Page Charges

JASS is a platinum open-access journal that does not charge authors any fees. Therefore, there are no fees for submissions or any other publication-related charges. The publisher fully covers all costs associated with the publication process.

Authorship

All authors must have made a significant intellectual contribution to the manuscript according to the criteria established by the ICMJE. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Authorship credit should be based on the following four ICMJE criteria: (1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or 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. All authors should meet all four criteria. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. All authors must state that they have approved the final draft before submission.

• • Contributors: Researchers who do not meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship but have made substantive contributions to the study in terms of idea development, manuscript writing, conducting research, data analysis, and financial support should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section of the article.
• • Correction of authorship: Any changes to the author list after submission, such as adding or deleting author(s) or changing the order of the authors, require the approval of the editor and are only permitted before the manuscript acceptance. Changes must be explained in a letter to the editor from the authors involved. The letter must include the following from the corresponding author: (1) an explanation for the change in authorship and (2) a written confirmation (email or letter) from all authors that they agree with the change in authorship. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper, including those who are being added or removed.
• • 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 forms and statements, are properly completed. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries promptly, 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) or their family members (such as spouses, children, and relatives) in their research, including when publishing or presenting papers jointly with them, should clearly indicate this in the cover letter. For further information, please refer to the Guidelines for Preventing Illegitimate Authorship by the National Research Foundation of Korea (https://www.nrf.re.kr/eng/).
• • Use of AI-assisted technologies: The journal has adopted policies, as specified by the ICMJE, regarding the use of artificial intelligence (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.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights

Clinical research should be conducted in accordance with the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki: Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Clinical studies that do not meet the Declaration of Helsinki will not be considered for publication. All clinical studies involving human participants should include a certificate, agreement, or approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB). For human subjects, identifiable information such as names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. For clinical studies with animal subjects, there should be a certificate, agreement, or approval from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). Research with animal subjects should adhere to the guidelines outlined in the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and must be performed with ethical consideration for all experimental animals. Original articles submitted to JASS that address any investigation involving humans and/or animals should include a description about whether the study was conducted with the approval by the IRB and/or IACUC of the institution at which the study was conducted. JASS may also request a documentation of approval by the IRB or IACUC for other types of articles when necessary. JASS assumes no responsibility as the authors are solely responsible for the content of each article.

Statement of Informed Consent

Informed consent should be obtained from all patients who participated in clinical investigations, unless waived by the IRB or the ethics committee. For individuals who cannot provide consent independently, including those from vulnerable populations—such as minors, the elderly, racial or ethnic minorities, individuals with certain health conditions, or those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged—consent should be obtained from a legally authorized representative or parent/guardian. For images of human subjects, explicit permission must be acquired as part of the consent process, and such images should only be included if essential for scientific purposes. Even when consent is obtained, identifying details should be omitted unless necessary. Authors must ensure that any modifications made to anonymize individuals in photographs do not compromise scientific accuracy. If consent is not obtained, it is generally insufficient to anonymize an image simply by using eye bars or facial blurring.

Registration of Clinical Trial Research

Any research that deals with a clinical trial should be registered with a primary national clinical trial registration site, such as the Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CRiS; https://cris.nih.go.kr/), a primary national registry site accredited by the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/network/), or ClinicalTrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov/), a service of the US National Institutes of Health.

Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) their 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. Nevertheless, the potential for a conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects their scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflict of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion (https://www.icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/). Conflicts of interest may also arise during the research process; however, the important point is the disclosure itself. To ensure the credibility of the journal and the authors, it is essential that all conflicts of interest are disclosed. If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should inform the editor and disclose them in the manuscript. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated. Disclosing conflicts of interest allows editors, reviewers, and readers to approach the manuscript with an understanding of the situation under which the research work was performed.

Originality and Duplicate Publication

JASS does not accept manuscripts that are currently under review or have been published in other journals. Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors are not permitted to duplicate any part of the content in another scientific journal without permission from the editorial board. However, authors may freely use the figures and tables, provided that the original source is acknowledged according to the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. Authors are responsible for resolving any copyright issues that may arise when citing figures or tables from another journal that is not open access.

