Safety Information in Journal Articles Part 1: The Necessity of Communication

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

This article was originally published on October 10, 2022. Updated with additional resources on July 26, 2023.

The Hazard of Insufficient Safety Reporting

The importance of safety in the research laboratory is widely recognized, including maintaining awareness of potential hazards and associated risks. But what about when it comes to effectively communicating these hazards and risks¹ as authors prepare their research for submission to a scientific journal?

When submitting a manuscript to an ACS journal, authors are expected to disclose potential safety hazards and other relevant information. These reporting requirements came into force in 2017,² driven in part by a review of author guidelines across more than 720 chemistry journals—which found that only 8% mentioned safety information requirements for authors.³

The ACS Divisions of Chemical Health and Safety (CHAS) and Chemical Information (CINF) along with the Committee of Chemical Safety (CCS) also conducted a survey of chemical safety in academia around the same time, and they found while most researchers were somewhat familiar with formal, industrial-level safety management processes, they rarely used them in their daily work—and few consistently shared them in their publications.⁴ Perhaps unsurprising, then, that a decade ago 46% of scientists had experienced some sort of injury in the lab and 30% had witnessed at least one major incident requiring medical attention.⁵

What Information Should be Included in a Safety Statement?

The Author Guidelines of every ACS journal state that an author “must emphasize any unexpected, new, and/or significant hazards or risks associated with the reported work.”⁶ If an experiment requires specialized equipment, procedures, or training beyond basic laboratory practices, the author must provide sufficient information so that others who may want to reproduce or build upon the published work can easily understand the hazards and risks involved and replicate the processes safely.

Even though a chemical may carry a “significant risk” and must be reported does not mean it cannot be used. Laboratory hazards and risks can be managed using RAMP methodology: Recognize hazards, Assess and Minimize risks, and Prepare for emergencies.⁷ Chemistry professionals must therefore be proficient in evaluating hazards, conducting assessments, and mitigating any identified risks. ACS recognizes this in both the Society’s Core Value of Safety and their position statement on safety in the chemical enterprise.⁸