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Instructions for Authors Instructions for Authors

Table of Contents

INSTRUCTION

All manuscripts should be submitted online (http://www.jpatholtm.org), and should meet the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org).

Manuscripts should be written in English. Authors from non-English speaking countries are encouraged to have their manuscripts proofread by professional English editors. The medical terms of Korean authors should be in accordance with the glossary published by the Korean Medical Association. The Editors may return the manuscript to the authors before the review process when the content, format, and grammar of the manuscript do not conform to the guidelines or when a breach of publication ethics is present.

Journal of Pathology Translational Medicine (J Pathol Transl Med, JPTM) is published bimonthly on the 15th of January, March, May, July, September, and November.

ETHICS

The journal adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=13&per_page=) and Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

1) Ethical Approval

All studies on human subjects should follow the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki (1964) and the authors should provide an affirmation that the studies have been approved by the appropriate institutional review board (IRB) and/or national research ethics committee with relevant reference numbers and dates. The following statement should be included in the text at the end of the Materials and Methods section: "All procedures performed in the current study were approved by IRB and/or national research ethics committee (reference number and date) in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments." Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. Animal studies also need to be approved by the institutional Animal Ethics Committee (AEC) or its equivalent. Research on animals 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.

2) Informed Consent

Authors should have obtained written informed consent from all participants prior to inclusion in the study, and the following statement should be included at the end of the Materials and Methods section after the IRB approval statement: “Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.” Identifying details of the participants (e.g. names, dates of birth, and unit numbers) should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and genetic profiles. In cases where identifying details are essential for scientific purposes, the participant should have given written informed consent for the identifying information to be published and it should be stated separately as following: "Additional informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for whom identifying information is included in this article."

Waiver of the informed consent can only be granted by the appropriate IRB and/or national research ethics committee in compliance with the current laws of the country in which the study was performed, and this should be separately stated as following: “Formal written informed consent was not required with a waiver by the appropriate IRB and/or national research ethics committee.” It should be noted that manuscripts that do not contain statements on IRB approval and patient informed consent can be returned to the authors before the review process.

For autopsy case reports, an informed consent is not required under the premises that consent was previously obtained for the autopsy to be conducted and that the strict anonymity of the patient has been respected.

3) Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

A statement disclosing all relationships or interests that could have direct or potential influence on the work should be included in a separate section before the reference list.

The authors will be held responsible for any false statements or failure to follow the ethical guidelines.

Each author should have participated in the research and/or article preparation. All authors are responsible for disclosing any conflict of interest that could influence the content of papers.

4) Redundant Publication and Plagiarism

Redundant publication is defined as "reporting (publishing or attempting to publish) substantially the same work more than once, without attribution of the original source(s)". Characteristics of reports that are substantially similar include the following: (a) "at least one of the authors must be common to all reports (if there are no common authors, it is more likely plagiarism than redundant publication)", (b) "subjects or study populations are the same or overlapped", (c) "methodology is typically identical or nearly so", and (d) "results and their interpretation generally vary little, if at all".

When submitting a manuscript, authors should include a letter informing the editor of any potential overlap with other already published material or material being evaluated for publication, and should also state how the manuscript submitted to JPTM substantially differs from other materials. If all or part of your patient population was previously reported, this should be mentioned in the Methods section, with citation of appropriate reference(s).

REVIEW PROCESS

1. Peer-Review Process

All papers, including those invited by the Editor, are subject to peer review. Manuscripts are reviewed by at least 2 external experts and editors. Received manuscripts will be peer-reviewed and a primary editorial decision will be sent to the authors within 2 weeks after submission. The Editor is responsible for the final decision whether the manuscript is accepted or rejected. All articles will be published within 2 months after final acceptance by the Editorial Office.

  • • The journal uses a single-blind peer review process: the reviewers know the identity of the authors, but not vice versa.
  • • Decision letter will be sent to corresponding author via registered e-mail. Reviewers can request authors to revise the content. The corresponding author must indicate the modifications made in their item-by-item response to the reviewers’ comments. Failure to resubmit the revised manuscript within 4 weeks of the editorial decision is regarded as a withdrawal.
  • • The editorial committee has the right to revise the manuscript without the authors’ consent, unless the revision substantially affects the original content.
  • • After review, the editorial board determines whether the manuscript is accepted for publication or not. Once rejected, the manuscript does not undergo another round of review.