Secondary Publication

Manuscripts may be republished if they satisfy the conditions for secondary publication outlined in the ICMJE Recommendations (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/).

Management of Research and Publication Misconduct

In case the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct, such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts 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 COPE (https://publicationethics.org/guidance). Discussions and decisions on suspected cases are conducted by the editorial board in accordance with the Regulations of the Research Ethics Council.

Editorial Responsibilities

The editorial board is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics and will continuously work towards this goal by providing guidelines for retracting articles; preserving the integrity of academic records; prioritizing intellectual and ethical standards over commercial interests; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when necessary; and preventing plagiarism and fraudulent data. The responsibilities of editors include the authority to accept or reject articles; ensuring that there is no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they accept or reject; promoting the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are discovered; and preserving the anonymity of reviewers.

Copyright Policy

As the official journal of the Korean Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery, all published materials in JASS are owned by the Korean Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery. All authors must sign the copyright transfer agreement form upon submission. The papers will not be published until the copyright transfer is complete. Copyright information is indicated on all published papers (HTML and PDF) and on the JASS website.

Open Access Policy

JASS is an open-access journal distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Thus, author(s) who wish to reproduce tables or figures published in JASS for scholarly and educational purposes do not need to obtain permission. However, proper acknowledgment must be given for the reuse of any borrowed material, by including a footnote on the reproduced table or in the figure legend (e.g., “Reprinted from J Adv Spine Surg Year;Vol:Page, available under the Creative Commons License.”) and in the reference list.
Author(s) who wish to reproduce tables or figures published in JASS for commercial uses must obtain permission from JASS. Commercial use refers to any type of reuse that is intended for commercial gain by the user, their employing institution, or any other third party. Examples of commercial use include, but are not limited to: (1) reuse by a non-author/third-party/other publisher of parts of or all of an article or articles in another publication (journal or book) to be sold for commercial purposes; (2) supplying multiple print or electronic copies of items from the journal to third parties on a systematic basis for marketing purposes; and (3) reuse by an author of parts of or all of an article in other publications from commercial organizations.
Licensing information is indicated on all published papers (HTML and PDF) and on the JASS website. All articles are available on the journal’s website to all users immediately upon publication and at no cost to readers or authors as JASS is a platinum open access journal.

Article Sharing (Author Self-Archiving) Policy

JASS is an open-access journal, which means that authors who publish with us are able to freely share their research in various ways, including preprint servers, social media platforms, conferences, and educational materials, in accordance with our open-access policy. However, it should be noted that submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals is strictly prohibited.

Data Sharing Policy

JASS encourages data sharing wherever possible, unless this is prevented by ethical, privacy, or confidentiality matters. Authors wishing to do so may deposit their data in a publicly accessible repository and include a link to the DOI within the text of the manuscript. JASS adheres to the data sharing statement policy in ICMJE Recommendations for Clinical Trials (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html). Authors may also refer to the editorial, “Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials: A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors,” in the Journal of Korean Medical Science vol. 32, no. 7, p. 1051–3 (https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2017.32.7.1051).

Archiving Policy

JASS ensures the long-term availability of its contents, even if the journal is no longer in publication, through archiving in the National Library of Korea (https://www.nl.go.kr/). Authors can also archive the publisher’s version (in PDF format) available from the website (https://e-jass.org/).

Preprint Policy

JASS allows authors to submit preprints to the journal. A preprint refers to a version of a scholarly paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Submitting a preprint to JASS will not be considered as duplicate submission or publication. JASS advises authors to mention the existence of the preprint, along with its DOI, in the cover letter during the submission process. Failure to do so may result in a plagiarism check program (Similarity Check) flagging the submission for excessive duplication. The preprint will go through the same peer review process as any other submission. If accepted for publication, the authors are encouraged to update the preprint with a link to the published article in JASS, including the DOI. It is highly recommended that authors cite the published article in JASS instead of the preprint in their future submissions to other journals.

