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Instructions for Authors — Journal of the Korean Medical Association

Source: https://jkma.org/authors/authors.php

The Journal of the Korean Medical Association (JKMA) is the official peer-reviewed, open-access, monthly journal of the Korean Medical Association (KMA). Manuscripts for submission to the JKMA should be prepared according to the following instructions. For issues not addressed in these instructions, the author is referred to the “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (http//www.icmje.org).

For the policies on the research and publication ethics not stated in these instructions, Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) or Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr) can be applied.

Conflict of interest exists when an author or the author’s institution, reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions. Such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties. These relationships vary from being negligible to having great potential for influencing judgment. Not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. On the other hand, the potential for conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony, are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion (http://icmje.org). If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should disclose them in the manuscript. The conflict of interest may occur dur-ing research process; however, important point is the disclosure itself. If there is a disclosure, editors, reviewers, and reader can approach the manuscripts after understanding the situation where the research work was processed.

Clinical research should be done in accordance of the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, outlined in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised 2013, (https://www.wma.net). Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. Human subjects should not be identifiable, such that patientsʼ names, initials, hospital num-bers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare 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, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.

Copies of written informed consents should be kept for studies on human subjects. For the clinical studies of human subjects, there should be a certificate, agreement, or approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of authorʼs institute. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct.

Any researches that deal with clinical trial should be registered to the primary national clinical trial registration site such as Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CRiS, http://cris.nih.go.kr), other primary national registry sites accredited by World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform) or ClinicalTrial.gov (https://clinicaltrials.gov), a service of the Unite States National Institutes of Health.

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 way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional infor-mation should questions about the paper arise after publication. Authors are responsible for the whole content of each article. Co-authorship should be based on the following 4 criteria:

If any persons who do not meet above four criteria, they may be placed as contributors in Acknowledgments section. Description of co-first authors or co-corresponding authors is also accepted if corresponding author believes that their roles are equally contributed.

Manuscripts under review or published by other journals will not be accepted for publication, and articles published in this journal are not allowed to be reproduced in whole or in part in any type of publication without permission of the Editorial Board. Figures and tables of this journal can be used freely if original source is verified according to Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License. It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from a other journal that is not open access.

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the condition of secondary publication of the “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (http://www.icmje.org/publishing_4overlap.html) as followings: Certain types of articles, such as guidelines produced by governmental agencies and professional organizations, may need to reach the widest possible audience. In such instances, editors sometimes deliberately publish material that is also being published in other journals, with the agreement of the authors and the editors of those journals. Secondary publication for various other reasons, in the same or another language, especially in other countries, is justifiable and can be beneficial provided that the following conditions are met. The authors have received approval from the editors of both journals. The editor concerned with secondary publication must have a photocopy, reprint, or manuscript of the primary version. The priority of the primary publication is respected by a publication interval of at least 1 week, unless specifically negotiated otherwise by both editors.

The paper for secondary publication is intended for a different group of readers; an abbreviated version could be sufficient. The secondary version faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the primary version. The footnote on the title page of the secondary version informs readers, peers, and documenting agencies that the paper has been published in whole or in part and states the primary reference. A suitable footnote might read: “This article is based on a study first reported in the [title of journal, with full reference].”

When the Journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as duplicate publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problem with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and etc., the resolving process will be followed by flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are done by Editorial Board.

Editorial board will continuously work for monitoring/safeguarding publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standard; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed; no plagiarism, no fraudulent data. Editorial board checks manuscripts to confirm the originality of text through Similarity Check. If the value of similarity index is unexpectedly high, it will be screened more precisely on plagiarism or duplicate publication. Editors are always keeping following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to rejected/accept article; no conflict of interest respect to articles they reject/accept; acceptance of a paper when reasonably certain; promoting publication of correction or retraction when errors are found; preservation of anonymity of reviewers.

Research article and practice guideline all medical researchers around the world. Correspondence can be submitted by any researchers or physicians. No qualification of authors is required for com-missioned articles.

Manuscripts for the Journal can be prepared in Korean or in English. In the case of Korean text, all tables, figures, and references should be prepared in English. Medical terminology should be written based on the most recent edition of Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary. Korean medical terms should be selected from the most recent edition of English-Korean Korean-English Medical Terminology published by KMA (http://term.kma.org). Vocabulary difficult to translate into Korean can be used in English. Abbreviations in English should be minimized, but when needed, write the full expression the first time it appears followed by its abbreviation in parentheses. Manuscripts submitted in Korean may be translated into English by the editorial office for publication, and the translated manuscripts are the responsibility of the corresponding author of the original paper.

