For the policies on research and publication ethics, the “Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals” (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=13) or the “Ethical Guidelines on Good Publication” (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) or “Ethical Considerations in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors” (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations) are applied.
1. Conflict-of-interest statement
The corresponding author is required to summarize all authors’ conflict of interest disclosures. Disclosure form shall be same with ICMJE Uniform Disclosure Form for Potential Conflicts of Interest (www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest). A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence (or bias) the author’s decisions, work, or manuscript. All authors should disclose their conflicts of interest, 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 conflicts of interest must be included as a footnote on the title page or in the Acknowledgements section.
All sources of funding should be declared on the title page or in the Acknowledgements section at the end of the text. If an author’s disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is determined to be inaccurate or incomplete after publication, a correction will be published to rectify the original published disclosure statement, and additional action may be taken as necessary.
If one or more of editors are involved as authors, the authors should declare conflict of interests.
Ex) AAA has been an editor of the Anesthesia and Pain Medicine since 2017; however, he was not involved in the peer reviewer selection, evaluation, or decision process of this article. No other potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
2. Statement of informed consent
Copies of written informed consents and Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for clinical research are recommended kept. The editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to make potential ethical issues clear.
3. Protection of privacy, confidentiality, and written informed consent
Identifying details should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or his/her parents or guardian) provides written informed consent for publication. Additionally, informed consent should be obtained in the event that anonymity of the patient is not assured. For example, masking the eye region of patients in photographs is not adequate to ensure anonymity. If identifying characteristics are changed to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning. When informed consent has been obtained, this should be indicated in the published article.
4. Protection of human and animal rights
In the reporting of experiments that involve human subjects, it should be stated that the study was performed according to the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised 2013) (Available from https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/ ) and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the institution where the experiment was performed. Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. Identifying details should not be published (such as name, initial of name, ID numbers, or date of birth).
In the case of an animal study, a statement should be provided indicating that the experimental processes, such as the breeding and the use of laboratory animals, were approved by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) of the institution where the experiment was performed or that they did not violate the rules of the REC of the institution or the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council, https://www.nap.edu/catalog/5140/guide-for-thecare-and-use-oflaboratory-animals). The authors should preserve raw experimental study data for at least 1 year after the publication of the paper and should present this data if required by the Editorial Board.
5. Registration of the clinical research
All prospective studies must be registered in the primary registry before submission. APM accepts registration in any of the primary registries that participate in the World Health Organization (WHO) International Clinical Trials Portal (http://www.who.int/ictrp/en), NIH ClinicalTrials.gov (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov), or Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CRiS, http://cris.nih.go.kr).
6. Reporting guidelines
The APM recommends a submitted manuscript to follow reporting guidelines appropriate for various study types. Good sources for reporting guidelines are the EQUATOR Network (www.equatornetwork.org) and the NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives (www.nlm.nih.gov/services/research_report_guide.html).
7. Author and authorship
An author is considered as an individual who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study and whose authorship continues to have important academic, social, and financial implications.
Authorship credit should be based on: (1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; (2) the drafting of the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) agreement on taking accountability for the accuracy or integrity of the work. Authors should meet these four criteria. and these criteria distinguish the authors from other contributors.
Correction of authorship after publication: APM does not correct authorship after publication unless a mistake has been made by the editorial staff. Authorship may be changed before publication but after submission when an authorship correction is requested by all of the authors involved with the manuscript.
When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments section.
8. Plagiarism and duplicate publication
Plagiarism is the use of previously published material without attribution. Prior to peer review, all manuscripts are screened for plagiarism by the Editor-in-Chief using iThenticate. When plagiarism is detected at any time before publication, the APM editorial office will take appropriate action as directed by the standards set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). For additional information, please visit http://www.publicationethics.org. Text copied from previously published work is interpreted using the following taxonomy:
Manuscripts are only accepted for publication if they have not been published elsewhere. Manuscripts published in this journal should not be submitted for publication elsewhere. Duplicate submissions identified during peer review will be immediately rejected. Duplicate submissions that are discovered after publication will be retracted. It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from a different journal that is not open access.
When duplicate publication is detected, the APM editorial office will notify the counterpart journal on this violation. Additionally, it will be notified to the authors’ affiliation and penalties will be imposed on the authors. It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the condition of secondary publication of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, available at: www.icmje.org. If the author or authors wish to obtain a duplicate or secondary publication for reasons such as publication for readers of a different language, the author(s) should obtain approval from the Editors-in-Chief of both the first and second journal.