The KJFM follows the recommendations for authorship by the ICMJE, 2017 (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals 2nd Edition (KAMJE, 2013, http://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=7&per_page=). Authorship credit should be based on 1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; 2) Drafting the work 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 4 conditions. If the number of authors is equal to or greater than 2, there should be a list of each author's role in the submitted paper.
The authors must ensure that they have met all the preconditions listed below before submitting a manuscript: (1) concept and design, or analysis and interpretation; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) approved the final version to be published; and (4) agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work and ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Group members who do not meet these criteria for authorship should be listed, with their permission, under “Acknowledgments.”
After submitting a manuscript, any changes in authorship (adding or deleting author or authors, or rearranging the order of authors) must be explained through a letter, signed by all the authors, to the editor of KJFM.
Every author must also complete the copyright assignment.
• Corresponding author and first author: KJFM allows multiple corresponding authors and first authors for one article.
A paper that has been published in another journal, or is under consideration for publication elsewhere will be rejected. In instances where the paper contains similar work that has been reported in another publication, or has been published in the journal, the author should include copies of such material along with the submitted paper. The Editorial Committee of KJFM will decide whether to republish the submitted paper, and then consider its acceptance.
• CrossCheck: KJFM is a member of CrossCheck (powered by iThenticate). CrossCheck is a multipublisher initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality. An accepted manuscript is screened against the CrossCheck database.
It is possible to republish manuscripts if they satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html).
The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connection with companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, mention about funds received and used for research purposes at the bottom of the cover page. All authors must disclose all interests related to research such as consultation fees and stocks when submitting the paper and affirm the disclosure, if at all, by signing the paper.
If the research involves human subjects, it must comply with the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration adopted in 1964 (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/); and, in principle, undergo scrutiny of an independent Institutional Review Board (IRB), which reviews ethical issues of human subject studies. In human subject studies, IRB’s approval and patient’s consent must be received and stated on paper. Description materials including photographs should not disclose the patient’s name, initials, and hospital identification number.
In 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 issues with a submitted manuscript, appropriation of an author’s idea or data, and complaints against editors, the resolving process will be as per the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The Editorial Board’s decision on the suspected cases will be final.
The Editorial Board will continuously work toward monitoring/safeguarding publication ethics. These include guidelines for retracting articles; maintaining integrity of the academic record; precluding business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed; and detecting plagiarism and fraudulent data. Editors will always have the responsibility and authority to accept/reject articles, determine any conflict of interest for the articles they accept/reject, accept a paper when reasonably certain, publish corrections or retract articles when errors are found; and preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
KJFM Consider for publication papers that have previously been deposited in a preprint server. Authors should inform us on submission if a preprint version exists and provide the link.
KJFM accepts the ICMJE Recommendations for data sharing statement policy (http://icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). All manuscripts reporting clinical trial results should submit a data sharing statement following the ICMJE guidelines.
KJFM has adopted the following policies, as specified by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in preparation of material to be submitted for publication in the Journal.
Authors must disclose at submission of the manuscript whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as large language models, chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted work. Authors who use such technology should describe, in both the cover letter and the submitted work, how they used it. Chatbots or other AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, and these responsibilities are required for authorship. Authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the originality, accuracy, and integrity of any submitted material that include the use of AI-assisted technologies. Authors should carefully review and edit all materials produced through the use of AI, to prevent the submission of authoritative-sounding output that is incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors should be able to assert that there is no plagiarism of text or images in materials produced by AI. Authors must ensure that all quoted material is properly attributed, including full citations. Citation of AI-generated material as a primary source is not acceptable.
Any researcher from across the world can submit a manuscript if the scope of the manuscript is appropriate.
Authors should submit their manuscripts online via the electronic submission system of KJFM (http://kjfm.or.kr/submission/Login.html). Once you have logged on to your account, the online system will lead you through the submission process in a step-by-step process. The submission instructions are available on the website. All articles submitted to the journal must comply with these instructions.
Failure to do so will result in the return of the manuscript and possible delay in publication.
KJFM reviews all the manuscripts. A manuscript is reviewed first for its format and suitability to the aims and scope of the journal. If a manuscript clears these criteria, it is sent to the two most relevant investigators in the field. The selection of the article will be based on the review outcome. If there is a discrepancy concerning the review, the selection will be decided pending further review by the Editorial Committee. The editor will inform the author about the final decision on acceptance/rejection for publication.
All manuscripts should be written in English. In principle, write the generic names of drugs in the article; provide the brand name only if it is intended for a particular pharmaceutical product.