If manuscripts from Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editors are submitted, it is also treated through same process with other manuscripts. However, those authors are not involved in the peer reviewer selection, review process, or final decision.

  • • AI use by peer reviewers: Generative AI tools can lack up-to-date knowledge and may produce nonsensical, biased or false information. Manuscripts may also include sensitive or proprietary information that should not be shared outside the peer review process. For these reasons we ask that, while the journal explores providing our peer reviewers with access to safe AI tools, peer reviewers do not upload manuscripts into generative AI tools. If any part of the evaluation of the claims made in the manuscript was in any way supported by an AI tool, we ask peer reviewers to declare the use of such tools transparently in the peer review report.the editorial board determines whether the manuscript is accepted for publication or not. Once rejected, the manuscript does not undergo another round of review.

2. How the Journal Handles Complaints and Appeals

Authors who wish to appeal a decision should contact the Editor-in-Chief, explaining in detail the reasons for the appeal. Appeals will only be considered when a reviewer or editor is thought to have made a significant factual error or when his/her objectivity is compromised by a documented competing interest, and when a reversal based on either of these grounds would change the original decision. The journal staff will ask for confirmation of the reason(s) in the first instance.
If the authors proceed, the original editor(s) will usually be asked to consider the appeal. Additional editorial board members may also be consulted. The editors will try to handle an appeal expeditiously; however, each appeal is unique and the journal cannot guarantee the turnaround time or the outcome. The process of handling complaints and appeals follows the guidelines of COPE available from (https://publicationethics.org/appeals). JPTM does not consider second appeals.

3. Roles of Editors and Editorial Board Members

1) Editors-in-Chief

  • - Responsible for the whole journal content
  • - Select, appoint and manage associate editors and editorial board members
  • - Make the final decision to accept or reject the manuscript for publication.
  • - Attract high-quality manuscripts
  • - Responsible for handling allegations on scientific misbehaviors and misconducts
  • - Provide guidelines to the authors for submission of manuscript and journal policies.

2) Senior Editors

  • - A group of respected scholars in the field of pathology and translational medicine who had served as Editors-in-Chief for the journal
  • - Advise on policy and scope of the journal

3) Associate Editors

  • - Assist EICs in getting manuscripts reviewed and published
  • - Handle articles by subject areas
  • - Initial screening of manuscripts
  • - Check for plagiarism and similarity

4) Consulting Editors

  • - Advise on journal policy, editing, and publication when consulted

5) Ethics Editor

  • - Advise on ethical issues of the journal

6) Statistics Editor

  • - Verify and advise on the statistics results described in the manuscripts

7) Manuscript Editor

  • - Assist EICs and AEs
  • - Handle day-to-day paperwork
  • - Perform technical check on all submitted manuscripts

8) Layout Editors

  • - Responsible for the final layout and printing of the manuscripts

9) Editorial Board

  • - A group of respected scholars in the field of pathology and translational medicine
  • - Assist with peer review
  • - Suggest ideas for special issues
  • - Recommend review articles with an impact

COVER LETTER

A cover letter must be included with each manuscript submission. It must be confirmed that neither the manuscript nor any parts of its content are currently under consideration or published in another journal. It must also be verified that each author approves of the submitted version of the manuscript. Optional: The authors may explain in the cover letter why the content of the paper is significant, placing the findings in the context of existing work and why it fits the scope of JPTM, and add anything else that the editors may find useful.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

1. General Guidelines

Manuscripts should be submitted as Microsoft Word files (doc, docx).

Abbreviations should be fully described in parentheses at first appearance in the text. After that the abbreviation can be used instead of the full term. The first letter of a name, place and a proper noun should be typed in capital letters. Numbers should be in Arabic numerals. Weight and other measurements should be written in the CGS (centimeter-gram-second) system of units. Other units need to be in the International System of Units. Species name and name of a gene should be typed in italic characters. The word of a Latin origin such as et al., in vivo, etc. needs not to be typed in italic characters. The spelledout abbreviation followed by the abbreviation in parentheses should be used on the first mention unless the abbreviation is a standard one.

