The Korean Journal of Internal Medicine focuses on clinical and experimental studies, reviews, book reviews, editorials, and announcements. Any physicians or researchers throughout the world can submit a manuscript if the scope of the manuscript is appropriate. Manuscripts should be submitted in English. Medical terminology should be written based on the most recent edition of Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary [2] or the most recent edition of English-Korean Korean-English Medical Terminology, published by the Korean Medical Association [3].

The Korean Journal of Internal Medicine follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) from ICMJE and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA [http://doaj.org/bestpractice]) if not described otherwise.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights
Clinical research should be conducted in accordance with 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. For human subjects, identifiable information, such as patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, and other protected health care 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. The ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.

Statement of Informed Consent and Institutional Approval
Copies of written informed consent should be kept for studies on human subjects. Clinical studies with human subjects should provide a certificate, an agreement, or the approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s affiliated institution. For research with animal subjects, studies should be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions regarding IRB/IACUC approval and study conduct.

Conflict of Interest Statement
The author is responsible for disclosing any financial support or benefit that might affect the content of the manuscript or might cause a conflict of interest. When submitting the manuscript, the author must attach the letter of conflict of interest statement (https://www.ekjm.org/authors/copyright_transfer_agreement.php). Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connections to companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated.

Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication
Redundant or duplicate publication refers to the publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published. Upon receipt, submitted manuscripts are screened for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication using Crossref Similarity Check. If a paper that might be regarded as duplicate or redundant had already been published in another journal or submitted for publication, the author should notify the fact in advance at the time of submission. Under these conditions, any such work should be referred to and referenced in the new paper. The new manuscript should be submitted together with copies of the duplicate or redundant material to the editorial committee. If redundant or duplicate publication is attempted or occurs without such notification, the submitted manuscript will be rejected immediately. If the editor was not aware of the violations and of the fact that the article had already been published, the editor will announce in the journal that the submitted manuscript had already been published in a duplicate or redundant manner, without seeking the author’s explanation or approval.

Secondary Publication
It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the conditions for secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf).

Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
Authorship credit should be based on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, and 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. Authors should meet these four conditions.

• • A list of each author’s role should accompany the submitted paper.
• • Correction of authorship: Any requests for such changes in authorship (adding author(s), removing author(s), or re-arranging the order of authors) after the initial manuscript submission and before publication should be explained in writing to the editor in a letter or e-mail from all authors. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper. A copyright assignment must be completed by every author.
• • Role of corresponding author: The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all of the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing the details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and 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 manner, 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.
• • Contributors: Any researcher who does not meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship discussed above but contribute substantively to the study in terms of idea development, manuscript writing, conducting research, data analysis, and financial support should have their contributions listed in the Acknowledgments section of the article.
• • KJIM allows only 1 corresponding author and up to 2 first authors for Original article, systematic review and meta-analysis, and review articles. In addition, KJIM allows up to 5 authors, including only 1 corresponding and 1 first author, for the Image of Interest.

Disclosure of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Programs
Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs (e.g. ChatGPT or other similar software) cannot be considered as authors of submitted manuscripts because they do not meet the requirements for authorship. For instance, they cannot understand the role of authors or take responsibility for the content of the paper. Additionally, AI cannot meet the authorship criteria set by organizations such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). This includes having the ability to give final approval for publication and being accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work.
Furthermore, AI lacks the capacity to comprehend a conflict of interest statement, and cannot legally sign such a statement. Additionally, AI does not have independent affiliation from its creators, nor can it hold copyright.
Therefore, when submitting a manuscript, authors should not include AI as authors but rather acknowledge the use of AI and provide transparent information about how it was used in writing the manuscript. As the field of AI is rapidly evolving, authors using AI should declare this fact and provide specific technical details about the AI model used, including its name, version, source, and the method of application in the manuscript. This is in line with the ICMJE recommendation of acknowledging writing assistance.

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, undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, appropriation by a reviewer of an author’s idea or data, and complaints against editors, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by COPE (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are carried out by the Editorial Board.

Editorial Responsibilities
The Editorial Board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of academic records; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and excluding plagiarized and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; avoid any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promote the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preserve the anonymity of reviewers.

The acceptance criteria for all papers are based on the quality and originality of the research and its clinical and scientific significance. An initial decision will normally be made within 4 weeks of receipt of a manuscript, and the reviewers comments are sent to the corresponding authors by e-mail. Revised manuscripts must be submitted online by the corresponding author. The corresponding author must indicate the alterations that have been made in response to the referees’ comments item by item. Failure to resubmit the revised manuscript within 8 weeks of the editorial decision is regarded as a withdrawal.

Korean Association of Internal Medicine retains the copyright, and The Korean Journal of Internal Medicine adopts CC BY-NC reuse policy. A copyright transfer form should be submitted to the editorial office by fax or regular mail on acceptance.

Manuscripts should be submitted online at https://kjim.or.kr. Submission instructions are available at the website. All articles submitted to the Journal must comply with these instructions. Failure to do so will result in return of the manuscript and possible delay in publication. For assistance please contact us via e-mail (office@kjim.or.kr), telephone (+822 2266 7375), or fax (+822 790 0993).

Word processors and format of manuscript:
All materials must be written in clear, appropriate English. The manuscript must be written in 12-point font with double-line spacing and at least 3-cm margins on A4 or letter-size paper using Microsoft Word or other major word processing programs. All pages should be numbered consecutively starting with the title page. All measurements should be in metric units.

Reporting guidelines for specific study designs:
For the specific study design, such as randomized control studies, studies of diagnostic accuracy, meta-analyses, observational studies and non-randomized studies, it is recommended that the authors follow the reporting guidelines listed in the following table [1].

Reporting sex or gender:
Ensure correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors), and, unless inappropriate, report the sex or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex or gender. If the study was done involving an exclusive population, for example in only one sex, authors should justify why, except in obvious cases (e.g., prostate cancer). Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity and justify their relevance.

A minimum of 50 off-prints will be provided on request, at the author’s expense. An off-print order form outlining the cost will be sent to the corresponding author with the page proofs.

Effective from October 1, 2024, an article processing charge of $1,000 (￦1,000,000 KRW) for original articles and $300 (￦300,000 KRW) for Images of Interest will be applicable for articles submitted for publication in the Korean Journal of Internal Medicine. No charges are applied to Correspondence. Submission of the article to the journal can be completed once the payment method has been agreed. Any applicable article processing charge must be paid prior to publication.

If the corresponding author is not based on a country which uses English as a primary language, a certificate confirming that your paper was reviewed and verified by a native English speaker needs to be submitted to the editorial office.
This certificate is required at the time you submit your article.

A preprint can be defined as a version of a scholarly paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. KJIM allows authors to submit a manuscript that have been posted on preprint platform to the journal. It is not treated as duplicate submission or duplicate publication. KJIM recommends authors to disclose it with only single DOI during the submission process. Otherwise, it may be screened from the plagiarism check program — Similarity Check (Crosscheck).
Preprint submission will be processed through the usual peer-review process. In addition, the preprint's history will be tracked by additional independent editor, with an emphasis on the posting procedure and format.
If the manuscript with preprint is accepted for publication, authors are recommended to update the information at the preprint platform with a link to the published article in KJIM, including DOI at KJIM. It is strongly recommended that authors cite the article in KJIM instead of the preprint.
Moreover, KJIM does not permit referencing a preprint as a reference unless there is an exceptional circumstance that the authors can justify.
If the authors of a submitted article differ from those of the preprint, the authors must explain the change in authorship and demonstrate that it complies with ICMJE recommendations.