The Journal publishes Opinion, Review article on focused issues, Continuing education column, Pharmacotherapeutics, Research article, Practice guideline, Special contribution, Health technology, Health statistics of Korea, Medicine and Humanity, and Correspondence. Most manuscripts are commissioned but those of publication types such as Research article, Practice guideline, Special contribution, Health technology, Health statistics of Korea, Medicine and Humanity, and Correspondence may be unsolicited.

Opinion

It deals with views on the health care-related situation that might interest general physicians or specialists in specific fields. The selection of the subject and the assignment of the author are handled by the editorial committee or by an academic society commissioned by the editorial committee.

Review article in focused issue of this month

It covers a review that organizes up-to-date medical knowledge based on literature that can help general physicians as well as specialists in specific fields. The subject is recommended to have a multidisciplinary nature, and consists of three to five detailed subject papers. It is recommended that experts of various fields participate in detailed topic papers. The editorial committee or an academic society commissioned by the editorial com-mittee will handle the selection of the entire subject, the composition of the detailed subject, and the assignment of authors of the detailed subject.

Continuing education column

It is for the official continuing medical education (CME) for physicians in Korea who should attend the CME courses. It easily explains the latest important medical knowledge that can be helpful to general physicians as well as specialists in specific fields. The study of this section and the dispatch of the answers to questions will be substitutes of the credits for CME. The selection of the subject and the assignment of the author are handled by the editorial committee or by an academic society commissioned by the editorial committee.

Pharmacotherapeutics

It covers a review paper that outlines up-to-date literature on drug therapy that can help general physicians as well as specialists in specific fields. The selection of the subject and the assignment of the author are handled by the editorial committee or by an academic society commissioned by the editorial committee.

Research article

It is an unsolicited publication. Manuscripts should be original and fall into one of the three categories: First, important clinical studies directly related to patient care; second, epidemiological data supporting evidence-based medicine; and third, highly practical translational research. We are particularly interested in the results of the first clinical trial among Korean people or well-standardized and randomly sampled national data.

Practice guideline

Manuscripts with this publication type can be either unsolicited or commissioned. We generally consider guidelines on relatively common diseases that can be encountered by general physicians or primary health care physicians. The content should be evidence-based one. A priority will be given to interdisciplinary works.

Special contribution

Manuscripts not fitting to other publication types may be included.

Health technology

It introduces new medical techniques that is helpful to ge-neral physicians as well as specialists in specific fields. The editorial committee may invite appropriate manuscripts, and the contribution may also be possible.

Health statistics of Korea

Manuscripts with this publication type can be either unsolicited or commissioned. We generally consider a manuscript analyzing the health statistics of Korea.

Medicine and Humanity

It publishes papers in the fields of medicine and the humanities, and may include history, music history, performing arts, philosophy, religion and art history related to medicine, and commemorates and celebrates Korean physicians who have made significant contributions to the development of Korean medicine.

Correspondence

It is a scientific comment on the previously published articles. Anyone can send correspondence to editor on the content of the papers. The response by authors will be followed.

Manuscripts should be prepared as a word-processor computer file with software such as Microsoft Word on 21.0 x 29.7 cm (A4) pages, double-spaced, with 3 cm margins at the top, bottom, and side margins. The text should be prepared in 10 point font.

1) Cover letter

General information about an article and its authors is presented on a cover page. It includes the article title (in Korean & English), running title (in Korean & English), author name (in Korean & English), affiliations of all authors (in Korean & English), and corresponding author (name and e-mail address in English). Title should be concise and distilled to present the content of text. Phrase or sentence type title (less than 10 words) is eligible.

2) Abstract

Abstract is written in English (160-250 words including subheadings).

The composition of English abstract according to the type of publication is as follows.

3) Keywords

At the bottom of the abstract, English and Korean keywords are listed in 3-5 words. English keywords are recommended to be selected in the list of Medical Subject Heading (MeSH, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh). Korean keywords are recommend to be selected in the list of the KMA medical terminology version 6 (http://term.kma.org).

4) Main text

The text should be prepared using the following format.