Text and spacing requirements are: font size of 10 points, double-spaced and blank space of at least 2.5 cm from every margin of A4 paper size. The preferred font is Arial or Times New Roman. Page numbers should be at the bottom center of the page. Please do not number the subsections. Please do not embed any tables or figures in the main manuscript file. Please do not include any supplemental material in the manuscript file.

2. Reporting Guidelines for Specific Study Designs

For the specific study design, such as randomized control studies, studies of diagnostic accuracy, meta-analyses, observational studies, and non-randomized studies, it is recommended that the authors follow the reporting guidelines. A good source of reporting guidelines is the EQUATOR Network (http://www.equator-network.org/home/) and the United States National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/research_report_guide.html).

TYPES OF MANUSCRIPTS

1. Original articles

The arrangement of an original article is as follows: Title Page, Abstract and Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conflict of Interest, Acknowledgments, References, and Legend for figures. Tables and Graphic files are included separately.

1) Title page

The title page must include the title of manuscript, the full name of all the authors and their affiliations, running title of not more than 40 characters, contact information of the corresponding author (postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, fax number), and ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) of all authors.

Avoid abbreviations in the title of the manuscript. Names of authors should be described fully without abbreviation. Any title of degree or professions such as MD. or PhD should not be added in the author name listing. If the manuscript has more than one author and more than one affiliation, superscripted numbers should be used to match individual authors with their corresponding affiliations. Address of affiliation should comprise at least the institute, city, and country.

All authors are recommended to provide an ORCID identifier. To obtain an ORCID identifier, authors should register on the ORCID web site: http://orcid.org. Registration is free. An example of an ORCID description is as follows: Chan Kwon Jung: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6843-3708.

2) Abstract/Key Words

An abstract must not exceed 250 words. A structured format is preferred with subheadings of 'Background', 'Methods', 'Results', and 'Conclusions'.

List three to five key words, selected from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of Index Medicus (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh), if possible.

3) Introduction

The introduction should begin on separate pages. It should provide a research background and specific purpose or objectives for the research. The hypothesis tested can be stated. The references should be exactly pertinent to the subject presented and they should be provided a reference number.

4) Materials and Methods

If the authors’ work contains human or animal studies, it must be stated that the studies have been approved by institutional review committees in the Materials and Methods section. If there is no IRB number, it should be discussed with the editor during the review process.

Clearly describe the selection of observational or experimental participants (healthy individuals or patients, including controls), including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population. Because the relevance of such variables as age, sex, or ethnicity is not always known at the time of study design, researchers should aim for inclusion of representative populations into all study types and at a minimum provide descriptive data for these and other relevant demographic variables.

Ensure correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors). Unless inappropriate, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex or gender. If the study involved an exclusive population (only one sex, for example), authors should justify why, except in obvious cases (e.g., prostate cancer). Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity, and justify their relevance.

Statistical methods should be described meticulously. Authors may be requested to provide raw data to the Editorial Office, if the reviewers wish to analyze the data. Softwares used for the statistical analysis should be stated with the name, manufacturer and version. Statistical results are encouraged to provide measurement error or uncertainty such as confidence intervals besides providing P-values.

5) Results

Authors should briefly describe the core results related to the conclusion in the text when data are provided in tables or in figures. Contents of tables and/or figures should not be duplicated in the Results section.

6) Discussion

It is important to deduce the conclusion from the results while avoiding statements not described in other sections. Emphasize the core findings and the conclusions drawn from them with the best available evidence.

7) Author Contributions

JPTM participates in the CRediT standard for author contributions (https://casrai.org/credit/). The contributions of all authors must be described using the CRediT Taxonomy of author roles. For each of the categories below, please enter the initials of the authors who contributed in that category. If listing more than one author in a category, separate each set of initials with a coma. If no one contributed in a category, you may leave that box blank.

Contributor Role Role Definition
Conceptualization Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
Data Curation Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.
Formal Analysis Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
Funding Acquisition Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
Investigation Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
Methodology Development or design of methodology; creation of models
Project Administration Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
Resources Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
Software Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
Supervision Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
Validation Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
Visualization Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
Writing – Original Draft Preparation Creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
Writing – Review & Editing Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.

The corresponding author is responsible for completing this information at submission, and it is expected that all authors would have reviewed, discussed, and agreed to their individual contributions ahead of this time.

