Table of Contents
Research ethics
Manuscripts with the following violation of research ethics cannot be published either online or in paper form of the KJPBT.
- • Forgery (fabrication): recording or reporting on made-up data or research results that do not exist.
- • Alteration (falsification): manipulating research data, equipment, processes, or results intentionally to distort research contents or results.
- • Plagiarism: using others’ ideas, research processes, contents, and/or results without proper authorization or citations.
Statement of human and animal rights and informed consent
Any reports or studies involving humans or animals should be approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) or the Animal Care Committee, respectively, of the institution(s) where the research was conducted. The KJPBT will not consider publishing any reports on studies involving humans or animals which have not received appropriate approval. Informed consent should be obtained from patients who participated in the clinical investigations, unless the relevant IRB waivered this requirement. Human subjects' names, initials, hospitals, dates of birth, or other personal or identifying information should not be used. Images of human subjects should not be used unless the information is essential for scientific purposes, and explicit permission has been provided. Even when consent is provided, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, authors should ensure that such alterations do not distort scientific meaning. If consent has not been obtained, it is generally insufficient to anonymize a photograph simply by using eye bars or blurring the face of the individual concerned. If the experiments involve animals, the research should be based on national or institutional guidelines for animal care and use. A statement describing whether the study was conducted with the approval of the IRB (with or without patient informed consent) or animal care committee must be provided in manuscripts describing human or animal research, respectively. The KJPBT may also request documentation of approval by the IRB or the Animal Care Committee for other types of articles when necessary. The content of each article is the responsibility of the authors and not of the KJPBT.
Originality and duplicate publication
Manuscripts that are under review or published by other journals will not be accepted for publication in the KJPBT. Any part of the accepted manuscript should not be duplicated in any other scientific journal without permission from the Editorial Board, although the figures and tables can be used freely if the original source is verified according to the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from another journal that is not open access.
Secondary publication
It is possible to republish the manuscript if it satisfies the condition of secondary publication of the recommendations from the ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html). 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 must 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 one 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 should faithfully reflect 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 be: “This article is based on a study first reported in the [title of journal, with full reference].” Permission for such secondary publication should be free of charge. The title of the secondary publication should indicate that it is a secondary publication (complete republication, abridged republication, complete translation, or abridged translation) of a primary publication. Of note, the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) does not consider translations to be “republications” and does not cite or index translations when the original article was published in a journal that is indexed in Medline. Editors of the journals that simultaneously publish in multiple languages should understand that NLM indexes the primary language version. When the full text of an article appears in more than one language in a journal issue (such as Canadian journals with the article in both English and French), both languages are indicated in the Medline citation (for example, Mercer K. The relentless challenge in health care. Health Manage Forum. 2008 Summer;21(2):4-5. English, French. No abstract available. PMID:18795553.)
Authorship
All authors must have made a significant intellectual contribution to the manuscript according to the criteria formulated by the ICMJE. Each author should have sufficiently participated in the work to take public responsibility for the content. 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; (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. All authors should meet criteria 1, 2, 3, and 4. All authors must state that they have approved the final submitted draft.
- • Author contributions: Author contributions should be written according to "Contributor Roles in CRediT" format (https://casrai.org/credit/).
- • Contributors: Any researcher who does not meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship discussed above but contributes 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.
- • Correction of authorship: Any changes to the author list after submission, such as a change in the order of the authors or the deletion or addition of authors, should only be made before the manuscript has been accepted and must be approved by the Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) an explanation for the change to the author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal, or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.
- • Role of the corresponding 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 are met, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements. 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, additional information, or questions about the article.
Use of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies
The KJPBT has adopted policies, as specified by the ICMJE, regarding the use of AI in the preparation of materials intended for publication in the journal. Generative AI, including language models, chatbots, image creators, machine learning, and similar technologies, can be employed to enhance readability and language accuracy in scientific writing. However, chatbots or other AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as authors.
The Editorial Board does not permit the use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts. Adjustments, such as brightness, contrast, or color balance, are acceptable if they do not obscure the original information. Exceptions apply if AI is integral to the research design or methods, for which case details must be provided in the Methods section. Authors should adhere to AI software policies and be asked for pre-AI-adjusted versions of images for editorial review. Authors are required to disclose whether AI-assisted technologies were used in the production of the submitted work at the time of the manuscript submission. It must be clearly reported in a dedicated section of the Methods section, or in the Acknowledgements section for article types lacking a Methods section. This disclosure provides details about the specific tools used, including the model name, version, and manufacturer, along with an explanation of the capacity in which they were utilized. Authors should guarantee that there is no plagiarism of text or images in the materials produced by AI. It is unacceptable to cite AI-generated materials as the primary source.
Registration of clinical trial research
Any research involving a clinical trial should be registered with a primary national clinical trial registration site such as CRIS (https://cris.nih.go.kr/cris/index/index.do) or other primary national registry sites accredited by the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform) or clinicaltrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov/), a service of the United States National Institutes of Health.
Conflicts of interest
A conflict of interest is present when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) their actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). The impact of these relationships can vary from being negligible to having a great potential for influencing reporting or judgment. Not all relationships represent true conflicts of interest. But the potential for a conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects their scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and are the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, authors, and science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). Authors must disclose any potential conflicts of interest in the manuscript. Conflicts of interest may occur during the research process; however, disclosure itself is an important point that can negate the conflict. Disclosure allows the editors, reviewers, and readers to approach the manuscript with an understanding of the situation in which the research work was performed.
Management of research and publication misconduct
When the journal comes across suspected cases of research or publication misconduct, such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, the use of fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, or complaints against editors, a resolution process will be undertaken. The resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). Discussions and decisions regarding suspected cases of research or publication misconduct will be conducted by the Editorial Board.
Editorial responsibilities
The Editorial Board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics through guidelines for retracting articles; the maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; ensuring that business needs do not compromise intellectual or ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and ensuring that there is no plagiarism or fraudulent data in publications. Editors have the following responsibilities: the responsibility and authority to reject/accept articles, to ensure the absence of conflicts of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept, the acceptance of a paper when reasonably certain, the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found, and the preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.
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