5) Tables and figures

Tables and figures should be prepared in English and numbered in the order they are cited in the text. The title of a table should appear above the table, and the title and explanation of a figure should appear below it. Notes at the bottom of tables should be in the order of abbreviations and superscripts. Superscripts a), b), c), d)… should appear to the right of words. Statistical values are given in a format of an average with its standard deviation (SD) or standard error (SE). For photomicrography figures, staining methods, magnification values, and reference scales should be given. When a figure is com-posed of more than 2 figure parts, each figure may be captioned separately [e.g., Figure 1A. Chest radiograph shows …; Figure 1B. Transverse CT scan demonstrates …] or together using a parenthesis [e.g., Figure 1 (A,B) CT scans obtained at levels of great vessels (A) and main bronchi (B), respectively, show …]. Figures' contrast should be at least 600 dpi with a width of 81 mm. Recommended format of figure is TIFF. When quoting tables and figures from other literature, the cited literature should be listed in the Reference list, and the citation and permission should be described. When photographs of patients were used, informed consents should be obtained from the patients.

6) ORCID

Open Researchers and Contributors ID (ORCID) of all authors should be described. (Example: Gil-Dong Hong, http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1234-5678). Authors without ORCID have to register at http://orcid.org.

7) Conflict of interest

The corresponding author should describe any potential conflicts of interest. Examples are financial support from any pharmaceutical companies and political pressures from any interest groups. When there is no conflicts of interest, the authors should describe such as “No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.”.

8) Acknowledgments

If the paper was supported by various research funds, the details of the research funds shall be described. Although the role does not eligible as authors, the name and role of the contributors shall be described.

9) References

References should be in English. It should follow the Vancouver style and listed consecutively in the order they are cited in the text. Journal names should be abbreviated according to the journal list of United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) avail-able from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez and the list of KoreaMed Journals available from: http://www.koreamed.org. If a reference has up to six authors, include them all. If there are more than six authors, list the first three, followed by "et al.". For reference formatting issues not described here, the NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov should be followed. The number of references according to the type of publication is as follows. Opinion, Focused issue, Continuing education, Pharmacotherapeutics, Special contribution, Health statistics, Health technology (less than 50), Research article, Practice guideline (less than 80), Medicine and Humanity, Correspondence (less than 10).

Entire book

Kim JS. Cerebral stroke. Garim Publishing Co; 2001.

Chapter in a book

Lee SH. Role of chemotherapy on brain metastasis. In: Kim DG, Lunsford LD, editors. Current and future management of brain metastasis. Karger; 2012. p. 110-114.

Online data

Food and Drug Administration. MedWatch. Accessed June 13, 2007. http://www.fda.gov/medwatch

Authors are requested to submissions should be made using the online posting system. Before submission, check list should be checked by authors.

Invited manuscripts are exempt from article processing charge. Korean authors who are members of the Korean Medical Association and have paid annual dues for at least three years will be charged 1,000,000 KRW per paper. All other Korean contributors will be invoiced 1,400,000 KRW before publication. Foreign authors are charged a fee of USD 1,000 for submitted manuscripts.

Each manuscript is peer-reviewed by two independent referees. If statistical analysis of data is included, a statistician will be additionally asked to review the manuscript. A decision to accept or reject manuscripts will be made by the Editorial Board. The review and publication processes that are not described in the Instructions to Authors will incorporate the Editorial Policy Statements Approved by the Council of Science Editors Board of Directors (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/). During peer review process, followings are required to reviewers: reviewers’ opinion should be objective; reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders; reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited; reviewed article should be treated confidentially.

The copyright of the whole content of papers published in the Journal belongs to KMA and all authors should sign the copyright transfer form when their manuscript is submitted. The journal also follows the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License as an open access journal.

The journal follows the ethical guidelines for research and publication outlined in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines), the ICMJE Recommendations (https://www.icmje.org), and the Good Publication Practice Guideline for Medical Journals (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=13) if not mentioned below. All procedures for addressing research and publication misconduct adhere to the COPE flowcharts (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

All designated authors should meet the criteria for authorship and be appropriately listed. Authorship credit should be based on substantial contributions to all four categories established by the ICMJE: (1) conception and design, or acquisition, 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 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. Individuals who do not meet these criteria may be acknowledged as contributors in the Acknowledgments section. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, and general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship.

All submitted manuscripts must be original and not under consideration by other journals. Accepted manuscripts should not be duplicated in any other journal without permission from the Editorial Board. If duplicate publication is detected, the authors will be publicly announced, their institutions will be informed, and penalties will be imposed. We do not consider posting on a preprint server to be duplicate publication, and it will not affect the manuscript's consideration for publication.

