Research and publication ethics

Regarding policies on research and publication ethics not addressed in these instructions, authors should refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on good publication (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts), the Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals by the ICMJE (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/) or Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (KAMJE, https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=13&per_page=).

Statement of human and animal rights and informed consent

Any investigations involving humans and animals should be approved by the institutional review board (IRB) or institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC), respectively, of the institution where the study took place. In addition, investigations with pathogens requiring a high degree of biosafety should obtain approval by relevant committee (institutional biosafety committee). Informed consent should be obtained, unless waived by the IRB, from patients (or legal guardians) who participated in clinical investigations. Human participants should not be identifiable, such that patients' names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. If experiments involve animals, the research should be based on national or institutional guidelines for animal care and use. Original articles submitted to PEMJ that address any investigation involving humans and animals should include a description about whether the study was conducted under an approval by the IRB (with or without patient informed consent) or IACUC, respectively. IRB no. is required for submission process, and if absent, the process cannot proceed.
PEMJ can request an approval by the IRB or IACUC when necessary. It is noteworthy that a Korean act of bioethics and biosafety was revised on November 11, 2014.

Authorship

The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflicts of interest (COI) forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely manner, and should be available to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information or questions about the paper even after publication. Authors may appeal against the editorial decisions by e-mail (pemoffice@kspem.org). The appeals are processed according to the procedures set by COPE (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts).

Authors must meet all aspects of the following 4 criteria: (1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; (2) Drafting the work 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. Any persons who do not meet any aspect of the above criteria, may be listed as contributors in the Acknowledgments section.

Up to 2 first or corresponding authors are allowed. The footnote should indicate that both first or corresponding authors contributed equally to the paper. The editorial board does not allow adding authors or changing the first or the corresponding authors once manuscripts are accepted. Any change in the byline (addition or deletion of authors, change in the name order) requires a letter signed by all authors indicating agreement with the same. The editorial board has no responsibility for such changes.

Originality and duplicate publication

Manuscripts under review or published by other journals will not be accepted for publication in PEMJ, and articles published in this journal are not allowed to be reproduced in whole or in part in any type of publication without permission of the editorial board. Figures and tables can be used freely if original source is verified according to Creative Commons Non-Commercial License. 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.

Secondary publication

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the condition of secondary publication of ICMJE as followings: certain types of articles, such as guidelines produced by governmental agencies and professional organizations, may need to reach the widest possible audience. In such instances, editors sometimes deliberately publish material that is also being published in other journals, with the agreement of the authors and the editors of those journals. Secondary publication for various other reasons, in the same or another language, especially in other countries, is justifiable and can be beneficial provided that the following conditions are met. The authors should receive approval from the editors of both journals (the editor concerned with secondary publication must have a photocopy, reprint, or manuscript of the primary version). The priority of the primary publication is respected by a publication interval of at least 1 week (unless specifically negotiated otherwise by both editors).

The paper for secondary publication is intended for a different group of readers; an abbreviated version could be sufficient. The secondary version faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the primary version. The footnote on the title page of the secondary version informs readers, peers, and documenting agencies that the paper has been published in whole or in part and states the primary reference. A suitable footnote might read: “This article is based on a study first reported in the title of journal, with full reference.”

Conflicts of interest

COI may exist when an author (or the author’s institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could bias the author’s decisions regarding the manuscript. Authors are expected to provide detailed information about all relevant financial interests and relationships or financial conflicts, particularly those present at the time the research was conducted and through publication, as well as other financial interests (such as patent applications in preparation), that represent potential future financial gain. All disclosures of any potential COI, including specific financial interests and relationships and affiliations (other than those affiliations listed in the title page of the manuscript) relevant to the subject of their manuscript will be disclosed by the corresponding author on behalf of each coauthor, if any, as part of the submission process. Likewise, authors without COI will be requested to state so as part of the submission process. If authors are uncertain about what constitutes a relevant financial interest or relationship, they should contact the editorial board. Failure to include this information in the manuscript will prohibit commencement of the review process of the manuscript. For all accepted manuscripts, each author’s disclosures of COI, relevant financial interests and affiliations, and declarations of no such interests will be published. The policy requesting disclosure of COI applies for all manuscript submissions. If an author’s disclosure of potential COI is determined to be inaccurate or incomplete after publication, an erratum will be published to rectify the original published disclosure statement. Authors are also required to report detailed information regarding all financial and material support for the research and work, including but not limited to grant support, funding sources, and provision of equipment and supplies as part of the submission process. For all accepted manuscripts, each author’s source of funding will be published. The authors should disclose all potential COI. If there is a disclosure, the editors, reviewers, and readers can interpret the manuscripts with this understanding.

