First published on January 1, 2004
Most recently revised on January 8, 2018

Table of contents

• • Conflict-of-interest statement
• • Statement of human and animal rights
• • Statement of informed consent and Institutional Review Board approval
• • Registration of clinical trial research
• • Authorship
• • Originality and duplicate publication
• • Secondary publication
• • Management of research and publication misconduct

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

1. Conflict-of-Interest statement

A conflict of interest exists when an author or the author’s institution, reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence or bias his or her actions. Such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties. These relationships vary from negligible in impact to having a great potential for influencing judgment. Not all relationships represent true conflicts of interest. That said, the potential for a conflict 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, or the science itself. Conflicts can occur for other reasons as well, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). If any conflicts of interest exist, the authors should disclose them in the manuscript. Conflicts of interest may also arise during the research process; these are similarly important to disclose. If a disclosure is made, the editors, reviewers, and readers can approach the manuscript with a full understanding of the situation and the background of the completed research.

2. Statement of human and animal rights

Clinical research should be performed in accordance with the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, as outlined in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised in 2013) (available at: https://www.wma.net/policy). Clinical studies that do not align with the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. For article publication, any identifiable information of human participants, such as patient names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information, should not be disclosed. For studies involving 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.

3. Statement of informed consent and Institutional Review Board approval

Copies of written informed consent statements should be kept for studies involving human participants. Clinical studies with human subjects require a certificate, agreement, or documented approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s affiliated institution. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct.

4. Registration of clinical trial research

Any research dealing with a clinical trial should be registered with a primary national clinical trial registry site, such as the Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CriS, http://cris.nih.go.kr), another primary national registry site accredited by the World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/ictrp/network/), or ClinicalTrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov/), a service of the United States National Institutes of Health. However, if the educational intervention does not harm the participants, it may be waived. This registration can be negotiated with the editor according to the characteristics of the educational intervention.

5. Authorship and contributorship

Authorship credit should be based on: 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, data acquisition, or data analysis and interpretation; 2) article drafting or critical revision 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 4 conditions. If the article has 2 or more authors, the role of each should be listed in the submitted paper. The roles of co-first authors or co-corresponding authors are also accepted if the corresponding author believes that these are applicable in contributing to the manuscript. The authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process. If anyone is not enough to be listed in the authorship, they can be listed in the contributorship at the separate heading in the end note.

6. Originality and duplicate publication

All submitted manuscripts should be original and should not be under consideration by other scientific journals for publication. No part of the accepted manuscript should be duplicated in any other scientific journal without permission of the Editorial Board, although the figures and tables can be used freely if the original source is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License. All authors must resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from another journal that is not open access.

7. Secondary publication

A manuscript may be republished if it satisfies the conditions for secondary publication under the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), available at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html. These conditions are as follows:

• • The authors have received approval from the editors of both journals (the editor concerned with the secondary publication must have access to the primary version).
• • The priority for the primary publication is respected by a publication interval negotiated by the editors of both journals and the authors.
• • The paper for secondary publication is intended for a different group of readers; an abbreviated version could suffice.
• • The secondary version faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the primary version.
• • The secondary version informs readers, peers, and documenting agencies that the paper has been published in whole or in part elsewhere—for example, with a note that might read, “This article is based on a study first reported in the [journal title, with full reference]”—and the secondary version cites the primary reference.
• • The title of the secondary publication should indicate that it is a secondary publication (complete or abridged republication or translation) of a primary publication. Of note, the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) does not consider translations as “republications” and does not cite or index them when the original article was published in a journal that is indexed in MEDLINE.

8. Management of research and publication misconduct

When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct, such as a redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, discovery of an ethical problem with the submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, or other issues, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The Editorial Board of JEEHP will discuss the suspected cases and reach a decision. JEEHP will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.