Authors should be aware of the information that must be included in the content of the research, according to the research design, and this must reflect in their articles. Random contrast study should refer to CONSORT, diagnostic research to STARD, observational research to STROBE, and systemic investigation to MOOSE and PRISMA.
Original articles are reports of basic investigations. There is no word count limit on the length of the article, including the title page, tables, figures, and references. The number of tables and figures should not exceed 10. The manuscript for an original article should be organized in the following sequence: cover letter, main text (title page, abstract and keywords, introduction, methods, results, and discussion, conflict of interest, acknowledgments (if necessary), and references), and tables and figures (should be received as separate files).
If there are more than two authors, their names should be listed sequentially, beginning with the author who has made the greatest contribution to the article in the descending order and each author’s name separated by a comma. If the author’s affiliation is different, then separate it with a semicolon according to the author’s order. If the affiliation is different from the first author, the authors should be marked “1,” “2,” “3,” and so forth in Arabic numerals, which should appear in superscript at the top-right-hand corner of the author’s name and before the affiliation.
The author responsible for correcting the handed-in article should be the corresponding author and an asterisk (*) should appear in superscript at the top-right-hand corner immediately following the author’s name. The corresponding author along with the first author must assume responsibility for making corrections to the handed-in paper during the review process. If the name of the corresponding author is not disclosed, then the editorial committee assumes the first author to be the corresponding author. The author’s name in English should be written in the order “Given name Surname.” If the given name is separated by a space, then capitalize the first letter of each given name. The title of the manuscript should be succinct and should not be written as “Research on…” or “Discussions on….”
After the paper is accepted for publication, the authors should submit the final version of the manuscript. The names and affiliations of the 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. Color images must be created as CMYK files. Send the electronic original with appropriate labeling and arrows. The EPS, TIFF, Adobe Photoshop, JPEG, or PPT 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 the symbols are too complex to appear in the caption, they should appear on the illustration itself, within the area of the graph or diagram, not to the side. 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. Confirm and check the checklist for authors and send the manuscript to the address below. Copy the checklist for use in each monthly published journal. If the Editorial Committee has requested the author to revise the manuscript, the author should re-submit the revised manuscript through the online review article system.
Before publication, the manuscript editor will correct the manuscript such that it meets the standard publication formats so long as it does not alter the general idea of the article. The author must respond within two (2) days when the manuscript editor contacts the author for revisions. If the response is delayed, the publication of the manuscript may be postponed to the next issue.
The policy of KJFM is primarily aimed at protecting the authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher of the journal. If not described below, the process of handling complaints and appeals follows the guidelines of the Committee of Publication Ethics available from: https://publicationethics.org/appeals.
Submitters, authors, reviewers, and readers may register complaints and appeals in a variety of cases as follows: falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship dispute, conflict of interest, ethical treatment of animals, informed consent, bias or unfair/inappropriate competitive acts, copyright, stolen data, defamation, and legal problem. If any individuals or institutions want to inform the cases, they can send a letter via the contact page on our website: http://kjfm.org/about/contact.php. For the complaints or appeals, concrete data with answers to all factual questions (who, when, where, what, how, why) should be provided. The consequence of resolution will follow the guidelines of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE).
TIf the authors or readers find any errors, or contents that should be revised, it can be requested from the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board may consider erratum, corrigendum or a retraction. If there are any revisions to the article, there will be a CrossMark description to announce the final draft. If there is a reader’s opinion on the published article with the form of Letter to the editor, it will be forwarded to the authors. The authors can reply to the reader’s letter. Letter to the editor and the author’s reply may be also published.
KJFM does not accept any commercial product advertisements until policy changes otherwise.
Journal propagation has been done through the journal website and distribution of an introduction pamphlet. Invitations to submit a manuscript are usually focused on the presenters at conferences, seminars, or workshops if the topic is related to the journal's aims and scope.
No page charge or article processing charge applies. There is also no submission fee.
Contact Us
Editor-in-Chief : Seung-Won Oh, M.D., Ph.D.
Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Email: sw.oh@snu.ac.kr
Editorial Office: Korean Journal of Family Medicine, Korean Journal of Family Medicine, Korean Academy of Family Medicine, #2003 Gwanghwamun Officia, 92 Saemunan-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 110-999, Korea
Tel: +82-2-3210-1537 • Email: kjfm@kafm.or.kr • Home page: http://kjfm.or.kr
NOTICE: These instructions to authors will be effective from the January 2020 issue.
