For papers including results from animal experiments, Annali di Igiene adopts the indications of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), for more information please visit http://publicationethics.org

Studies involving experiments with animals must state that their care was in accordance with institution guidelines.

Papers describing research including human subjects must state that they were in accordance with institution guidelines.

Work on human beings that is submitted to Annali di Igiene should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki; with Recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects, adopted by the 75th World Medical Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, October 2024 and the 64th World Medical Assembly, Fortaleza, Brasil, October 2013.

The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committee/s related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that subjects gave informed consent to the work.

Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent which should be documented in the paper. Patients have a right to privacy: therefore identifying information, including patients’ images, names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be included in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and you have obtained from the patient (or parent, guardian or next of kin where applicable) written informed consent for publication in print and electronic form. If such consent is made subject to any conditions, Annali di Igiene must be made aware of all such conditions. Written consents must be provided to Annali di Igiene on request.

Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, Authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and the editors should so note. If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients included in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials (including all illustrations) must be removed before submission.

All Authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. If there are no conflicts of interest then please state this: ‘Conflicts of interest: none’.

Upon submission Authors will be required to declare funding, competing interests and to indicate whether ethical approval was sought. This information must also be inserted into the manuscript under the ‘Acknowledgements’ section with the headings below. If there are no declarations to make, the following statements should be inserted into the manuscript:

Funding: None; Competing interests: None declared; Ethical approval: Not required (please add a brief explanation as to why ethical approval was not needed for the study).

Submission of an article implies that the work described (a) has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic pre-print), (b) that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, (c) that its publication is approved by all Authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and (d) that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Authors should also declare that the data in their paper are not a result of plagiarism, self-plagiarism or fraud, and that all data in the article are real, authentic and original. Finally, all Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in manuscripts

The use of AI-assisted tools (e.g., ChatGPT, GPT-4, Bard) is permitted only for language and grammar improvements. AI must not generate original scientific content, conduct analyses, or interpret data. Authors must disclose AI use in the Methods or Acknowledgments section. AI cannot be listed as an author, as it does not meet authorship criteria. Authors remain fully responsible for the integrity, accuracy, and originality of their work. Authors, Editors and Reviewers must not use AI for peer review. Manuscripts will undergo plagiarism and ethical checks, and undisclosed or improper AI use may lead to rejection or retraction.

Each Author is required to declare his or her individual contribution to the article: all Authors must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so roles for all authors should be described.

The statement that all Authors have approved the final article should be true and included in the disclosure.

All Authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following: (1) the conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) final approval of the version to be submitted.

Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process.

This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of Author names in the Authorship of accepted manuscripts.

Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an Author, or to rearrange the Author names, must be sent to the Journal Managing Editor by the corresponding Author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the Author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all Authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement.

In the case of addition or removal of Authors, this includes confirmation from the Author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding Author will be forwarded by the Journal Managing Editor to the corresponding Author, who must follow the procedure as described above.

Note that: (1) the Journal Managing Editor will inform the Journal Editor in Chief of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until Authorship has been agreed.

After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Any requests to add, delete, or rearrange Author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.

Authors are requested to specify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.

The corresponding author must sign and send to the Managing Editor the disclosure form which can be unloaded from the Journal’s website (Authors Disclosure Form) “STATEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY”

Randomized controlled trials should be presented according to the CONSORT guidelines.

At manuscript submission, Authors must provide the CONSORT checklist accompanied by a flow diagram that illustrates the progress of patients through the trial, including recruitment, enrollment, randomization, withdrawal and completion, and a detailed description of the randomization procedure.

The CONSORT checklist and template flow diagram can be found on: www.consort-statement.org

Registration in a public trial registry is a condition for publication of clinical trials in this journal in accordance with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, www.icmje.org) recommendations.

Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrollment. The clinical trial registration number should be included at the end of the abstract of the article. A clinical trial is defined as any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects of health outcomes.

Health-related interventions include any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome (for example drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and process-of-care changes).

Health outcomes include any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. Purely observational studies (those in which the assignment of the medical intervention is not at the discretion of the investigator) will not require registration.

The Peer Reviewer is responsible for critically reading and evaluating a manuscript in his/her specialty field, and then providing objective, respectful, constructive, and honest feedback to Authors about their submission. It is appropriate for the Peer Reviewer to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the article, ways to improve the strength and quality of the work, and evaluate the relevance and originality of the manuscript.

Reviewers must:

• maintain the confidentiality of the review process
• immediately alert the Managing Editor of any real or potential competing interest that could affect the impartiality of their reviewing and decline to review where appropriate
• conduct themselves fairly and impartially
• point out relevant published work which has not been cited by the Author(s)
• Editors and reviewers must not use AI for peer review. Manuscripts will undergo plagiarism and ethical checks, and undisclosed or improper AI use may lead to rejection or retraction.
• We are aware, of course, that academics will come from a particular school of thought and/or may have strong ties to a particular interest. All we ask is that reviewers strive to act fairly. If in doubt about whether a conflict exists, a reviewer should be transparent and seek the views of the journal Editor in Chief.

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