Research and Publication Ethics
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- Research and Publication Ethics
The journal adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) and Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr/intro.php?body=publishing_ethics).
- 1. Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
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Authorship credit should be based on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Authors should meet these four conditions.
After the initial submission of a manuscript, any changes whatsoever in authorship (adding author(s), deleting author(s), or re-arranging the order of authors) must be explained by a letter to the editor from the authors concerned. This letter must be signed by all authors on the paper. Copyright assignment must be completed by every author.
The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely manner, and should be available to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information or questions about the paper even after publication. P&FM does not allow multiple corresponding authors for one article. Only one author should correspond with the editorial office and readers for one article. P&FM does accept notice of equal contribution for the first author when the study was clearly performed by co-first authors. There is no limitation on the number of authors.
- 2. Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication
- Submitted manuscripts must not have been previously published or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. No part of the accepted manuscript should be duplicated in any other scientific journal without the permission of the Editorial Board. Submitted manuscripts are screened for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication by CrossCheck upon arrival. If plagiarism or duplicate publication related to the papers of this journal is detected, the manuscripts may be rejected, the authors will be announced in the journal, and their institutions will be informed. There will also be penalties for the authors.
A letter of permission is required for any and all material that has been published previously. It is the responsibility of the author to request permission from the publisher for any material that is being reproduced. This requirement applies to text, figures, and tables published by any of the authors themselves or used from another source, unless it is in the public domain.
- 3. Secondary Publication
- It is possible to republish manuscripts if they satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html).
- 4. Conflict of Interest Statement
- The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of the data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connections to pharmaceutical companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated.
- 5. Registration of Clinical Trial Research
- It is recommended that any research that deals with a clinical trial be registered with a primary national clinical trial registration site, such as http://cris.nih.go.kr, or other sites accredited by the WHO as listed at http://www.who.int/ictrp/en/.
- 6. Statement of Informed Consent and IRB Approval
- Copies of written informed consent and Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for clinical research should be kept. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct. In addition, for studies conducted with human subjects, the method by which informed consent was obtained from the participants also needs to be stated in the Methods section.
- 7. Statement of Human and Animal Rights
- All human and animal investigations must be conducted according to the principles expressed in the WMA Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/).
- 8. Process for Managing Research and Publication Misconduct
- When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, an undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and so on, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are carried out by the editorial board.
- 9. Editorial Responsibilities
- The editorial board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and excluding plagiarism and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; avoiding any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promoting publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.