Examples of authors' contributions are as followings:

  • Conceptualization: CKJ
  • Data curation: YMJ
  • Formal analysis: SJ, CKJ
  • Funding acquisition: CKJ
  • Investigation: CKJ
  • Methodology: SJ, YMJ, YK, CKJ
  • Project administration: SJ
  • Resources: CKJ
  • Software:
  • Supervision: CKJ
  • Validation: SJ, CKJ
  • Visualization: SJ, YK, CKJ
  • Writing – original draft: SJ, CKJ.
  • Writing – review & editing: SJ, YMJ, YK, CKJ.
  • Approval of final manuscript: all authors

8) Conflict of interest

For potential conflict of interest, a specific disclosure must be stated as following: "Author A has received a research grant from Company X.", "Author A owns stock in Company X.", or "Author A is a member of the Committee X." If there is no potential conflict of interest, the following should be stated: “The authors declare that they have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.”

9) Funding statement

Funding to the research should be provided here. Providing a FundRef ID is recommended including the name of the funding agency, country and the number of the grant provided by the funding agency.

10) Acknowledgments (optional)

Any individual and/or organization that contributed to the study or the manuscript, but not meeting the requirements of an authorship could be mentioned here. For mentioning any individuals or organizations in this section, there should be a written permission from them.

11) References

References are numbered in the order of citation within the article. Citations in the main text must appear in square bracket at the end of the sentence or immediately after the authors' name. References with up to six authors must list all names; for more than six authors, list the names of the first three authors followed by et al. Periodical abbreviations should follow those used by Index Medicus.

When citing references, journal articles are the most preferable. Nowadays, website material is also used frequently. The problem with website materials is the frequent change of the URL address or sudden disappearance of data. Therefore, it is recommended to cite open access or free access book archived in a public web site such as Bookshelf (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books) or ScienceCentral Books (http://www.e-sciencecentral.org/books/). Materials equipped with a DOI are also recommended as references.

Individual references should be formatted in Vancouver style as follows:
Endnote Style

Journal articles

1. Slebos RJ, Hruban RH, Dalesio O, Mooi WJ, Offerhaus GJ, Rodenhuis S. Relationship between K-ras oncogene activation and smoking in adenocarcinoma of the human lung. J Natl Cancer Inst 1991; 83: 1024-7.

Books

2. Kumar V, Abbas AK, Fausto N, Aster JC. Robbins pathologic basis of disease. 8th ed. Philadelphia: Saunders-Elsevier, 2010; 79-86.

Book chapters

3. Frosch MP, Anthony DC, De Girolami U. The central nervous system. In: Kumar V, Abbas AK, Fausto N, Aster JC, eds. Robbins pathologic basis of disease. 8th ed. Philadelphia: Saunders-Elsevier, 2010; 1279-344.

Internet resources

4. Medicare now covers HIV tests [Internet]. Chicago: American Medical Association, c1995-2010 [cited 2010 Jan 28]. Available from: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2009/12/21/gvsf1223.htm.

12) Legend for figures

All figures should have a short explanatory title and caption. Define any abbreviations used in the figures.

13) Tables

Each table should appear on a separate page and must be uploaded as a separate file. Remove internal horizontal or vertical lines. The horizontal line is only used for the title field and the bottom line. The line should be single. Explanatory words should be placed in footnotes including explanation of nonstandard abbreviation. To indicate the specific content in the table, use the superscript a, b, c, d consequently and explain them at the footnote.

14) Figures

Authors must submit illustrations as electronic files. Acceptable figure file formats are TIFF, BMP, JPEG, and PPT/PPTX. Figures are loaded as separate files during the submission process. Each figure needs to be prepared in a resolution higher than 300 dpi with good contrast and sharpness. The file size of each submitted figure should not exceed 10 MB per figure.

If any tables or figures are replicated or modified from other papers, authors should obtain permission through the Copyright Clearance Center https://www.copyright.com/ or from the individual publisher if the materials are not included in an open access journal published according to the Creative Commons license. If figures are from an open access journal, simply verify the source of the journal precisely in the footnote. Please note that a free access journal is different from that of open access; therefore, it is necessary to obtain permission from the publisher of the free access journal for using figures from these sources.