If a co-author is in a personal relationship with another (e.g., a person younger than 19 years, a spouse or a first-degree cousin), this should be marked in the byline with related facts written in a footnote. If necessary, the editorial board may request consent to provide personal information from the corresponding author, or an investigation from the affiliated institution. If a research misconduct by co-authors in a personal relationship is confirmed, the related fact can be notified to the relevant institution (e.g., advancement, employment, promotion, and research funding order, etc.) from which the author took advantage.

Process to manage research and publication misconduct

When the editorial board faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as duplicate publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed COI, ethical problem, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and etc., the resolving process will follow the flowchart provided by COPE (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts). The Research Ethics and COI subcommittee makes decisions on suspected cases. The Editor-in-Chief serves as the chairperson of the subcommittee, and the composition of the subcommittee is posted on the journal website. In this process, a debatable matter may be consulted to KAMJE.

Data sharing

The journal encourages authors to state the data sharing in their submission. Authors may state linking to a repository or declaring confidentiality of the data. Since 2019, all manuscripts reporting clinical trials must be submitted with a data sharing statement (Table 1). If authors describe this in their manuscripts, the description will be published alongside their manuscripts.

Table 1. Examples of data sharing statements that fulfill the ICMJE requirements

Intellectual property

All published articles become permanent intellectual properties of the KSPEM, and they may not be published elsewhere without written permission. Copyrights of the articles are owned by the KSPEM. PEMJ is an open access journal. All articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Post-publication discussions and corrections

The post-publication discussion is available via the correspondences. Readers can express a concern about a published article by submitting a correspondence on the article within 8 weeks of publication. In a case of error in the article, it can be corrected through the author’s reply to the correspondence, erratum or retraction.

Preprint policy

PEMJ allows submission of manuscripts that have previously been posted on preprint servers. In such cases, the authors should state the preprint server deposition with DOI in the cover letter. Once the article is published in PEMJ, the preprint should be linked to the PEMJ version via DOI (e.g., “This article has been published in the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Journal following peer review and can be viewed on [DOI].”), and the PEMJ version should be cited, instead of the preprint. Citation of preprint is not allowed.

Use of artificial Intelligence (AI)

Authors may use generative AI and AI-assisted technologies (e.g., ChatGPT) to improve the readability and language in their manuscript. However, such technologies should be used with human oversight and control to ensure that the output generated is accurate. Authors should carefully review and edit the output generated by AI and AI-assisted technologies because the output may be plausible but incorrect. Authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author, nor cite AI as an author because authorship requires the authors to have responsibilities and tasks that can only be endowed to humans. When submitting a manuscript prepared with the help of generative AI, authors should disclose the name of the specific technology used and the scope of its use in the methods or acknowledgements sections. This policy does not apply to the use of basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references, and other routine tasks. Please note that authors are ultimately responsible for the contents of their work, including the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies. By following the policy, authors can ensure that the use of AI in manuscript preparation is transparent, responsible, and compliant with best practices in scientific research.

Editorial responsibilities

The editorial board will continuously work towards monitoring and safeguarding publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; plagiarism screening for all manuscripts (https://crosscheck.ithenticate.com/en_us/login), maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standard; publishing errata, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed; avoiding plagiarism, and fraudulent data. The responsibilities of the editorial board shall include: responsibility and authority to reject or accept article; avoid COI with respect to articles they reject/accept; acceptance of a paper when reasonably certain; promoting publication of erratum or retraction when errors are found; preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.