Plagiarism: A similarity check is used to screen manuscripts for plagiarism or duplicate publication. Plagiarism is defined as reproducing another work without attribution. If plagiarism is detected before, during, or after acceptance, or after publication, the author will have the opportunity for rebuttal. Unsatisfactory rebuttals will result in retraction and a publication ban for a period determined by the editor(s). Figures and tables can be used freely if the original source is verified according to the Creative Commons Non-Commercial License. Authors must resolve any copyright issues when citing figures or tables from non-open-access journals.

Manuscripts can be republished if they meet the ICMJE Recommendations for secondary publication available from https://www.icmje.org/:

The corresponding author must ensure that any conflicts of interest related to the submitted manuscript are disclosed in the manuscript and take responsibility for this disclosure. Potential conflicts should be reported even if the authors believe they were not influenced in preparing the manuscript. All authors must disclose, i.e., (1) financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony), (2) personal relationships, (3) academic competition, and (4) intellectual passion. These disclosures should be included on the title page. A completed conflict of interest form should be submitted during manuscript submission.

Investigations involving humans must be conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/). Clinical studies not adhering to the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. For animal research, studies must comply with the National or the Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, ensuring the ethical treatment of all experimental animals.

Research involving humans or animals must be approved by the institution's Research Ethics Committee (REC), Institutional Review Board (IRB), or Animal Care Committee. For human studies, informed consent must be obtained, unless the IRB waives it. Copies of written informed consent (from the patient, or from a parent or guardian if the patient is not capable) and IRB approval should be retained. Editors or reviewers may request these documents. The manuscript must explicitly state that written informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study. For animal studies, approval from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) is required.

Patients have the right to privacy, which must not be violated without their informed consent. Identifying information, such as names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published unless it is essential for scientific purposes and obtained with written informed consent from the patient (or their parent or guardian). Nonessential identifying details should be omitted. If there is any doubt about maintaining anonymity, informed consent is necessary, as masking the eye region in photographs is inadequate. If identifying characteristics are deidentified, authors must assure, and editors must confirm, that these changes do not distort scientific meaning.

Any research involving a clinical trial should be registered with the primary national clinical trial registry site, such as the Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CRiS, http://cris.nih.go.kr), any other primary national registry site accredited by the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/network), or ClinicalTrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov/), a service of the United States NIH.

When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct, such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, ethical problems with the submitted manuscript, a reviewer appropriating an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and other issues, resolution processes will follow the applicable COPE flowchart (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). Suspected cases will be discussed and decided upon by the Editorial Board of the journal.

The Editorial Board is committed to upholding publication ethics by continuously monitoring and safeguarding ethical standards. This includes retracting articles when necessary, maintaining the integrity of the academic record, and ensuring that business needs do not compromise intellectual and ethical standards. The Board is also responsible for publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed, and for preventing plagiarism and fraudulent data in publications. Editors have the responsibility and authority to accept or reject articles. They must avoid any conflicts of interest with respect to the articles they evaluate and ensure the accuracy of accepted papers. Additionally, editors are responsible for promoting the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found and for preserving the anonymity of reviewers.

For the consideration of research ethics and related issues, the journal operates a Research Ethics Council (the Council). The Chairperson of the Publication Committee of the JKMA serves as the chair of the Council. The journal's editorial board determines the composition of the Council, and regulations set by the Council govern its operations. The roles of the Research Ethics Council are as follows:

Manuscript title: _____________

Please check ( * V*  ) all the following items before submission of the manuscript.

1. General guidelines

2. Title, Running title, Authors, ORCID

3. Abstract, Keywords

4. Main text

5. References

6. Tables and figures

7. When submitting Research article, all three items in this criteria should be satisfied.

Criteria for research article submission. All two item numbers should be satisfied.

| No. | Item | Yes or No | | | 1 | The study falls into one of three categories | Clinical study directly linked to patient care | | | Epidemiological data or health policy supporting evidencebased medicine | ||| | Highly practical translational research | ||| | 2 | The study falls into one of two categories | First study among Korean people | | | Well-standardized and randomly sampled | |||