Peer Review Policy

All submitted papers, including those invited by the editor, are subject to peer review. JASS follows a double-blind peer review policy, ensuring the anonymity of both authors and throughout the review process. However, the editor managing the review process has access to the identities of both authors and reviewers. Each manuscript undergoes peer review by at least two reviewers with relevant expertise. The editorial board selects reviewers based on their expertise, publication history, and past reviews. During the review, reviewers can interact directly with the editor alone (via the submission system or email), following the “independent review” approach. Certain publication types, including editorials, errata, corrigenda, retractions, withdrawals, and letters to the editor, are reviewed by the editorial board without external peer review.
Peer reviewers are requested to refrain from uploading manuscripts into generative AI tools, as these tools can lack up-to-date knowledge and could generate inaccurate or misleading information. Additionally, manuscripts may contain sensitive or proprietary information that should not be shared outside the peer review process. While the journal explores providing our peer reviewers with access to safe AI tools, we request transparency if any part of the evaluation was supported by an AI tool, and ask peer reviewers to declare such use in their peer review report.
The initial decision is typically made within 2 months of receiving a manuscript. If there is no correspondence from the editorial office regarding the manuscript’s status after 2 months, authors are encouraged to contact the editorial office. The editorial board is responsible for the final decision on whether to accept or reject a manuscript after the peer review.
All published articles in JASS display the dates of submission, revision, acceptance, and publication on their article page, but information regarding the review process and editorial decisions are not published.

Copyright Transfer

All authors must sign the Transfer of Copyright Agreement when they submit their manuscript. This form is available on our website on the submission page, and authors must submit the form online in PDF format. Materials appearing in the journal are covered by copyright. Written permission is needed to reprint anything that appears on its pages. The authors are responsible for obtaining permission from the copyright holder to reprint in JASS any previously published material.

• • Language: Manuscripts should be submitted in English or Korean. Medical terminology should be written based on the most recent edition of Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary.
• • Format of manuscript: Manuscripts should be submitted in the file format of Microsoft Word 2010 or higher. Manuscripts should be typed on an A4-sized document, be double-spaced, and use a font size of 10–12 points with margins of 2 cm on each side and 3 cm for the upper and lower ends. We recommend the use of the templates (available from: https://e-jass.org/authors/authors.php) when formatting the manuscript.
• • Abbreviation of terminology: Abbreviations should be avoided as much as possible. One word should not be expressed through an abbreviation, although two or more words may be expressed through an abbreviation. The full term for which the abbreviation stands should be used at its first occurrence in the text. Abbreviations should not be present in the title. Common abbreviations, such as DNA or COVID-19, however, may be used.
• • Units: The use of International Standardized (SI) units (https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/metric-si/si-units/) is encouraged.
• • Machines and equipment: When the use of reagents or devices is reported in the text, the name of the manufacturer should be indicated.
• • Statistics: Statistical methods must be described and the program used for analysis and its source should be stated.
• • Reporting guidelines for specific study designs: Research reports frequently omit important information. As such, reporting guidelines have been developed for a number of study designs that some journals may ask authors to follow. Authors are encouraged to also consult the reporting guidelines relevant to their specific research design. A good source for reporting guidelines is the EQUATOR Network (https://www.equator-network.org/) and the US National Library of Medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/research_report_guide.html).
• • 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 Acknowledgements 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.

Original Article

Manuscripts should not exceed 4,000 words, including the title page, abstract, text, and references, but not including tables and figure legends and should not include more than a total of eight figures or tables. The following components are required: a title page, an abstract, text, tables, figure legends, and figures.

1. Title page
The title page must include the article title, the authors’ names (including ORCID), affiliations, corresponding authors’ names and contact information, running title, and declarations.

