APS follows the ethical guidelines for research and publication outlined in Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; https://publicationethics.org/), the ICMJE Recommendations (https://www.icmje.org), and the Good Publication Practice Guideline for Medical Journals (https://www.kamje.or.kr/guide/books). All procedures for addressing research and publication misconduct adhere to the COPE guidance (https://publicationethics.org/guidance).
An author is considered as an individual who has made sub¬stantive intellectual contributions to a published study and whose authorship continues to have important academic, so¬cial, and financial implications. The ICMJE has recommended the following criteria for authorship: (1) substantial contribu¬tions to conception and design, acquisition, analysis, and inter¬pretation of data; (2) drafting the article or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the ver¬sion 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. Authors should meet criteria 1, 2, 3, and 4. These criteria are applicable to those journals that distin¬guish the authors from other contributors.
The journal strictly prohibits honorary or gift authorship (inclusion of authors who do not meet the criteria) and ghost authorship (exclusion of contributors who meet the criteria).
• ORCID and CRediT: To ensure accurate attribution and improve transparency, the journal requires all authors to provide their ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID; https://orcid.org/) during the submission process. Furthermore, the journal adopts CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy; https://credit.niso.org/) for detailing author contributions. Each author's specific role must be clearly stated in the manuscript.
• 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.
• AI and authorship: Generative AI, including Large Language Models (LLMs), does not meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship. As these tools cannot take legal or ethical responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of the work, they cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• Correction of authorship: Requests for changes in authorship (adding/removing authors or rearranging order) after submission but before manuscript acceptance must be submitted in writing to the editor with justification, signed by all authors, and require the editor’s approval. Post-publication, authorship changes will not be permitted, even in the case of editorial staff errors, as authors are responsible for verifying authorship during the final proofreading process.
• 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://cre.nrf.re.kr/).
All submitted manuscripts should be original. Manuscripts are only accepted for publication in journals if they have not been published elsewhere. Manuscripts published in this journal should not be submitted for publication else¬where. Manuscripts under review by this journal must not be submitted to other journals simultaneously. Posting a manuscript on a preprint server (e.g., medRxiv, bioRxiv) is generally not considered prior publication, but this must be disclosed at the time of submission. To ensure originality, the APS editorial committee screens all submitted manuscripts using Similarity Check (https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/) prior to publication.
• Secondary publication: Manuscripts can be republished if they meet the ICMJE Recommendations for secondary publication:
Conflicts of interest exist when an author (or the author's institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal rela¬tionships that inappropriately influence his/her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). All authors should disclose their conflicts of interest, i.e., (1) financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony), (2) personal relationship, (3) academic competition, and (4) intellectual passion. These conflicts of interest must be included as a footnote on the title page. Each author should certify the disclosure of any conflicts of interest with his/her signature.
• Editors and Reviewers: Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves from the peer-review process if they have a conflict of interest related to a manuscript. In such cases, the editorial office will assign an alternative editor or reviewer to ensure an unbiased evaluation.
The ICMJE has recommended the following statement for the protection of privacy, confidentiality, and written informed consent: The rights of patients should not be infringed without written informed consent. Identifying details should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or his/her parents or guardian) provides written informed consent for publication. However, complete patient anonymity is diffi¬cult to achieve; therefore, informed consent should be obtained in the event that anonymity of the patient is not assured. For example, masking the eye region of patients in photographs is not adequate to ensure anonymity. If identifying characteristics are changed to protect anonymity, authors should provide as¬surance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should take note of this. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article.
While reporting experiments that involve human subjects, it should be stated that the study was performed according to the Helsinki Declaration (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki/) and approved by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) or the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the institution where the experiment was performed. A writ¬ten informed consent should be obtained from all subjects. In the case of an animal study, a statement should be provided in¬dicating that the experiment process, such as the breeding and the use of laboratory animals, was approved by the REC of the institution where the experiment was performed or that it does not violate the rules of the REC of the institution or the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54050/). The authors should preserve raw experimental study data for at least 5 years after the publication of the paper and should present this data if required by the edi-torial board.
All research involving clinical trials must be registered with a primary national clinical trial registry, such as the Korea Clinical Research Information Service (https://cris.nih.go.kr), another primary national registry accredited by the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/network), or ClinicalTrials.gov (https://clinicaltrials.gov), a service of the United States National Institutes of Health.
The journal encourages authors to follow the Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) Guidelines to ensure systematic reporting of sex and gender in research. Authors should distinguish between sex (biological attributes) and gender (sociocultural identity) correctly. The sex and/or gender of study participants (or the origin of cells/tissues) should be clearly reported in the Methods section. Where applicable, data should be disaggregated by sex and/or gender, and results of such analyses should be reported. If the study was conducted in a single sex or gender, the authors must provide a clear scientific justification for this exclusion. For more details, please refer to the SAGER Guidelines (https://ease.org.uk/communities/gender-policy-committee/the-sager-guidelines/).
When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant or duplicate publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, an 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 applicable COPE guidance (https://publicationethics.org/guidance). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are carried out by the editorial board.
The journal is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scientific record. When errors or misconduct are identified, the journal will issue a Correction, Retraction, or Editorial Expression of Concern following the COPE guidance (https://publicationethics.org/guidance) and ICMJE Recommendations (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/corrections-and-version-control.html).
• Corrections: Honest errors that do not invalidate the study's results (e.g., typographical errors, author name misspellings, or errors in figures/tables) will be corrected by publishing a formal correction notice. This notice will be linked to the original article.
• Retractions: In cases of major scientific flaws, unreliable data, or serious research misconduct (e.g., plagiarism, data fabrication), the article will be retracted. A retraction notice will explain the reason for the retraction and will be linked to the original version, which will remain available but clearly marked as "Retracted."
• Editorial expressions of concern: An expression of concern may be published when there is substantial evidence of potential misconduct but the investigation remains inconclusive, or when the investigation is expected to be prolonged.
All notices will be published as soon as possible, clearly identified in the journal's table of contents, and linked to the original article to ensure full transparency.
The editorial board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and excluding plagiarism and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; avoiding any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promoting publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.
