Authors should double-check their own research papers in detail for accuracy in calculations, data presentation methods, analysis of results, etc.

Authors must ensure that their research was carried out in an ethical manner, and has adhered to relevant regulations.

Authors must submit manuscripts that are original and must not submit the same paper to more than one academic journal.

Authors should respect the embargo regulations of an academic journal. One should not inform other media about the contents of the manuscript submitted to a journal until a designated time, and should also seek the agreement of the affiliated institution or the funding agency regarding this policy.

If any errors are discovered after the submission or the publication of the manuscript, even in case of a trivial error, the author must immediately inform the journal editor and discuss follow-up measures.

The author should submit data, regulations, procedures, software, lab notes, or other information promptly when requested by the editor.

Even after the publication of the manuscript, the author must cooperate fully with any requests made by the editor (or the readers); in addition, any errors or problems discovered regarding the manuscript must be resolved by cooperating with the editor.

The research process and method of analysis suggested by the author in the manuscript must be clear so that other researchers can repeat and reproduce the same results.

Researchers must record the procedure and results faithfully and store the evidence in a systematic fashion. If at any point during the peer review, the reviewers or the journal editor requests the evidence, the researcher must be able to present it.

If there are any limitations present in the research, the researcher must indicate them clearly.

Researchers must disclose all financial and non-financial conflicts of interest so that the journal editor, reviewers, and the readers are fully aware of such conflicts. Researchers can refer to the submission guidelines for conflicts of interest that must be revealed. (For information on the basics of conflicts of interest, please refer to ‘Chapter 5: Conflicts of Interest’.)

The research funding agencies must be revealed. If the funding institution provided support beyond monetary support, such as the design, performance, analysis, interpretation, translation, or report of the experiment, this must be indicated in the paper in detail. The source from which materials and equipment were provided must be specified along with any individual who supported the performance, statistical evaluations, or the conceptualization of the experiment.

The author must not submit the manuscript to more than one journal concurrently.

If the journal editor wishes to publish a manuscript previously published in another journal he or she should obtain permission from the copyright holder. The fact that the article has been reprinted should be disclosed with the source of the original publication.

If the results presented in a manuscript have been reported or if the same data is analyzed differently to create multiple manuscripts, the journal editor must be informed. A copy of any relevant manuscripts or manuscripts submitted to other journals must be submitted to the editor.

A significant level of data modification can be viewed as fabrication, and thus should be avoided.

In particular, when utilizing digital images (electron microscope images, X-ray images, electrophoresis photographs, etc.), researchers should be careful not to imply a biased conclusion. In certain cases, it may be unclear whether the manipulation was appropriate or within regulations. If such doubts are raised, the author must elaborate on his or her process and justify the decision in the manuscript so that the reviewers or the readers can make a proper judgment.

When writing a research paper, the results should not be deliberately excluded simply because they are difficult to explain, are not consistent with other data, or do not support the hypothesis or the conclusion of the paper

When referring to others' work, the author must include a proper citation of the source. This also applies to sources written by the authors themselves.

When using data tables or diagrams from another manuscript or when using a substantial portion of another manuscript, the author should seek permission from the owner of its copyright.

When requested by the editor, the author must provide a copy of the relevant documents such as the approval, enrollment form, or subjects' informed consent forms. In addition, the editor can request, when needed, the research proposal to verify whether the research was conducted according to the original research design. In such cases, the author should comply with the editor's requests.

The personal information of the subjects should be kept confidential. Any other information can be published only if agreed upon by the subjects. If some information may be offensive to the subjects or close parties of the subjects, additional consent is required even if the information is included in the scope of the original agreements.

Statistical analysis must adhere to the research design. Any addition or modifications to the method of analysis must be identified and distinguished from the original design.

The editor must take into account the opinions of the authors, readers, reviewers, and the journal editors. At the same time, he or she must inform these individuals of their responsibilities in the publication process. Furthermore, any other guidelines regarding policies, criteria, and the sharing of information before and after publication must be established and clearly delivered to the relevant parties.

Any activities regarding the management of the journal should be separated from the editing and evaluation of the manuscripts. Any sponsors or publishers should be prohibited from having an inappropriate influence on the publication of manuscripts or on manuscripts that have already been published. In addition, all the necessary information should be provided to the readers so that they could understand the roles and the characteristics of the sponsors or the publishers.

Regulations must be established so that the editor cannot be fired due to any criticism on the content of the journal by the publishing organization unless the editor-in-chief has made inappropriate edits or decisions that disrupt the objectives of the journal.

If advertisements are included in the journal, it must be ensured that the content and tone of the advertisement does not produce any conflicts with the publication guidelines. In addition, the advertisements should not be related to the content of the journal articles and be clearly separated from the articles.

