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://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should disclose them in the manuscript. The conflict 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

Clinical research should be done in accordance of the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). 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.

3. Statement of informed consent and institutional review board approval

Copies of written informed consents should be kept for studies on human subjects. For the clinical studies of human subjects, there should be a certificate, agreement, or approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of author.s institute. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct.

4. Registration of the clinical trial research

Any researches that deal with clinical trial should be registered to the primary national clinical trial registration site such as Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CRiS, http://cris.nih.go.kr), other primary national registry sites accredited by World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/network) or ClinicalTrial.gov (http://clinicaltrial.gov/), a service of the Unite States National Institutes of Health.

5. Authorship and author's responsibility

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 forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional infor-mation should questions about the paper arise after publication. Authors are responsible for the whole content of each article. Co-authorship should be based on the following 4 criteria:

1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
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.

If any persons who do not meet above four criteria, they may be placed as contributors in Acknowledgments section. Description of co-first authors or co-corresponding authors is also accepted if corresponding author believes that their roles are equally contributed.

6. Use of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies

The journal has adopted policies, as specified by the ICMJE, regarding the use of AI in the preparation of materials intended for publication in the journal. Generative AI, including language models, chatbots, image creators, machine learning, or similar technologies, may be employed to enhance readability and language accuracy in scientific writing. However, chatbots or other AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as authors.

• Generative AI images: We do not permit the use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools for creating or altering images in submitted manuscripts. Adjustments like brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if they don't obscure original information. Exceptions apply if AI is integral to the research design or methods, in which case details must be provided in the methods section. Authors should adhere to AI software policies and may be asked for pre-AI-adjusted versions of images for editorial review.

• Declaration of AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process: Authors are required to disclose whether AI-assisted technologies were used in the production of the submitted work at the time of manuscript submission. It must be clearly reported in a dedicated section of the Methods, or in the Acknowledgments section for article types lacking a Methods section. This disclosure should provide details about the specific tools used, including the model name, version, and manufacturer, along with an explanation of the capacity in which they were utilized. Authors should affirm that there is no plagiarism of text or images in materials produced by AI. It is not acceptable to cite AI-generated material as a primary source.

7. Originality and duplicate publication

Manuscripts under review or published by other journals will not be accepted for publication, and articles published in this journal are not allowed to be reproduced in whole or in part in any type of publication without permission of the Editorial Board. Figures and tables of this journal can be used freely if original source is verified according to Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License. It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from a other journal that is not open access.

8. Secondary publication

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the condition of secondary publication of the "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals" (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) 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 1 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]."

9. Process to manage the research and publication misconduct

When the Journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as duplicate publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or 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, and etc., the resolving process will be followed by flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are done by Editorial Board.

10. Editorial responsibilities

Editorial board will continuously work for monitoring/safeguarding publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standard; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed; no plagiarism, no fraudulent data. Editorial board checks manuscripts to confirm the originality of text through Similarity Check. If the value of similarity index is unexpectedly high, it will be screened more precisely on plagiarism or duplicate publication. Editors are always keeping following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to rejected/ accept article; no conflict of interest respect to articles they reject/accept; acceptance of a paper when reasonably certain; promoting publication of correction or retraction when errors are found; preservation of anonymity of reviewers.