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.