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Research and publication ethics
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Journal of Trauma and Injury (JTI) adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in the Guidelines on Good Publication by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Good Publication Practice Guideline for Medical Journals by the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE).
Table of contents
- • Authorship
- • Statement of Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent
- • Statement of Informed Consent
- • Registration of Clinical Trial Research
- • Conflicts of Interest
- • Originality and Duplicate Publication
- • Secondary Publication
- • Management of Research and Publication Misconduct
- • Editorial Responsibilities
All authors must have made a significant intellectual contribution to the manuscript according to the criteria formulated by the ICMJE. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based on the four ICMJE criteria: (1) substantial contributions to conception, design, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article 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. All authors should meet all four criteria. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. All authors must state they have approved the final draft before submission.
• Contributors: Any researcher who does not meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship but contributes substantively to the study in terms of idea development, manuscript writing, conducting research, data analysis, and financial support, should have their contributions listed in the Acknowledgments section of the article.
• Correction of authorship: Any changes to the author list after submission, such as adding or deleting author(s) or changing the order of the authors, require the approval of the editor and are only permitted prior to the manuscript acceptance. Changes must be explained in a letter to the editor from the authors involved. The letter must include the following from the corresponding author: (1) an explanation for the change in authorship and (2) a written confirmation (email or letter) from all authors that they agree with the change in authorship. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper, including those who are being added or removed.
• Role of corresponding author: 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 conflict of interest statement forms, are properly completed. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely manner, and after publication, 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 article.
• Recommendations for working with people with personal connections: Authors who intend to include minors (under the age of 19 years) or their family members (such as spouse, children, or relatives) in their research, including publishing or presenting papers together, should clearly indicate this in the cover letter. For more information, refer to the Guidelines for Preventing Illegitimate Authorship by the National Research Foundation of Korea (https://www.cre.re.kr/).
Clinical research should be conducted in accordance with the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki: Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Clinical studies that do not meet the Declaration of Helsinki will not be considered for publication. All clinical studies involving human participants should include a certificate, agreement, or approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB). For human subjects, identifiable information such as names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. For clinical studies with animal subjects, there should be a certificate, agreement, or approval from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). Research with animal subjects should adhere to the guidelines outlined in the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and must be performed with ethical consideration for all experimental animals. Original articles submitted to JTI that address any investigation involving humans and/or animals should include a description about whether the study was conducted with the approval by the IRB and/or IACUC of the institution at which the study was conducted. JTI may also request a documentation of approval by the IRB or IACUC for other types of articles when necessary. JTI assumes no responsibility as the authors are solely responsible for the content of each article.
Informed consent should be obtained from patients who participated in clinical investigations unless the requirement is waived by the IRB. Images of human subjects should only be used if the information is essential for scientific purposes and explicit permission has been obtained as part of the consent. Even with consent, identifying details should be omitted if they are not necessary. Authors must ensure that any alterations made to maintain the anonymity of individuals in photographs do not compromise the scientific accuracy of the image. If consent has not been obtained, it is generally not sufficient to anonymize a photograph simply by using eye bars or blurring the face of the individual concerned.
Any research involving clinical trials should be registered with the primary national clinical trial registry site, such as the Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CRiS; https://cris.nih.go.kr/), a primary national registry site accredited by the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/network/), or ClinicalTrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov/), a service of the US National Institutes of Health.
A conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) their actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from being negligible to having great potential for influencing judgment. Not all relationships represent true conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, the potential for a conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects their scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and science itself. However, conflicts can also occur from personal relationships, academic competition, or intellectual passion (https://www.icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/). Conflicts of interest may also arise during the research process; however, the important point is the disclosure itself. To ensure the credibility of the journal and the authors, it is essential that all conflicts of interest are disclosed. If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should inform the editor and disclose them in the manuscript. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated. Disclosing conflicts of interest allows editors, reviewers, and readers to approach the manuscript with an understanding of the situation under which the research work was performed.
JTI does not accept manuscripts that are currently under review or have been published in other journals. Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors are not permitted to duplicate any part of the content in another scientific journal without permission from the Editorial Board. However, authors may freely use the figures and tables, provided that the original source is acknowledged according to the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. Authors are responsible for resolving any copyright issues that may arise when citing figures or tables from another journal that is not open access.
Manuscripts may be republished if they satisfy the conditions for secondary publication outlined in the ICMJE Recommendations (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/).
In case the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct, such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and so on, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by COPE (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts/). Discussions and decisions on suspected cases are conducted by the Editorial Board in accordance with the Regulations of the Research Ethics Council.
The Editorial Board is committed to maintain high standards of publication ethics and will continuously work towards this goal by providing guidelines for retracting articles; preserving the integrity of academic record; prioritizing intellectual and ethical standards over commercial interests; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when necessary; and preventing plagiarism and fraudulent data. The responsibilities of editors include the authority to accept or reject articles; ensuring that there are no conflicts of interest with regards to the articles they accept or reject; promoting the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are discovered; and preserving the anonymity of reviewers.
