The journal adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=7), Recommendations of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations) and Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

Registration of Clinical Trial Research
It is recommended that any research that deals with a clinical trial be registered with a primary national clinical trial registration site, such as http://cris.nih.go.kr/, or other sites accredited by the WHO as listed at http://www.who.int/ictrp/en/.

Conflict of Interest Statement
The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of the data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial or non-financial support from or connections to pharmaceutical companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study (including but not limited to grants, data monitoring board, study design, manuscript preparation, statistical analysis, etc. from government, commercial, or private foundation parties) should be explicitly stated. Conflict of interest is a condition not a behavior.

Statement of Informed Consent
Copies of written informed consent and institutional review board (IRB) approval for clinical research should be kept. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct. In addition, for studies conducted with human subjects, the method by which informed consent was obtained from the participants (i.e., verbal or written) also needs to be stated in the Methods section. For studies where individual human subjects may be recognized and identified by image records and/or medical information, written informed consent must be obtained. The Patient Photographic and Videographic Consent, Authorization and Release Form available at the JWMR website (http://jwmr.org/authors/photographic.php) can be used for informed consent. For research with animal subjects, studies should be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC).

Patient Photographic and Videographic Consent
Patients introduced in the manuscripts should be informed and aware that their photographs, videos, and other images (imaging records) will be released by the authors, and the authors should attach an Authorization and Release Form available at the JWMR website (http://jwmr.org/authors/photographic.php) or equivalent form from the institute involved in patient care (not necessarily in English but acknowledgable to the Editorial Board) including each patient's signature if the patient can be identified by these images.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights
All human investigations must be conducted according to the principles expressed in the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki (June 1964) and subsequent amendments (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/). For animal subjects, the research should be performed based on the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained.

Authorship
Authorship credit should be based on (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting or revising the article critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; (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 all of these four conditions.

• If the number of authors is greater than six, there should be a list of each author’s role for 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. JWMR's electronic submission system automatically relays all notifications concerning the progress of each manuscript only to the corresponding author, who is held responsible for communication with the Editorial Office. 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. Failure to do so may be regarded as withdrawal of the manuscript. Only persons capable of maintaining communication with the Editorial Office should act as corresponding authors; if this role of communication gateway is not retained, then that person should no longer be the corresponding author.
• 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.

Research and Publication Misconduct
All submitted manuscripts should be original and should not be considered by other scientific journals for publication at the same time. No part of the accepted manuscript should be duplicated in any other scientific journal without the permission of the Editorial Board. If duplicate publication related to the papers of this journal is detected, the manuscripts may be rejected. 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, illustrations, and tables.

The Editorial Board of JWMR takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. This includes carefully examining all submitted manuscripts to check whether the ethical guidelines of the ICMJE and COPE have been abided by. In no case shall the Editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.

In the event that the Editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in JWMR such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, data fabrication, undisclosed conflicts of interest, reviewer’s appropriation of an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and other issues, the resolving process will follow the flowchart provided by COPE (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The Editorial Board of JWMR, including Associate Editors of the Ethics Committee (http://jwmr.org/about/editorial.php), will discuss the suspected case(s) and reach a decision. JWMR will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.