Timely publication of manuscripts should be ensured. A procedure to reconsider the editor's decisions must be in place in case of irregularities. The editor should also closely manage academic and ethical issues starting from the review process of the submitted manuscripts to the publication of the journal. Even after the publication of the journal article, if a problem arises regarding a manuscript, corrections, explanations, withdrawal, or an apology should be immediately issued, as appropriate, to ensure the integrity of the journal and the publication ethics. If ethical problems arise or any allegations of research misconduct are made, a policy must be implemented to deal with the issue whenever it arises and the situation must be monitored regularly.

At the most basic level, the authors, reviewers, editors, and the publishing organizations must each disclose any issues of conflicts of interest that are within their purview.

In cases where the submission and peer review process are held online, any paths that may potentially allow other irrelevant individuals to gain access without permission should be blocked.

The editor should not utilize factitious means or abuse authority such as manipulating statistical indicators to improve the ranking of the journal.

The reference list of a manuscript should be selected purely based on academic criteria. No influence or pressure should be put on the author for any other reason.

For example, if a manuscript using statistical analysis is submitted, at least one reviewer should have statistical expertise to evaluate the statistical method, the sample size, the suitability of the analysis, and/or the potential biases.

Especially in cases involving human subjects or animal testing, the submitted manuscript should be processed by the editor and reviewers who are well-acquainted with the guidelines.

If there are national laws or regulations related to the research, the editor must ensure that the researchers have already consulted with the relevant ethics committee. It must be noted that even if the research had passed a pre-evaluation process, if ethical issues are raised during the peer review process, the article may be rejected.

If a research paper involving human subjects or animal testing is submitted and the relevant national regulations are unclear, the editor should consult with the author about any laws or regulations that may exist and should verify to what degree the research has adhered to the rules.

If the research involves human subjects, the editor must ensure that the subjects have volunteered for the research and have agreed to the publication of the research results. In addition, the editor should confirm whether the informed consent process and the content of the consent form were valid.

Standards regarding the management and evaluation of digital image files, images, and diagrams must be clearly stated in the submission guidelines. Especially in the fields where digital images play a critical role, the journal should be well equipped with enough manpower and an adequate procedure to ensure that the digital images have been managed appropriately.

It is recommended that editors use programs designed to search for textual similarities to ensure that no plagiarized manuscripts or manuscripts that have already been published in another journal are published. At the same time, the aforementioned editing policies should be clearly communicated to the authors.

The editor-in-chief must establish guidelines for peer review and editing policies that prevent attempts to publish a single research result in multiple manuscripts (salami publication) and publishing the same manuscript in multiple journals (duplicate publication).

If a minor correctable error is discovered prior to publication, the error can be revised and the paper can continue to go through the review process; the reviewers should be asked to reevaluate the revised manuscript when needed.

If a severe error that cannot be repaired without a major revision is discovered, the editor should inform the author and give him or her an opportunity to explain.

If the situation is not resolved despite the author's explanation, the journal should inform the author's institution of affiliation and request that they investigate the matter. The author should also be informed of the actions taken by the journal with respect to the institution. The affiliated institution should investigate whether the error is a simple mistake or intentional misconduct. The journal should ask the institution to provide the results of the investigation.

If the institution confirms that the discrepancy in the data is not due to any research misconduct, the manuscript should be resubmitted and reevaluated. However, if intentional misconduct is identified in the investigation, the journal should inform the author of the sanctions imposed by the journal.

If the degree of plagiarism or redundant publication is not significant, the author can be asked to revise the manuscript to properly cite the source and continue through the review process.

If the plagiarism in the manuscript is so severe that it cannot be revised through partial modification, the corresponding author and all the co-authors should be informed. The information should include the journal's post-publication processes. The procedures may include refusal of further manuscripts from the relevant authors for a certain period, notification of the original author who committed the plagiarism, and notification of the research institution of affiliation.

Once plagiarism and duplication is confirmed, the editor should inform the copyright holder of the original manuscript (author and the publisher) and the author's affiliated institution of the situation. This can be understood as a part of the academia's self-regulation efforts. This prevents the problematic manuscript from being resubmitted, resulting in an increase in productivity of all journals and aids the effectiveness of the peer review system. This would lead the affiliated institutions to start investigation into the possible misconduct. It allows the identification of the one who is responsible and the severity of the errors the author has made; this is a way to protect authors with good intentions.

One should avoid reviewing a manuscript if he or she lacks expertise or has participated in the requested research a similar research recently.

