Consent for Publication
Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics approval and informed consent, which should be documented. Appropriate consents, permissions, and releases must be obtained where an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in the Women, Midwives and Midwifery (WMM) journal.
For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to a person, written informed consent for the publication of these details must be obtained from that person (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18). The consent must be for publication of their details under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (such that they will be freely available on the internet). If the person has died, consent for publication must be obtained from their next of kin. The manuscript must include a statement that written informed consent for publication was obtained.
Authors can use the WMM consent form to obtain consent for publication, or a consent form from their institution or region if appropriate. The consent form must state that the details/images/videos will be freely available on the internet and may be seen by the general public. The consent form must be made available to the Editor if requested and will be treated confidentially.
In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable, and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required.
Unless the authors have written permission from the patient (or, where applicable, the next of kin), the personal details of any patient included in any part of the articles and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations and videos) must be removed before submission.
The Women, Midwives and Midwifery journal does not hold any responsibilities, should any disputes arise from failing to obtain the consent for publication by the authors. The editor will resort to COPE's and WAME's guidance on related/similar cases.