Revised on July 1, 2019

Research and Publication Ethics

For the policies on research and publication ethics not stated in the Instructions, Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/) or Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr/) can be applied.

Conflict of interest

Any potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed in the cover letter even when the authors are confident that their judgments have not been influenced in preparing the manuscript. Examples of conflicts are financial support from or connections to commercial preferences, political pressure from interest groups, or academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated. The Editor will decide whether the information on the conflict should be included in the published paper.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consen

Any investigations involving humans and animals should be approved by the Institutional Review Board and Animal Care Committee, respectively, of the institution where the study took place. Journal of Health Informatics and Statistics (JHIS) will not consider any studies involving humans or animals without the appropriate approval. Informed consent should be obtained, unless waived by the Institutional Review Board, from patients who participated in clinical investigations. Human subjects should not be identifiable, such that patients' names, hospital, identifiers, date of birth or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. The Journal adheres to the protected health information guideline described in “Guidance Regarding Methods for De-identification of Protected Health Information in Accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule (https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/forprofessionals/privacy/special-topics/de-identification/index.html)”. Distribution of gender and age of all subjects should be provided in the main text. If experiments involve animals, the research should be based on national or institutional guidelines for animal care and use. Species, strain, sex, and age of laboratory animals should be provided in the main text. Original articles submitted to JHIS that address any investigation involving humans and animals should include a description about whether the study was conducted under an approval by the Institutional Review Board (with or without patient informed consent) and Animal Care Committee, respectively, of the institution where the study was conducted. JHIS can request an approval by the Institutional Review Board or Animal Care Committee for other types of articles when necessary.

Authorship

The JHIS recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:
• Substantial contributors to the conception or design of the work; • or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual • content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• 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.

Only one first author and one corresponding author are recommended. In particular, the corresponding author is the only one individual who 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 requirement.

Originality, plagiarism and duplicate publication

Submitted manuscripts must not have been previously published or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. No part of the accepted manuscript should be duplicated in any other scientific journal without the permission of the Editorial Board. Submitted manuscripts are screened for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication by CrossCheck (http://www.ithenticate.com/) upon arrival. If plagiarism or duplicate publication related to the papers of this journal is detected, the manuscripts may be rejected, the authors will be announced in the journal, and their institutions will be informed. There will also be penalties for the authors.
A letter of permission is required for any and all material that has been published previously. It is the responsibility of the author to request permission from the publisher for any material that is being reproduced. This requirement applies to text, figures, and tables.

Process to Manage 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, undisclosed conflict of interest, an ethical problem with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, etc., the resolution process will followed the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). Discussions and decisions regarding suspected cases are carried out by the Committee of Publication Ethics of JHIS.

Editorial Responsibilities

The editorial board will continuously work towards monitoring/safeguarding publication ethics in the following respects: providing guidelines for retracting articles; maintaining of the integrity of the academic record; precluding business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standard; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and avoiding plagiarism, and fraudulent data. Editors’ responsibilities shall include: responsibility and authority to reject/accept articles; avoiding conflicts of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept; accepting papers when reasonably certain; promoting the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preserving the anonymity of reviewers.