If a reviewer finds it difficult in to evaluate the entire content of the submitted manuscript or is able to evaluate the manuscript regarding only certain aspects, then it must be noted in the reviewer's report. The reviewer's field of expertise and focus of review should be described clearly.

If the peer review must be avoided due to a conflict of interest, one must adhere to the journal's regulations. If a reviewer is in any of the following situations, and the journal does not provide a guideline, the reviewer should notify the editor.

The reviewer should declare all personal, financial, academic, occupational, political, and religious conflicts of interest such as currently working or soon to be working in the same institution as the author(s), or if one of the authors has applied to the reviewer's institution to work. If any uncertainties are present, the reviewer should seek advice from the editor (Refer to Chapter 5: Conflicts of Interest).

Once peer reviews are complete, the manuscript should either be returned or disposed of. After online review processes, the reviewer must delete the copy after returning the review.

Individual meetings with the author should be avoided, and even if the identity of the reviewer is revealed, any questions or issues that require consultations with the author during the peer review should be reported through the editor.

If the reviewer seeks the advice of an expert in the specific field, even if the expert is a colleague in the same institution, the reviewer must still seek approval from the editor. Some journals put responsibility on each reviewer to seek assistance from another colleague as needed. If another researcher has contributed to the reviewer's comment, the editor should be informed of the names of those who provided assistance so that proper credit can be given. Even if the journal has allowed seeking assistance, if assistance was received, it is still wise to indicate this in the reviewer's comments.

The reviewer should check for illogical or biased assertions and make suggestions to clarify the interpretations of the results. He or she can suggest methods to further verify the argument.

When criticizing the manuscript's argument, the reviewer should provide the basis of such criticism, for example, by citing relevant references. Even if the reviewer decides that the manuscript is not up to publication standards, he or she should provide the reasoning behind the decision and advice for possible improvements in detail.

If the reviewer does not have the expertise to evaluate one section of the manuscript but thinks this section should still be reviewed, he or she should notify the editor. In such cases, the reviewer can seek an expert's opinion or tell the editor that the review was conducted while assuming the section in question was sound so that the editor can make the proper judgement.

The expression of concern can be published in the following circumstances: (1) when research misconduct is suspected, but an investigative committee has not yet been formed or the conclusion of the investigation is uncertain, (2) when the validity of the investigation into the misconduct is in question, (3) if the authors or the experts of the field have conflicting opinions on the research, (4) if the result of the research has the potential to harm the readers, (5) if a manuscript that did not receive authorization has been confirmed to have been submitted as a duplicate (in this case, a separate expression of concern for redundancy can be published).

The fact that the ‘expression of concern’ regarding the relevant manuscript has been issued should clearly be detectable while searching for the published article in the database. Whenever the article is searched or is downloaded, the expression of concern should be linked to the article. The journal editors and the manager of the journal database must make the greatest effort to ensure that any expression of concern or the revised articles are linked to the relevant article so that the readers can obtain the most accurate information.

The editor should ensure that the article in question can easily be verified in the expression of concern by clearly identifying the author and title at the beginning of the expression of concern; the sections and contents in question should be elaborated in as much detail as possible. In particular, whether the reason is due to research misconduct, or due to an honest mistake, or due to differences in the analysis of results must be clearly stated in the expression of concern. Under no circumstances should the expression of concern include hostile remarks or libelous comments, and should reveal only the contents in question in detail.

Publications are retracted when the results presented cannot be accepted due to research misconduct, or due to honest errors such as miscalculation or experimental errors. Retractions are also used when the research is confirmed to have been plagiarized or conducted in an unethical manner.

When a duplicate publication is confirmed without clear prior disclosure or proper permission, the reason should be clearly stated and the second duplicated manuscript should be retracted. Among the duplicated publications, the first published manuscript can remain published as long as the validity of the study results is not questioned. However, the fact that some of the content has been duplicated should be revealed in an ‘expression of concern.’

At the beginning of the retraction note, the title and the author of the manuscript should be clearly identified so that the manuscript can be easily linked to the retraction.

The reasons behind the retraction should be as detailed as possible. In particular, it should be very clear whether the reason for retraction is due to research misconduct or due to an honest mistake. If the error occurred due to miscalculation or during the experiments, (i) how the error took place in what steps, (ii) problems that resulted from the error, and (iii) which part of the study were not affected by the error, should all be clearly stated. If the error occurred due to research misconduct or duplicate publication, this fact should be accurately summarized and explained to the readers.

Publish the retraction note on the online database promptly after the decision has been made and publish the retraction note in the first printed version right after the decision has been made.

The article should be retracted as promptly as possible. This is to minimize the probable damage to other researchers, who may waste their time and effort or draw incorrect conclusions based on the invalid publication. This is also to minimize cases where it may lead to a meta-analysis that reproduces the same misleading results.

