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

3.1 Authorship

The authors must ensure that they have met all the preconditions listed below before submitting a manuscript: (1) concept and design, or analysis and interpretation; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) approved the final version to be published; and (4) agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work and ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Group members who do not meet these criteria for authorship should be listed, with their permission, under “Acknowledgments.”

After submitting a manuscript, any changes in authorship (adding or deleting author or authors, or rearranging the order of authors) must be explained through a letter, signed by all the authors, to the editor of KJFM.

Every author must also complete the copyright assignment.

• Corresponding author and first author: KJFM allows multiple corresponding authors and first authors for one article.

3.2 Originality and Duplicate Publication

A paper that has been published in another journal, or is under consideration for publication elsewhere will be rejected. In instances where the paper contains similar work that has been reported in another publication, or has been published in the journal, the author should include copies of such material along with the submitted paper. The Editorial Committee of KJFM will decide whether to republish the submitted paper, and then consider its acceptance.
• CrossCheck: KJFM is a member of CrossCheck (powered by iThenticate). CrossCheck is a multipublisher initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality. An accepted manuscript is screened against the CrossCheck database.

3.3 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).

3.4 Conflict of Interest Statement and Financial Disclosures

The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connection with companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, mention about funds received and used for research purposes at the bottom of the cover page. All authors must disclose all interests related to research such as consultation fees and stocks when submitting the paper and affirm the disclosure, if at all, by signing the paper.

3.5 Statement of Informed Consent and Institutional Review Board Approval

If the research involves human subjects, it must comply with the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration adopted in 1964 (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/); and, in principle, undergo scrutiny of an independent Institutional Review Board (IRB), which reviews ethical issues of human subject studies. In human subject studies, IRB’s approval and patient’s consent must be received and stated on paper. Description materials including photographs should not disclose the patient’s name, initials, and hospital identification number.

3.6 Process to Manage Research and Publication Misconduct

In 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 issues with a submitted manuscript, appropriation of an author’s idea or data, and complaints against editors, the resolving process will be as per the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The Editorial Board’s decision on the suspected cases will be final.

3.7 Editorial Responsibilities

The Editorial Board will continuously work toward monitoring/safeguarding publication ethics. These include guidelines for retracting articles; maintaining integrity of the academic record; precluding business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed; and detecting plagiarism and fraudulent data. Editors will always have the responsibility and authority to accept/reject articles, determine any conflict of interest for the articles they accept/reject, accept a paper when reasonably certain, publish corrections or retract articles when errors are found; and preserve the anonymity of reviewers.