1. Conflict of interest statement
Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her 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 conflict of interest. On the other hand, the potential for conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her 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 of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion (
http://icmje.org/ethical_4conflicts.html). If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should disclose them in the manuscript. The conflicts of interest may occur during research process; however, important point is the disclosure itself. If there is a disclosure, editors, reviewers, and reader can approach the manuscripts after understanding the situation where the research work was processed.
2. Statement of human and animal rights, informed consent and institutional review board approval
Human research should be done in accordance of the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, outlined in the Helsinki Declaration of 1975 (revised 2013), available from:
https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects. Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. Human subjects should not be identifiable, such that patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. For animal subjects, research should be performed based on the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained. Copies of written informed consents should be kept for studies on human subjects. For the clinical and epidemiological studies of human subjects, there should be a certificate, agreement, or approval by the institutional review board (IRB). Approval and compliance with research requirements regarding human subjects must be noted, and information regarding informed consent procedures must be described in the “Methods” section of manuscripts concerning human subjects research. Authors should assure in the “Methods” section of manuscript that animals used in a study have been treated humanely and with regard for the alleviation of suffering, and that the protocol was approved by an institutional animal care and use committee.
3. Registration of the clinical trial research
Any research that deals with clinical trial should be registered to the primary national clinical trial registration site such as Korea Clinical Research Information Service (
http://cris.nih.go.kr), other primary national registry sites accredited by World Health Organization (
https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/network/primary/en) or ClinicalTrials.gov (
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/), a service of the US National Institutes of Health.
4. Authorship
Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content and should meet the authorship criteria of the Uniform Requirement for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (
http://icmje.org/ethical_1author.html). One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. Authorship credit should be based only on: 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and 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) agreeing to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Authors should meet these 4 conditions. If the number of authors is greater than 6, there should be a list of each author’s role for the submitted paper. If any persons who do not meet above 4 criteria, they may be placed as contributors in Acknowledgements section. The addition of an author to a manuscript under review is possible only with the editor’s approval. Changes in authorship cannot be made after the manuscript is accepted for publication. Multiple first authors can be accepted if corresponding author believes that the authors contributed equally while co-corresponding authors are not allowed.
5. Originality and duplicate publication
Contributions submitted to
EAHT must be original works of the author(s) and must not have been previously published in print or online or simultaneously submitted to another publication. Dissertations/theses are not regarded as prior publication. Presentation of original results prior to publication at scientific meetings is generally encouraged. The contents published as the proceedings or presentations in academic conference but not as the whole papers can be submitted to
EAHT.
EAHT supports posting of research articles on not-for-profit preprint servers such as arXiv.org, bioRxiv.org, ChemRxiv.org, medRxiv.org, and the like. Distribution on the Internet in other ways may be considered prior publication. Authors should send related materials (published, in press or in reviewing) with the submitted manuscript to the editorial board. It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright and plagiarism issues when citing a figure or table from a different journal that is not open access.
6. Secondary publication
It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the condition of secondary publication of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’, available from:
http://www.icmje.org/publishing_4overlap.html 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 have received 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 one 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].” Permission for such secondary publication should be free of charge. The title of the secondary publication should indicate that it is a secondary publication (complete republication, abridged republication, complete translation, or abridged translation) of a primary publication.
7. Process to manage the research and publication misconduct
When the Journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problem with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, etc., the resolving process will be followed by flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (
https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are done by editorial board.