• • Title: The title should be concise and precise. The title should be written in sentence case, meaning the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns are capitalized, as in a typical sentence. Generic drug names should be used in the title, not brand names. The title should also indicate the study design. If the study involved human participants, the country where the study was conducted should be included.
• • Authors and affiliations: First, middle, and last names should be included for each author. If authors are affiliated with multiple departments and hospitals, affiliations should be arranged in the order of authors and demarcated with a number.
• • ORCID: The ORCIDs of all authors must be provided. Registration is available from the ORCID website (https://orcid.org).
• • Corresponding author: The corresponding author’s name, telephone number, and email address should be included.
• • Running title: A running title of less than 50 characters including letters and spaces should be included in English. If the included running title is inappropriate, the editorial board may revise it.
• • Article information:
  • - Ethics statements: When reporting experiments with human or animal subjects, the authors should indicate whether they received approval from the IRB for the study and whether informed consent from the patients was obtained.
  • - Conflict of interest: If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should disclose them in the manuscript. Disclosures allow editors, reviewers, and readers to approach the manuscript with an understanding of the situation and background of the completed research. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should include the following sentence: “The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.”
  • - Funding: Funding for the research should be provided here.
  • - Author contributions: The contributions of all authors must be described using CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy; https://credit.niso.org/).
  • - Acknowledgments: Persons or institutes that contributed to the paper but did not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged here.
  • - If any of the sections are not relevant to the manuscript, please include the heading and write “Not applicable.” for that section.

2. Abstract

• • The structured abstract should contain a maximum of 350 words and consist of six sections, with healings (in this order): Study Design, Purpose, Overview of Literature, Methods, Results, and Conclusion.
• • Specific numerical data should be presented under Results.
• • Up to five keywords should be given and should be listed in the following order: anatomical name; diagnosis; and treatment. Authors are recommended to use the MeSH (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/) to find Medical Subject Heading terms.
• • Abbreviations should be minimized. When necessary, spell out the full term the first time it appears, add the abbreviation in parentheses, and use the abbreviation thereafter. References are not allowed in the abstract.

3. Text
The text, or body, of the manuscript should be divided into 4 sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.

• • Introduction: State the background or problem that led to the initiation of the study. Lead systematically to the hypothesis of the study and finally, to a restatement of the study objectives, which should match that in the abstract. Do not include conclusions in the Introduction.
• • Methods: Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, when applicable, must be stated. Describe the study design (prospective or retrospective, inclusion and exclusion criteria, duration of the study) and the study population (demographics, length of follow-up). Explanations of the experimental methods should be concise, yet enable replication by a qualified investigator.
• • Results: Include detailed reports on the data obtained during the study. All data in the text must be presented in a consistent manner throughout the manuscript.
• • Discussion: Data should be interpreted to demonstrate whether they affirm or refute the original hypothesis. Discuss elements related to the purpose of the study and present the rationales that support the conclusion drawn by referring to relevant literature. Care should be taken to avoid information obtained from books, historical facts, and irrelevant information. A discussion of study weaknesses and limitations should be included. Conclusions derived from the results should be described in one to two sentences and must match the study objectives.

4. References

• • References should be obviously related to the document. In the text, references should be cited with Arabic numerals in brackets, numbered in the order cited.
  Some examples:
  Negotiation research spans many disciplines [1].
  This result was later contradicted by Kim [2], Lee and Paik [3], and Ahn et al. [4].
  This effect has been widely studied [3‒6,8].
  
• • In the references section, the references should be numbered and listed in order of appearance in the text.
• • All references should be stated in English, including the author, title, and the name of the journal. If necessary, the reviewers and the editorial board may request original documents of the references. In the References section, journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in the list of journals indexed in the NLM Journal Catalog (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals/). Journal titles that are not listed in the Catalog should follow the ISO abbreviation as described in Access to the LTWA (List of Title Word Abbreviations; https://www.issn.org/services/online-services/access-to-the-ltwa/).
• • The surname should be put before the given name, whose first letter is capitalized. All six or fewer authors should be recorded, and if authors are seven or more, “et al.” should be put after the first three authors.
• • In principle, the number of references is limited to 30 for original articles. Exceptions can be made only with the agreement of the editor.
• • References should follow the NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/) if not specified below.

