The journal adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in the Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) and the ICMJE Guidelines (http://www.icmje.org).

Authorship

An author is considered as an individual who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study and whose authorship continues to have important academic, social, and financial implications. The ICMJE has recommended the following criteria for authorship: (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition, 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. If any persons do not meet the above four criteria, they may be listed as contributors in the Acknowledgments section. After the initial submission of a manuscript, any changes whatsoever in authorship (adding author(s), deleting author(s), or re-arranging the order of authors) must be explained by a letter to the editorial office (or editor-in-chief) from the authors concerned. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper. Copyright assignment must also be completed by every author.

Originality, plagiarism, and duplicate publication

Submitted manuscripts should be original and should not be under consideration by other scientific journals for publication. No part of an accepted manuscript should be duplicated in any other scientific journal without the permission of the Editorial Board, although the figures and tables can be used freely if the original source is acknowledged according to the Creative Commons Attribution License. It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from another journal that is not open-access. The cover letter must include the corresponding author's name, address, telephone number, and e-mail address, and state that the manuscript is not under consideration for publication and has not been published elsewhere. Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) is used to screen submitted manuscripts for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication upon arrival. If plagiarism or duplicate publication is detected, the manuscript will be rejected, the authors will be announced in the journal, and their institutions will be informed. There will also be penalties for the authors. If the author(s) wishes to obtain a duplicate or secondary publication for various other reasons, such as for readers of a different language, he/she should obtain approval from the editors-in-chief of both the first and second journals.

Conflict of interest statement

A conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence his/her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). All authors should disclose their conflicts of interest, such as (1) financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony), (2) personal relationships, (3) academic competition, and (4) intellectual beliefs. We define “people with personal connections” as minors (age under 18) or researchers’ family members (spouse, offspring, relatives, and so on). These conflicts of interest must be included after the discussion section. Each author should certify the disclosure of any conflict of interest with his/her signature. If no conflict exists, please state that “The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest.”

Statement of privacy, confidentiality, and written informed consent

The ICMJE has recommended the following statement for the protection of privacy, confidentiality, and written informed consent: The rights of patients should not be infringed without written informed consent. Identifying details should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or his/her parents or guardian) provides written informed consent for publication. However, complete patient anonymity is difficult to achieve; therefore, informed consent should be obtained in the event that anonymity of the patient is not assured. For example, masking the eye region of patients in photographs is not adequate to ensure anonymity. If identifying characteristics are changed to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should take note of this. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article.

Statement of human and animal rights

While reporting experiments that involve human subjects, it should be stated that the study was performed according to the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/) and approved by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) or the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the institution where the experiment was performed. Written informed consent should be obtained from all subjects. In animal studies, a statement should be provided indicating that the experimental process, such as the breeding and the use of laboratory animals, was approved by the REC of the institution where the experiment was performed or that it did not violate the rules of the REC of the institution or the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals.pdf). The authors should preserve raw experimental study data for at least 1 year after the publication of the paper and should present this data if required by the Editorial Board.

Registration of clinical research

Any research that deals with a clinical trial should be registered with the primary national clinical trial registration site, such as http://cris.nih.go.kr/cris/index.jsp, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ or other sites accredited by World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform).

Process for managing research and publication misconduct

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 COPE (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The REC of ChiKD will carry out the discussion and decision for suspected cases. We will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

Complaints and appeals policy

The policies of ChiKD are principally intended to protect the authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher of the journal. Any appeal against an editorial decision must be made within 2 weeks of the date of the decision letter. Anyone wishing to raise a concern or make a complaint about any aspect of being published in ChiKD journal, or working with our publishing partners may email chikd@chikd.org. Your complaint and appeal must be made in writing, not by telephone, and should be confined to the scientific and rational argument, based on facts over emotions. The Editor-in-Chief and at least one other Duputy/Associate editor will discuss the appeal. 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 guidelines of COPE available from (https://publicationethics.org/appeals). ChiKD does not consider second appeals.

Editorial responsibilities

The Editorial Board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics, including 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.
In the event that any ethical concerns are identified during the course of research, the REC of ChiKD will convene to address the situation, in accordance with the Regulation of the REC of ChiKD.

Declaration of generative artificial intelligence (AI)

Fundamentally, authorship assignment to AI is prohibited in ChiKD. We discourages the use of AI tools to create any type of content in submission. If AI tools are used, authors must report their use in the Method section. This should include the name of AI tool, version, data accessed and manufacturer along with a description of how and for which parts of the submission the tools were used. The use of AI tools to improve readability and language is acceptable and does not require specific disclosure. Authors are ultimately responsible for all content that AI tools generate. In addition, reviewers are not permitted to use AI tools for generating review comments.