Home E-submission Sitemap Contact us ABOUT Aims and scope General information Editorial board Management team Disclaimer Contact us BROWSE ARTICLES Current issue All issues Ahead of print Most read article Most downloaded articles Most cited articles Data sharing articles Funded articles Article type Author index Advanced search Metrics JOURNAL POLICIES Publishing policies Research and publication ethics Best practice FOR CONTRIBUTORS Instructions for authors Author’s checklist E-submission Article-processing charge For reviewers Search J Korean Med Assoc Search CLOSE Manuscript submission Page Path Home For contributors Manuscript submission Authors are requested to submit their manuscript via email to [email protected] . Journal Impact Factor 0.5 ABOUT Aims and scope General information Editorial board Management team Disclaimer Contact us BROWSE ARTICLES Current issue All issues Ahead of print Most read article Most downloaded articles Most cited articles Data sharing articles Funded articles Article type Author index Advanced search Metrics EDITORIAL POLICY Publishing policies Research and publication ethics Best practice FOR CONTRIBUTORS Instructions for authors Author’s checklist E-submission Article-processing charge For reviewers

Clinical research should be done in accordance of the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, outlined in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised 2013, http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3). Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. Human subjects should not be identifiable, such that patientsʼ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare 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, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.

The Journal of the Korean Medical Association (JKMA) is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to upholding the following policies to maintain its high standards.

It is available at https://jkma.org/authors/authors.php

When preparing a revised version of your manuscript, carefully follow the instructions provided in the editor's letter. Submit an annotated copy that describes the changes you have made. Failure to do so may delay the decision on your revision. If references, tables, or figures are moved, added, or deleted during the revision process, renumber them to ensure all citations remain in numeric order.

Revised manuscript submissions should include a point-by-point response to reviewer comments. Authors should describe how each reviewer's comment was addressed or explain why it was not addressed, and clearly indicate which paragraph in the manuscript was revised according to each comment. The response to reviewers will be shared with all reviewers. If certain data should not be included in the manuscript, authors may provide the data supporting their argument in the response to reviewers’ file.

The annotated copy should have changes highlighted (not by using the Track Changes function in MS Word, but by marking them) with notes in the text referring to the editor or reviewer query.

Corresponding authors who wish to withdraw a manuscript after submission must provide a signed letter indicating that they represent the wishes of all authors. Manuscripts will remain under consideration until the journal office receives this written request. Manuscripts cannot be withdrawn after final acceptance, except in cases of scientific error or misconduct.

Appeals against editorial decisions must be submitted within two weeks of receiving the decision letter. Authors should contact the editor-in-chief with detailed reasons for the appeal. Appeals are discussed with at least one associate editor and, if needed, at a full editorial meeting. The process follows COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/appeals). We do not consider second appeals.

Once the manuscript is finally accepted, a proofread version will be sent to the corresponding author after professional editing has been completed. Authors should review the proof for any misspellings or errors. Delayed responses may result in the manuscript's publication being postponed to the next issue.

After corrections have been made, authors will receive the final version of the manuscript as a PDF file. Within two working days of receipt, authors must notify the editorial office (or printing office) of any errors found in the file. The proof may be revised more than once by the corresponding author, if needed. Authors should double-check the content, title, affiliations, capitalization, figure locations, and references for accuracy. Corresponding authors are responsible for any further corrections needed after printing.

To correct errors in published articles, the corresponding author should contact the journal’s editorial office with a detailed description of the proposed correction. Errors can be corrected through an erratum (publisher's errors), a corrigendum (author's errors), or a retraction.

Authors must declare that their work is original and that copyright is not breached. The publisher owns copyright for all published material. Each author must sign the authorship responsibility and copyright transfer agreement, attesting to their adherence to the authorship criteria. The corresponding author submits the Copyright Transfer Form during submission. Authors must obtain and provide written permission for any previously published material. Submitted material will not be returned unless requested.

It is an open-access journal. Articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Authors do not need permission to use tables or figures published in JKMA in other periodicals, books, or media for noncommercial purposes. For any commercial use of material from this open-access journal, permission must be obtained from the publisher at https://jkma.org/about/contact.php.

It is an open-access journal under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), where articles can be shared without embargo. Articles can be shared only as an accepted or published version, as described below.

The accepted version incorporates all amendments made during peer review but precedes the final published version.

The accepted version may be placed on:

It is recommended that the authors include a note and a DOI link on the first page.

The final published version can be shared immediately upon publication under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, permitting unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In accordance with the Korean Library Act, the full text of the journal is archived in the National Library of Korea (NLK; https://www.nl.go.kr/archive/search_eng.do?op=all&kwd=2093-5951). It ensures electronic backup and preservation of journal content through archiving in the NLK. This enables the permanent preservation of JKMA papers and ensures continued access in the event the journal ceases publication.

It encourages data sharing wherever possible to promote openness, transparency, and reproducibility of research. Subject to ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

It adheres to the ICMJE Recommendations for a clinical data sharing statement policy (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/).