5. Table
Tables should provide sufficient information without the reader having to consult the main text. As such, the explanations of tables should contain enough information to describe the data included in a self-explanatory fashion. Tables must be numbered in the order in which they are cited in the text. Each table must be simple and typed on a separate page. Supply a brief title at the top of the table. The titles of tables start with “Table 1.” In tables, remove internal horizontal or vertical lines. A horizontal line, which should be single, is used only for the title field and the bottom line. Explanatory words should be placed in footnotes, including explanations of nonstandard abbreviations. To introduce more in-depth statements about specific content in the table, use the superscript lowercase letters (^a), ^b), ^c), ^d), …). consecutively and explain them in the footnotes.

6. Figure Legends
Each figure should have a brief, double-spaced legend on a separate page after the references.

7. Figures

• • Each figure should be prepared in a separate file (e.g. Fig. 1.jpg or Fig. 2A.jpg). Photographs, charts, and diagrams are all to be referred to as Figure(s) and should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are mentioned in the text (e.g. Fig. 1). The name of an image file should match the figure number, such as Fig. 1.eps. If a figure contains two or more photographs, they should be assigned an Arabic numeral followed by letters in the English alphabet (e.g. Fig. 1A, Fig. 1B). Do not embed images into the text file.
• • Submit illustrations online in JPG, GIF, or PPT format. If a manuscript is accepted for publication, the journal will request high-quality figures in TIFF or EPS format. Color and grayscale images, such as radiography, must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi, and line-art drawings must have a minimum resolution of 1,200 dpi (5×7 inch=127×178 mm in size). Papers containing unclear photographic prints may be rejected.
• • Staining techniques used should be described. Photomicrographs with no inset scale should have the magnification of the print in the legend.
• • Any illustrations previously published should be accompanied by the written consent of the copyright holder (author or publisher), and such permission should be stated in the legend.
• • All abbreviations appearing in the figures should be defined in the caption for each respective figure. Abbreviations appearing only in the figure caption must be defined at first use.

Review Article

Review Articles should focus on a specific topic. The main text of the review is composed of three sections: Introduction, Text, and Conclusion. The abstract must be written as one unstructured paragraph. The total number of references for all review types should not exceed 100, and the word count for the main text should be less than or equal to 5,000 words.

Systematic Review

Systematic Reviews should follow the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses; https://www.prisma-statement.org/) guidelines. These reviews should rigorously assess and synthesize quantitative or qualitative data to answer specific research questions. The methodology should include detailed eligibility criteria, a transparent search strategy, and an assessment of study quality or risk of bias. For more information, visit. The total number of references for systematic review should not exceed 50, and the word count for the main text should be less than or equal to 5,000 words.

Case Report or Technical Note

Case Reports and Technical Notes should be no longer than 2,000 words. Case Reports or Technical Notes require the body of the manuscript to be divided into 4 sections: Abstract, Introduction, Case Report(s) or Technical Note(s), and Discussion. The Abstract should not exceed 200 words and must be written in one unstructured paragraph. In the Introduction, the reason for reporting the case or techniques should be stated in a clear and cohesive manner. The Case Report or Technical Note section should include relevant elements, such as patient history and treatment, or technical descriptions. Discussion should focus on the case or techniques and pertinent literature. References should not exceed 20.

Editorial

Editorials are most commonly invited by the editorial board. These provide a brief review of the articles in the journal and comment on recent developments and events in the field of spine surgery. Editorials also may deal with a change in the journal’s style, format, or communication with outside organizations or professionals. Additionally, various topics are selected by the editorial board. Divisions in the body of an editorial are not required. The total number of references is recommended to be less than or equal to 10. The word count of the main text should be less than or equal to 1,000.

Correspondence

Correspondences provide a platform for discussing current issues in the spine, sharing brief observations, and offering professional opinions. Submissions may include short reports on novel findings, discussions on timely issues, or other scholarly contributions that do not fit the structure of full-length articles.
If submitted as a Letter to the Editor, it presents opinions, findings, or responses directly related to articles published in the journal, fostering focused discussions. A title, authors, affiliations, main text, and references are required. The total number of references is recommended to be less than or equal to 10. The word count of the main text should be less than or equal to 1,00. Figures or tables may be included if relevant.