15) Supplementary Materials

Authors can submit supplementary materials for online-only publication when there is insufficient space to include the materials in the main article. Supplementary materials should be original and important to the understanding and interpretation of the report. As supplementary materials will not be edited or formatted after publication, authors are responsible for the accuracy and presentation of this material.

Supplementary materials should be submitted in a single Word document, a single Excel file, or a single PDF file which should include all materials (information, tables, figures, and references). Each element included as supplementary material should be cited in the text of the main manuscript (e.g., Supplementary Table S1, Supplementary Fig. S1, Supplementary Methods). The first page of the online-only document should list the number and title of each element included in the document.

2. Reviews and Editorials

Reviews and Editorials are normally by invitation only. Unsolicited articles are rarely considered, but if you wish to enquire further about the suitability of your article, you can email the Editorial office of J Pathol Transl Med at office@jpatholtm.org. Manuscripts should include the following: (1) title page, (2) abstract (not more than 250 words) and keywords, (3) introduction, (4) main text, (5) conclusion, (6) author contributions, (7) conflict of interest, (8) acknowledgments (optional), (9) references, and (10) legend for figures. Tables and Graphic files are included separately. There are no restrictions to the number and size of the figures. Ethics statement: If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

3. Case Studies

A small series or a single case with unique pathological aspect and in-depth scientific content including genetic analysis or literature review can be reported as Case Studies. The manuscripts must include the following: (1) abstract (one paragraph, not more than 150 words), (2) introduction, (3) case description, (4) discussion, (5) author contributions, and (6) references.

For Case Studies with human subjects, there should be a certificate of waiver, an agreement, or the approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author's affiliated institution. Personal information of the patient(s) must be de-identified or the patient’s written authorization to allow information on their case to be published should be supplied.

4. Letters to the Editors

The Editors welcome brief letters (not more than two A4 pages in length) commenting on articles appearing in recent issues, on general interests for pathologists, and personal opinions on specific topics. Those letters selected for publication will first be referred to the author of the paper in question, whose response may also be published.

COPYRIGHT, LICENSING, AND ARCHIVING POLICY

All published papers become the permanent property of the Korean Society of Pathologists and the Korean Society for Cytopathology. Copyrights of all published materials are owned by the Korean Society of Pathologists and the Korean Society for Cytopathology. Permission must be obtained from the Korean Society of Pathologists and the Korean Society for Cytopathology for any commercial use of materials. Every author should agree to the copyright transfer during the publication process and sign the copyright transfer agreement forms via online submission system. Articles cannot be published until a signed copyright transfer agreement form has been received.

JPTM is an open access journal. Articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To use the tables or figures of JPTM in other journals, books or media for scholarly, educational purposes, the process of permission request to the publisher of JPTM is not necessary. All contents of the journal are available immediately upon publication without embargo period.

Full text of JPTM has been archived in PubMed Central (PMC). According to the deposit policy (self-archiving policy) of Sherpa/Romeo (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/), authors cannot archive pre-print (i.e., pre-refereeing), but they can archive post-print (i.e., final draft post-refereeing). Authors can archive publisher's version/PDF. JPTM provides the electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content in the event the journal is no longer published by archiving in PubMed Central. Authors can archive publisher's version/PDF.

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGE

JPTM publishes all contents Open Access and makes the content freely available online.

Original articles and reviews are exempt from author submission fees or other publication-related charges.

For others (case studies, brief case reports and letters), authors are required to pay publication fees. Page charges are $150 USD per 4 printed pages or less and $25 USD per additional page. The surcharge for color figures is $100 USD per page.

OFFPRINTS AND CHARGES

The charge for print copies of each article is $50 USD per 50 printed copies and the surcharge is $10 USD per additional copy.

CONTACT

All manuscripts should be submitted through the web site of the Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine (www.jpatholtm.org).

Inquiries about the manuscript submission and processing can be sent to Editorial Office:
Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine
Room 1209 Gwanghwamun Officia, 92 Saemunan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03186, Korea /
#1508 Renaissancetower, 14, Mallijae-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul 04195, Korea
Tel: +82-2-795-3094 / +82-2-593-6943,      Fax: +82-2-790-6635 / +82-2-593-6944,     E-mail: office@jpatholtm.org

J Pathol Transl Med : Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine
© The Korean Society of Pathologists and the Korean Society for Cytopathology.
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