Editorial Policy

The journal adheres to the guidelines and best practices published by professional organizations, including ICMJE Recommendations and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by the Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE; the Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ; the World Association of Medical Editors, WAME; and Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA; https://doaj.org/bestpractice). Furthermore, all processes of handling research and publication misconduct shall follow the applicable COPE flowchart (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

The manuscript that has been published previously or is currently under consideration for publication elsewhere will not be accepted for publication of Journal Chest Surgery (JCS). Also, the manuscript that has been accepted in JCS should not be duplicately published in other journals. However, in the case of the thesis for a degree, the major contents can be introduced in accordance with a rule of “Key Reference”.
• Secondary publication: It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/).

It is recommended that any research dealing with a clinical trial be registered with a primary national clinical trial registration site such as Clinical Research Information Service (https://cris.nih.go.kr), or other sites accredited by the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (http://www.who.int/ictrp/en) and ClinicalTrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov), a service of the United States National Institutes of Health.

The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of the data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connections to pharmaceutical companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues.

Copies of written informed consent or Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for any manuscripts involving human or human products should be kept. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct. In addition, for studies conducted with human subjects, the method by which informed consent was obtained from the participants (i.e., verbal or written) also needs to be stated in the Methods section.

All human investigations must be conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki(https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Indicate whether or not your IRB (or Ethics Committee or comparable group) approved this study and whether or not individual consent for the study was obtained or waived. When animals are used as subjects, institutional approval of the protocol is necessary and authors should include a statement in methods indicating that investigators complied with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee or an equivalent guideline.

All authors must have made a significant intellectual contribution to the manuscript according to the criteria formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Authorship credit should be based 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) 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 these four conditions. Before publication of an accepted manuscript, each author is required to certify by signing the conditions for Publication Form that he or she has participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for a meaningful share of the content of the manuscript. An image file of the conditions for publication form signed by all authors should be attached to the manuscript.
• Correction of authorship: After the initial submission of a manuscript, any changes whatsoever in authorship (adding authors, deleting authors, or re-arranging the order of authors) must be explained by a letter to the editor from the authors concerned. This letter must be signed by all authors on the paper. Copyright assignment must be completed by every author.
• Contributors: Any researcher who does not meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship discussed above but contribute 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.

When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant (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 flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are carried out by the Editorial Board.

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.