Research and publication ethics

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The chief goal of our policy is threefold: to provide advice for our authors, to maintain the scholarly integrity of our journals and their content, and to detail the ethical responsibilities of J Korean Soc Ster Func Neurosurg, our editors and authors. We expect all authors to read and understand our ethics policy before submitting to any of our journals. This is in accordance with our commitment to the prevention of ethical misconduct, which we recognize to be a growing problem in academic and professional publications. It is important to note that most incidents of plagiarism, redundant publication, copyright infringement or similar occur because of a lack of understanding, and not through fraudulent intent. Our policy is one of prevention and not persecution.

Research Ethics

All of the manuscripts should be prepared in strict observation of research and publication ethics guidelines recommended by the Council of Science Editors (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME, http://www.wame.org), and the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE, https://www.kamje.or.kr). Any study including human subjects or human data must be reviewed and approved by a responsible institutional review board (IRB). Please refer to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki, revised in 2013 (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/) for all investigations involving human materials. If ethical approval is not required, authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee that indicates ethics approval is not required for this type of study. For non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys, questionnaires, social media research), all participants must be fully informed if the anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used and if there are any risks associated.

Animal experiments also should be reviewed by an appropriate committee (IACUC) for the care and use of animals. If ethical approval is not required, authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee. The editors will require that the benefits potentially derived from any research causing harm to animals are significant in relation to any cost endured by animals, and that procedures followed are unlikely to cause offense to the majority of readers. Authors should particularly ensure that their research complies with the commonly-accepted '3Rs': Replacement of animals by alternatives wherever possible, Reduction in number of animals used, and Refinement of experimental conditions and procedures to minimize the harm to animals. Authors must include details on housing, husbandry and pain management in their manuscript.

Also studies with pathogens or Cell Lines requiring a high degree of biosafety should pass review of a relevant committee (IBC). Methods sections for submissions reporting on research with cell lines should state the origin of any cell lines. For established cell lines the provenance should be stated and references must also be given to either a published paper or to a commercial source. If previously unpublished de novo cell lines were used, including those gifted from another laboratory, details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval must be given, and confirmation of written informed consent must be provided if the line is of human origin.

In studies of clinical tirals authors must follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ policy and deposit trial information and design into an accepted clinical trial registry before the onset of patient enrollment.

Publication Ethics

The editor of J Korean Soc Ster Func Neurosurg, may request submission of copies of informed consents from human subjects in clinical studies or IRB approval documents. The J Korean Soc Ster Func Neurosurg, will follow the guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, http://publicationethics.org) for settlement of any misconduct.

1) Redundant Publication and Plagiarism
Redundant publication is defined as "reporting (publishing or attempting to publish) substantially the same work more than once, without attribution of the original source(s)". Characteristics of reports that are substantially similar include the following: (a) "at least one of the authors must be common to all reports (if there are no common authors, it is more likely plagiarism than redundant publication)," (b) "the subject or study populations are often the same or similar," (c) "the methodology is typically identical or nearly so," and (d) "the results and their interpretation generally vary little, if at all."

A study that has been posted on a preprint server is not considered as prior publication. However, the authors must notify in the title page whether their study has been posted on elsewhere.

If all or part of your patient population was previously reported, this should be mentioned in the Materials and Methods, with citation of the appropriate reference(s).

Please note that submitted manuscripts may be subject to checks using the iThenticate service, in conjunction with CrossCheck, in order to detect instances of overlapping and similar text. The iThenticate software checks submissions against millions of published research papers, documents on the web, and other relevant sources. If plagiarism or misconduct is found, we will retract the article before peer-review process and contact the corresponding author requesting an explanation of the suspect material. In the event that a simple oversight is identified and corrected, no further action is needed. In more egregious cases, editors are obliged to contact the other authors of the manuscript and institutional leaders such as a department chair or dean, which may have serious consequences.

2) Data Fabrication
Data falsification can take many forms from overt to subtle. Clear-cut fabrication of results has no place in scientific literature. It can be difficult to identify and often is found only when co-authors or collaborators find serious questions about a manuscript and bring them to attention. In one case, a reviewer of a manuscript provided evidence that the data presented in no way could have been collected by the submitting authors. Journals must rely heavily on the honor system because they do not typically have direct access to primary data. More subtle forms of data falsification include embellishment, selective publication of results, or even non-publication of results. Efforts to limit these include clinical trials registration, preferably at the outset of a study. The policy of the ICMJE, followed by our journals, is that all clinical trials should be registered, preferably before enrollment of the first patient. ICMJE defines a clinical trial as “any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes” (http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/clinical-trials-registration/). Note that certain publishable studies, such as retrospective studies or the use of registry data, do not currently require registration. Manipulation of figures is sometimes unethically done to support or strengthen a hypothesis. It is made easier with modern photo editing programs, but the same programs help us detect figure manipulation. A more subtle issue occurs when, if an author discovers after publication an error that he/she made, he/she ignores it to avoid embarrassment or to just avoid the bother of correcting it. Instead, the author should always notify the editorial office and get an erratum attached to the article. Not doing so is also considered unethical.

Authors have the responsibility to ensure that their published information is correct, to the best of their knowledge.

3) Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest may involve many individuals in the publication process including authors, reviewers, or editors. Conflicts may be financial, legal, scientific, or personal, including academic competition. Authors should address the statements regarding potential conflicts of interest including related information in a separated section entitled “Conflict of Interest” in their submitting manuscript. If there is no interest to declare then please state this: ‘There is no conflict of interest to disclose.’ The Editor-in-chief may reject manuscript that does not fulfill the above mentioned guideline.

4) Informed consent
Every individual has a right that cannot be infringed. Individuals participating in research have the right to determine what happens to collected (identifiable) personal data, what they say in research or interviews, and what happens to the pictures taken. It is therefore important that all participants gave their informed consent in writing prior to their inclusion in the study. Details of the subject (name, date of birth, identity number, and other information) should not be published as written description, photographs, and genetic information unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or guardian participant) gave their informed consent for publication. When complete anonymity may not be achieved (for example, masking an eye area in a participant's photo is inappropriate for anonymity protection), the author should obtains informed consent.

The following statement should be addressed in separated section entitled “Informed consent”.

“Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study”. If informed consent is not required, the author must state that “this type of study does not require informed consent.”

5) Authorship
The J Korean Soc Ster Func Neurosurg, follows the recommendations for authorship by the ICMJE, 2013 (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals 2nd Edition (KAMJE, 2013, https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=7).

The rules for authorship are clearly laid out by the ICMJE as follows.

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
Final approval of the version to be published;
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 conditions of 1, 2, 3, and 4. In addition, an author should be accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done and should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. Authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their coauthors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.

6) Role of the committee on the publication ethics for an ethical problem
When there is an ethical issue any of listed above in a submitted manuscript, the committee on the publication ethics performs the following processes.

  • - Reviewer or editor raises ethical concerns about the manuscript.
  • - The committee on the publication ethics notifies the author of the ethical issue.
  • - The Author should answer to this issue.
  • - If the answer is satisfactory, the committee on the publication ethics will apologize to the author and review process will be continued.
  • - If the answer is unsatisfactory, the review process will be stopped.
  • - If the issue is not resolved, the concerns are forwarded to author’s employer or person responsible for research governance at institution.
  • - If the issue is not resolved after the processes above, the issue is referred to other authorities.

Korean Society of
Stereotactic and
Functional
Neurosurgery

Print ISSN: 1738-6217
Online ISSN: 2765-6608

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