they have published or which are under review or pending publication by another journal.

Plagiarism

Canadian Rheumatology Today condemns all forms of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the use of others' ideas or words without attribution, presenting them as original rather than derived from an existing source. The editorial team is responsible for screening all submitted manuscripts for incidences of plagiarism.

Self-plagiarism (also called "text recycling") involves using one's own previously published writing without citing it formally, and must be avoided or clarified.

Copyright & Licensing

Copyright of all content published in Canadian Rheumatology Today is obtained and owned by its publisher, Catalytic Health. Authors retain the right to present, orally or otherwise, information and other parts of their work, provided the published source is acknowledged. To reuse or republish article content, in full or in part, for commercial purposes, permission must be obtained from the publisher.

Articles published by Canadian Rheumatology Today are licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0, and may be copied, printed, redistributed, or linked-to in full for any non-commercial purpose provided the source is cited.

Corrections & Retractions

Canadian Rheumatology Today will issue corrections, retraction statements and other post-publication updates including Editorial Expressions of Concern on published content as appropriate. Substantial errors to supplementary information are corrected in the same manner as amendments to the main article.

When making corrections to articles, in the majority of cases the original article is corrected and is linked to and from the published amendment notice, which details the original error. For the sake of transparency, when changes made to the original article affect data in figures, tables or text (for example, when data points/error bars change or curves require redrawing) the amendment notice will reproduce the original data. When it is not possible to correct the original article in both HTML and PDF versions (for example, articles published many years before the error is raised) the article will remain unchanged but will link to and from the published amendment notice.

Canadian Rheumatology Today welcomes discussion of articles post-publication in the form of letters to the editor. Please submit comments and inquiries by email to info@catalytichealth.com.

Advertising

All advertisements and commercially sponsored publications are independent from editorial decisions. Canadian Rheumatology Today does not endorse any product or service marked as an advertisement or promoted by a sponsor in Canadian Rheumatology Today publications. Editorial content is not compromised by commercial or financial interests, nor by any specific arrangements with advertising clients or sponsors.

All advertisements for drug-specific campaigns must comply with the relevant Canadian legislation that regulates advertising. All advertisements should be correct and rational (not exaggerated or sensationalized), may not be deceptive or misleading, and must be verifiable. Advertisements should clearly identify the advertiser and the product or service being offered, and must be distinct in appearance from editorial content.