Only articles that have already been published can be retracted. If retraction was issued after being published online but before being printed, the retraction note should be linked to the online article using the same methods stated above. However, the printed journal does not need to publish the retraction note.

The retraction note should easily be visible on the page that contains the article. The retracted article should be available to everyone regardless of the journal or online database disclosure policy.

It should be clearly indicated in the retracted article file that the paper has been retracted. It should also be attached so that the retraction note is automatically downloaded together whenever the manuscript is downloaded.

CrossCheck, which will be explained in detail below, utilizes a database created by CrossRef. The search engine is one created for commercial use by iParadigms. Other search methods, such as the free web-based search service, eTBLAST (http://etest.vbi.vt.edu./etblast3) developed by Viginia Bioinformatics Institute; MEDLINE, a database for biomedical academics; and arXiv, a database developed by NASA for mathematics, physics, and computer science, can all be used.

PlagScan (https://www.plagscan.com) is a program that compares the selected text with online data and also allows users to add their own text to the PlagScan database. The Korean service CopyKiller (https://www.copykiller.co.kr) also allows the selected text to be added to its own database. Hence, there are cases where the similarity rises if the same text is searched again. In addition, there are websites such as Copyscape (http://copyscape.com) that use the Google search engine to check how similar a selected webpage is compared to other existing webpages.

When comparing Korean sentences, the similarity test software developed in English-speaking countries may not be well-suited to handling particles or changes in word order effectively. Professor Hwan-Gue Cho, a computer scientist at Pusan National University is developing DeVAS and DeVAC (http://devac.cs.pusan.ac.kr), programs specifically tailored to detect plagiarism in Korean documents.

A digital object identifier (DOI) refers to unique identification number assigned to digital data. CrossRef links a DOI to the digital data and connects the DOI and the site providing the data.

Even if the URL of the saved data changes, users who use the DOI numbers to access the data will not be affected. This is because CrossRef is responsible for linking the DOI to the newly changed site address. The DOI is a permanent link.

The format of DOI is similar to “http://dx.doi.org/prefix/suffix”. For example, a manuscript published in 2007 from the journal Automatica from Elsevier has the DOI “http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2007.xx.xxx”.

The search can be conducted on the web (http://www.ithenticate.com), and has also been set up to allow searching from the homepages of journals that subscribe to the CrossCheck service.

The search tool iThenticate is a program developed by iParadigms, who also developed Turnitin. This is why CrossCheck is a paid service. Academic journals, once they become members of CrossRef, are provided with the CrossCheck service and are required to pay for an annual license or to purchase credits depending on the number of searches.

According to 2012/13 statistics, the CrossCheck database includes 38 million items.

In addition to CrossCheck, third party databases such as PubMed and arXiv.org are available, and internet data can also be included in the search indexes.

Login to http://ithenticate.com and create a folder to submit the selected manuscript. The search parameter can be designated while setting up the folder. Among the available search indexes, one or all among the databases <CrossCheck>, <Internet>, and <Publications> can be selected. If <CrossCheck> and <Internet> are selected, both the CrossCheck database and internet database collections are included in the data searched. In order to include a third party database as described above, <Publications> can be selected.

An exclusion list can also be determined. Quoted material, fixed phrases, and bibliographic material can be excluded from the test, and sections such as ‘Abstract’ or ‘Methods and Materials’ can also be excluded. The reason ‘Methods and Materials’ is allowed to be excluded from the test is because there are topics in which the author has no choice but to use wording similar to that of other published documents.

Once the settings of the folder have been verified, the similarity test begins. The program supports a variety of file formats such as PDF, Microsoft Word, and HWP (Hangul word processing file).

The similarity report shows the degree of the similarity of the documents and not the degree of plagiarism. Just because the similarity is high, it does not mean that it has been plagiarized, and vice versa. However, the higher the similarity percentage is, the more closely the potential for plagiarism should be examined further.

It is important to examine in detail in what ways the submitted document is similar to other existing manuscripts as shown in Figs. 3 and 4, instead of simply relying on the numerical similarity value. What is important is the content, and the degree of similarity between the content of the submitted manuscript and the existing manuscripts can only be evaluated by the editors and reviewers with expertise.

Usage of CrossCheck can help prevent a researcher who may have committed plagiarism from submitting the manuscript to CrossCheck member journals; in addition, it can prevent a researcher from plagiarizing from the CrossCheck member journals.

Each journal can use the similarity test in its own way as a reference in the manuscript evaluation process. For example, if the similarity percentage is higher than a certain value, the author can be invited to rewrite and resubmit the manuscript without entering the peer review process.