Review and handling procedures related to all research ethics including ethics regulations and plagiarism, duplicate publication, and research misconduct will be followed according to the ‘Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr/)’ stipulated by the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE).

1) Ethical Review and Informed Consent
If the research involves human participants, it must comply with the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki (adopted in 1964; amended in 2008; https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/) and in principle must undergo scrutiny of an independent Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Research Ethics Committee (ERC) which reviews the ethical issues of the human experiment. However, in clinical studies, the approval of the IRB or ERC and participant's consent must be received and specified in the text.

2) Privacy and Confidentiality
Every author must protect privacy and confidentiality of study participants. The personal information regarding the identity of a study participant must not be disclosed in any form: article, photo or pedigree. However, if a study participant’s personal information is indispensable as scientific information, it must be explained to the study participant or his/her legal guardian, written informed consent should be obtained from him/her before publication, and his/her approval must be specified in a published article. At the time of explanation, a manuscript to be published, including photos, must be offered to a study participant and be approved by him/her. Description materials including photographs should not disclose study participant’s name, english initials, and hospital identification number.

3) Redundant Publication/Duplicate Submission
An article that has been already reported in another journal or is being reviewed by another journal, and an article that has a redundant material previously published in the journal will be rejected. If the article contains similar work that has already been reported in another publication or has been published in the journal, the author should include copies of such material along with the submitted article. The Editorial Committee will decide on the matter of secondary publication of the submitted article and then consider for its acceptance. Also, the author can not submit a published article to another journal without authorization. Only under the conditions for secondary publication stipulated in the 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals' this may be allowed.

4) Authorship and Contributorship
Every author must meet the authorship standards set forth in the 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals'. He/she has a duty of verifying that his/her article has not yet been published and is not the same as any existing one. All persons designated as authors must fulfill all three conditions that they had contributed to 1) conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and 3) final approval of the version to be published. All contributors participating in the research not meeting the authorship standards must be listed in 'Acknowledgments' section after receiving their permission. After a manuscript has been submitted, no author could not be added.

5) Conflicts of Interest and Financial Disclosures
Each author has a duty to disclose direct or indirect conflicts of interest in the subject matter discussed in the submitted article. All authors must reveal all possible conflicts of interest that related to research such as consultation fees and stocks when submitting their article and should provide all of their personal signatures to verify that they have revealed so. A financial grant or support received for research purposes should be disclosed at the bottom of the title page, and all conflicts of interest such as consulting fees and stocks associated with study should also be disclosed at the bottom of the title page or in acknowledgment section. The corresponding author is required to confirm whether his/her or his/her co-authors have any conflict of interest to declare, and to provide appropriate details to the Editorial Committee.