The journal adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr/publishing_ethics.html) and Guidelines on Good Publication (http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/guidelines).

Registration of Clinical Trial Research

It is recommended that any research dealing with a clinical trial be registered at on appropriate online public registry. Manuscript with non-registered interventional clinical trials will not be considered for publication.

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.

Ethical Statement

All of the manuscripts should be prepared in strict observation of research and publication ethics guidelines recommended by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org/). Any study reporting the results of human subjects or human data must be conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki, and must be reviewed and approved by a responsible institutional review board (IRB). The authors should describe the title and approval number of the IRB, and should describe about informed consents from the participants in “Ethical Statement” subsection in Materials and Methods section. 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 or study conduct. All studies involving animals must state that the guidelines for the use and care of laboratory animals of the authors’ institution, or any national law, were followed.

Authorship

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. Each author should meet these four conditions.

Originality and Duplicate Publication

All submitted manuscripts should be original and should not be considered by other scientific journals for publication at the same time. 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. 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.

Secondary Publication

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the “ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (http://www.icmje.org/).

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, a fraudulent 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.

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.