Journal's policy on Animal Rights

To be acceptable for publication, experiments on living non-human vertebrates or Octopus vulgaris must conform to the European Union’s legislation (Directive 2010/63/EU) and are in accordance with guidelines set by the Committee for Research and Ethical Issues of IASP (IASP Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research - International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP)).
Every research article submitted to our Journal must include a statement that the study obtained ethics approval, the number/ID of the approval(s).

This information must be also declared in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript which should also include the following details about animal study design (see more in the ARRIVE guidelines):

• The number of experimental and control groups.
• Any steps taken to minimize the effects of subjective bias when allocating animals to treatment (e.g. randomization procedure) and when assessing results (e.g. if done, describe who was blinded and when).
• The experimental unit (e.g. a single animal, group, or cage of animals).
• For each experiment and each experimental group, including controls, provide precise details of all procedures carried out. If anesthesia was used, the anesthetic dose and duration of surgery must be provided, as well as information about any intra- and/or post-operative drugs (i.e., drug, dose, and inter-dosing interval, if given more than once). If pain was caused, the authors have to explain clearly how it was managed and minimized.
• Authors must provide details of the animals used, including species, strain, sex, developmental stage (e.g., mean or median age plus age range), and weight (e.g., mean or median weight plus weight range). Further relevant information such as the source of animals, international strain nomenclature, genetic modification status (e.g., knock-out or transgenic), genotype, health/immune status, drug or test naive, previous procedures, etc.