• The ICMJE defines authorship of academic journals based on the following criteria:
  • 1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the research, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data,
  • 2) Writing a thesis with the research result, or revising important academic points critically
  • 3) Final approval of the draft before publishing
  • 4) Ensuring proper investigation and resolution of issues related to accuracy or integrity and being accountable for all aspects
• Contributors of a thesis not meeting the criteria of authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgements.

• The primary author writes the actual thesis, contributes the most to the thesis and becomes the representative author.
• The corresponding author is a responsible author who editorially supervises details of the overall research thesis and takes the primary responsibility in communicating the research result. Therefore, he or she is also called as a guarantor in some academic circles.
• There is no clear definition for arrangement of authors, but they are ordered according to their contribution degree and some journals may require detailed explanations of each author’s contribution.

• If an author has a conflict of interest in the thesis submitted, the details should be notified to the journal.
• Conflict of Interest refers to the cases in which the author, author’s institution, reviewer, or editor has a financial or personal relationship and has an influence on the review or publication process.
• The statement “the research claims no conflicts of interest” means that the research result is irrelevant in terms of financial gain, influence of external factors, and cheating for positive results.

• Research should be conducted in accordance with the following ethics declarations and laws to ensure the rights of subjects and the rights of laboratory animals.

Rights of Subjects

• In a human-subject research, personal information, photos, family tree, etc. should not be published without the patient’s consent and if necessary for scientific description, informed consent should be obtained.
• If the research is not exempt from review of the Institutional Re-view Board and requires an approval, editors of the journal can require relevant documentation.
  • - Helsinki Declaration of 1975’의 Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (J Korean Med Assoc 2014 November; 57(11): 899-902)
  • - Bioethics and Safety Act (revised in February 2013)

Rights of Laboratory Animals

• Animal researches should follow the guidelines for management and use of laboratory animals as defined by the country or institutions in order to promote scientific use and ethical handling of laboratory animals.
• Animal Protection Act specifies the 3R principle (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement), a general principle for animal testing. (Article 23 of Animal Protection Act)
• Therefore, all animal testing should be conducted in accordance with this principle.
  • - Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals 8^th
  • - Standard Operation Guideline of Animal Experiment Ethics Committee of Animal and Plant Quarantine Agency (revised in December 2017)

• Research results of clinical trials are used as very useful bases in determining medical practices and relevant policies.
• However, in reporting these results, there are concerns that selective reporting and publication distortions occur.
• To prevent this, major countries or research funding organizations around the world operate systems for clinical trial or research registration, mandate relevant laws and regulations and make recommendations through guidelines.
• To secure objectivity of the research results, a growing number of associations require registration of clinical trials before conducting research.

Registry of Public Clinical Trial

• KCDC CRiS
• NIH Clinicaltrials.gov
• ISRCTN Registry
• UMIN Clinical Trials Registry
• WHO ICTRP

• Data Sharing, which is required by the academic society, is the one of the requirements of WHO to increase the transparency of clinical trials and refers to the author’s handling of data sharing.
• The shared data includes a variety of documents and statistical data related to individual patient data and researches and links to data repositories, which can be used by other researchers.
• ICMJE recommended that clinical trials starting to recruit research subjects after January 2019 should include a data sharing plan when registering the clinical trial.
• ICMJE requires the researchers, based on the member journals, to comply with the “sharing of clinical trial raw data”.

Guidelines for data sharing

• WHO Statement on Public Disclosure of Clinical Trial Results
• US National Institutes of Health: Protecting the Rights and Privacy of Human Subjects

Data sharing registry

• DMP Tool (Data Management Plan)
• Harvard Dataverse
• Re3data.org
• Dryad
• figshare
• Open Science Framework
• Zenodo
• Network Data Exchange (NDEx)

Duplicate Submission

• Authors should not submit the same manuscript to more than one academic journal, whether in the same language or different languages.
• The doubly submitted manuscripts may not be agreed between journals over the right of publication and journals may not know the duplicates and conduct the unnecessary review of the same manuscript and publish it.
• The association recommends that authors should verify and clarify whether the manuscript has been published before, part or all of the study has been verbally presented or it has ever been doubly submitted or not.

Duplicate Publications

• Double publication is the publication of a paper that has been substantially overlapped with a paper that has already been published.
• Readers of academic journals have the right to read believe that the applicable paper is original and thus, if it is violated, it violates International Copyright Act, research ethics and effective use of information resources.
• Papers that complete and report letters to journal editors or preliminary reports such as abstracts or posts published at conferences are not considered double publication.
• Papers that complete and report letters to journal editors or preliminary reports such as abstracts or posts published at conferences are not considered double publication.

Secondary Publication

• The second publication of a publication published in another journal is intended to disseminate the relevant academic information to different readerships with the consent of the journal editors
• Examples can be guidelines made by government agencies or professional groups.
• The National Library of Medicine in the US does not consider a translated version as a second publication and if the journal publishing the original paper is indexed on MEDLINE, the translated version is not cited again or indexed.

• Reporting Guidelines for specific research plans developed for various study designs
• Research based on the standard guidelines can help peer review and readers and other researchers understand and evaluate the corresponding research.
• Publishers recommend authors a list that helps check if their studies are designed and executed according to the guidelines.

Research design guideline by research type

• Randomized controlled trials for experimental study : CONSORT(Consolidate Standards of Reporting Trials Statement)
• Observational study : STROBE(Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology)
• Meta-analysis : PRISMA(Transparent Reporting of Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis)
• Diagnosis Research : STARD(Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies)

Search multiple reporting guideline forms

• EQUATOR Network
• NLM Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives

• Provides useful information related to paper preparation, journal publication process and latest trends in the academic and publishing world
  • - Editage Insight
  • - Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors(KAMJE)
  • - Korean Council of Science Editors(KCSE)
  • - International Committee of Medical Journal Editors