Authors may refer to the editorial, “Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials: A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors,” in J Korean Med Sci 2017;32:1051-3 (https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2017.32.7.1051).

It accepts submissions of papers posted on preprint servers. Authors should disclose the preprint's digital object identifier (DOI) in the cover letter or title page during submission. Authors should not post an updated version of the paper to a preprint server during the peer review process. If accepted, update the preprint with a link to the published article in JKMA, including the DOI. Authors are strongly recommended to cite the published article in JKMA rather than the preprint in future journal submissions.

It follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/guidance) for this process, if not described as below:

It aims to ensure the integrity of the academic record of all published or potential publications. Whenever it is recognized that a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement, or distorted report has been published, it must be corrected promptly and with due prominence. If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, it should be retracted. The retraction should be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems.

Errors in published papers may be identified in the form of a corrigendum or erratum when the Editor-in-Chief considers it appropriate to inform the journal readership about a previous error and makes a correction to the error in the published article. The corrigendum or erratum will appear as a new article in the journal and will cite the original published article.

An article may be retracted when the sincerity of the published work is undermined due to errors in the conduct, analysis, and/or reporting of the study. Violation of publication or research ethics may also result in a study’s retraction. The original article is marked as retracted, but a PDF version remains available to readers, and the retraction statement is bi-directionally linked to the original published paper. Retraction statements will typically include a statement of assent or dissent from the authors.

Where a certain amount of doubt arises as to the honesty or integrity of a submitted or published article, journal editors may issue an expression of concern. However, it should only be issued if an investigation into the problems relating to the article has proven inconclusive and if there are strong indicators that the concerns are valid.

Crossmark is an initiative to provide a standard way for readers to locate the current version of a piece of content. By applying the Crossmark button, JKMA commits to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes, if and when they occur. Clicking on the Crossmark button will inform readers of the current status of a document and may also provide additional publication record information about the document (https://www.crossref.org/documentation/crossmark/crossmark-policy-page/).

It does not accept any commercial product advertisements until policy changes otherwise.

It generally follows the editorial, Huh S. Editorial policies of Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions on the use of generative artificial intelligence in article writing and peer review. J Educ Eval Health Prof. 2023;20.40. doi: 10.3352/jeehp.2023.20.40.

All organizations forbid generative AI from being listed as an author. It also does not allow the authorship of generative AI.

The disclosure of AI use to peer reviewers and editors is optional, not mandatory. Plagiarism checking for AI-generated text is the editor’s responsibility.

Asking authors to verify the use of AI tools is not required. If the authors want to verify it, they can do so at their discretion. The decision depends on the author’s choice. Statistical analysis can now be performed by generative AI platforms. In such cases, authors can incorporate generative AI for statistical programs instead of relying solely on well-known statistical packages. It would be natural to cite generative AIs in this case. Also, provide the source code for the analysis.

If AI tools are thought to be statistical tools or writing tools, it is not required for a journal to disclose an explicit policy about the use of AI-generated text and images. The editors can select items on the policy and modify them accordingly. Therefore, this policy can be optional for editors. However, it has announced its policies about the use of AI-generated text and images.

The author’s accountability is always emphasized in all writing, not only AI-generated writing. All content of the manuscripts or published articles should be under the author’s responsibility.

As authors’ disclosure of the use of generative AI is optional, editors and reviewers do not need to specify this information.

If uploaded manuscripts are not secure, they should not be uploaded for peer review. The problem is that if reviewers upload a manuscript to an AI platform, there is no way for editors to detect it. Therefore, it depends on the reviewer’s choice whether they adhere to this recommendation or not. Furthermore, it is uncertain which generative AIs utilize uploaded manuscripts for their pre-training to improve performance. If there is a lucid statement that a platform does not use uploaded data for pre-training, uploading a manuscript for peer review will be no problem.

There are many tools for this purpose. The editorial office has already used some of them.

This is unnecessary to mention because it is already routine work for authors.

A clear statement regarding the use of AI for research on AI is natural. It should be mentioned in the Methods section.

The data generated by AI cannot be reproduced because generative AI systems evolve rapidly, resulting in varying answers over time. Therefore, using AI-generated data, the answers can be presented as supplemental materials. It is not meaningful to cite AI-generated text or images in the References section because they are not reproducible with the same prompt. To cite AI-generated texts, the texts should be added as a supplement.

It acknowledges generative AI as a research tool. As with authorship, we do not allow authors to list generative AI platforms in the Acknowledgment section.