Table of Contents

• Statement of Human and Animal Rights
• Statement of Informed Consent and Institutional Approval
• Conflict of Interest Statement
• Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication
• Secondary Publication
• Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
• Disclosure of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Programs
• Process for Managing Research and Publication Misconduct
• Editorial Responsibilities

The Korean Journal of Medicine follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) from ICMJE and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA [http://doaj.org/bestpractice]) if not described otherwise.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights

Clinical research should be conducted in accordance with the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. For human subjects, identifiable information, such as patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, and other protected health care information, should not be disclosed. For animal subjects, research should be performed based on the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. The ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.

Statement of Informed Consent and Institutional Approval

Copies of written informed consent should be kept for studies on human subjects. Clinical studies with human subjects should provide a certificate, an agreement, or the approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s affiliated institution. For research with animal subjects, studies should be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions regarding IRB/IACUC approval and study conduct.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author is responsible for disclosing any financial support or benefit that might affect the content of the manuscript or might cause a conflict of interest. When submitting the manuscript, the author must attach the letter of conflict of interest statement (https://www.ekjm.org/authors/copyright.php). Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connections to companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated.

Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication

Redundant or duplicate publication refers to the publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published. Upon receipt, submitted manuscripts are screened for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication using Crossref Similarity Check. If a paper that might be regarded as duplicate or redundant had already been published in another journal or submitted for publication, the author should notify the fact in advance at the time of submission. Under these conditions, any such work should be referred to and referenced in the new paper. The new manuscript should be submitted together with copies of the duplicate or redundant material to the editorial committee. If redundant or duplicate publication is attempted or occurs without such notification, the submitted manuscript will be rejected immediately. If the editor was not aware of the violations and of the fact that the article had already been published, the editor will announce in the journal that the submitted manuscript had already been published in a duplicate or redundant manner, without seeking the author’s explanation or approval.

Secondary Publication

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the conditions for secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf).

Authorship and Author’s Responsibility

Authorship credit should be based on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, and 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 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.

• • A list of each author’s role should accompany the submitted paper.
  
• • Correction of authorship: Any requests for such changes in authorship (adding author(s), removing author(s), or re-arranging the order of authors) after the initial manuscript submission and before publication should be explained in writing to the editor in a letter or e-mail from all authors. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper. A copyright assignment must be completed by every author.
  
• • Role of corresponding author: The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all of the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing the details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and 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 after publication, 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 article.
  
• • Contributors: Any researcher who does not meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship discussed above but contribute substantively to the study in terms of idea development, manuscript writing, conducting research, data analysis, and financial support should have their contributions listed in the Acknowledgments section of the article.

Disclosure of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Programs

Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs (e.g. ChatGPT or other similar software) cannot be considered as authors of submitted manuscripts because they do not meet the requirements for authorship. For instance, they cannot understand the role of authors or take responsibility for the content of the paper. Additionally, AI cannot meet the authorship criteria set by organizations such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). This includes having the ability to give final approval for publication and being accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.
Furthermore, AI lacks the capacity to comprehend a conflict of interest statement, and cannot legally sign such a statement. Additionally, AI does not have independent affiliation from its creators, nor can it hold copyright.
Therefore, when submitting a manuscript, authors should not include AI as authors but rather acknowledge the use of AI and provide transparent information about how it was used in writing the manuscript. As the field of AI is rapidly evolving, authors using AI should declare this fact and provide specific technical details about the AI model used, including its name, version, source, and the method of application in the manuscript. This is in line with the ICMJE recommendation of acknowledging writing assistance.

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, undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, appropriation by a reviewer of an author’s idea or data, and complaints against editors, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by COPE (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are carried out by the Editorial Board.

Editorial Responsibilities

The Editorial Board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of academic records; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and excluding plagiarized and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; avoid any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promote the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preserve the anonymity of reviewers.