Submission Process

Authors are requested to submit their papers electronically using the online manuscript submission and peer review system (https://submit.e-jass.org/). Under this online system, only corresponding authors can submit manuscripts. The process of reviewing and editing will be conducted entirely through this system. Authors and reviewers may check the progress of reviews and related questions/answers on this system. The corresponding authors will be notified of all progress in the review process.

Peer Review Process

All submitted papers, including those invited by the editor, are subject to peer review. The peer review process also applies to the research data and supplementary materials submitted upon initial submission. Manuscripts are first reviewed for their format and adherence to the aims and scope of the journal. Prior to peer review, all submissions undergo plagiarism screening using Similarity Check (https://crosscheck.ithenticate.com/). Manuscripts are sent simultaneously to at least two reviewers with relevant expertise. A third reviewer will be assigned if there is a discrepancy between the two reviewers. The initial decision is typically made within 2 months of receiving a manuscript. Authors will receive notification of the publication decision, along with reviewers' comments and instructions for revision. The editorial board is responsible for the final decision on whether to accept or reject a manuscript after the peer review. Final decisions regarding manuscript publication are made by the editor-in-chief or a designated editor who does not have any relevant conflict of interest.

Submission by Editors

All submissions from editors, employees, or editorial board members undergo the same review process and are not involved in reviewer selection or decision-making. Editors do not handle their own manuscripts even if commissioned. In the event that an editor has a conflict of interest with a submitted manuscript or with the authors, the manuscript will be handled by one of the other editors who does not have a conflict with the review and who is not at the same institution as the submitting editor. In such circumstances, full masking of the process will be ensured so that the anonymity of the peer reviewers is maintained.

Appeals of Decisions

Any appeals against the editorial decision must be made within 2 weeks of the date of the decision letter. Authors who wish to appeal against a decision should contact the editor-in-chief, explaining in detail the reasons for the appeal. All appeals will be discussed with at least one other associate editor. If consensus cannot be reached thereby, an appeal will be discussed at a full editorial meeting. The process of handling complaints and appeals follows the COPE guidelines. JASS does not consider second appeals.

Final Version

After a paper has been accepted for publication, the author(s) should submit the final version of the manuscript. The names and affiliations of authors should be double-checked, and if the originally submitted image files were of poor resolution, higher resolution image files should be submitted at this time. TIFF and PDF formats are preferred for submission of digital files of photographic images. Symbols (e.g., circles, triangles, squares), letters (e.g., words, abbreviations), and numbers should be large enough to be legible on reduction to the journal’s column widths. All symbols must be defined in the figure caption. If references, tables, or figures are moved, added, or deleted during the revision process, renumber them to reflect such changes so that all tables, references, and figures are cited in numeric order.

Manuscript Corrections

Before publication, the manuscript editor will correct the manuscript such that it meets the standard publication format. The author(s) must respond within 2 working days when the manuscript editor contacts the author for revisions. If the response is delayed, the manuscript’s publication may be postponed to the next issue.

Gallery Proof

The author(s) will receive the final version of the manuscript as a PDF file. Within 2 working days of receipt, authors must notify the editorial office (or the printing office) of any errors found in the file. Any errors found after this time are the responsibility of the author(s) and will have to be corrected as errata or corrigenda (depending on the responsibility for the error).

Corrections

To correct errors in published articles, the corresponding author should contact the editorial office with a detailed description of the proposed correction. Corrections that profoundly affect the interpretation or conclusions of the article will be reviewed by the editors. Major errors that impact the article’s interpretation but do not compromise its overall integrity will be corrected with a separate correction notice. Minor errors, such as typographical mistakes that do not affect the article’s interpretation, are corrected online without a separate correction notice. An indication of the correction, along with the date it was made, will be added in both the HTML and PDF versions. For pervasive errors or concerns about research integrity, expression of concern or, if warranted, a retraction will be issued. All corrections and retractions are handled in accordance with COPE guidance.