Patient Consent & Privacy
Case-based publishing depends on trust. Authors submitting to Chronicles of Medical and Clinical Case Reports must protect patient identity and obtain appropriate consent before publication.
De-identification
Remove direct identifiers such as full names, initials combined with other data, medical record numbers, national identifiers, exact dates of birth, addresses, photographs that could identify a person, and rare occupation or location combinations. Use age ranges or decaded dates when clinically sufficient.
Informed consent
When a manuscript includes patient-specific clinical information or identifiable images, written informed consent for publication is generally required unless a documented waiver applies under institutional policy and applicable law. Consent forms should cover publication in an open-access journal and reuse of figures online.
- Consent obtained and documented
- Consent waived by an authorized ethics body (with explanation)
- Truly non-identifiable aggregate data (with justification)
- Deceased patients — follow institutional and legal requirements
Clinical images
Images must be cropped or altered only for privacy, not to change clinical meaning. Tattoos, facial features, unique lesions in identifiable contexts and metadata embedded in files should be reviewed before upload.
Secure handling
Consent documents uploaded during submission are stored securely, are not published with the article and are accessible only to authorized editorial staff for verification purposes.
Full policy: Patient privacy policy