GENERAL GUIDELINES

The manuscripts published by this journal should follow the ethical guidelines specified in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication (see www.icmje.org for detailed policies), which was established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). For the policies on the research and publication ethics not stated in the aforementioned instruction, “Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals” (from the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors, KAMJE; see http:// kamje.or.kr/publishing_ethics.html) or “Guidelines on Good Publication” (from the Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE; see http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) can be applied

DISCLOSURE OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Any financial support associated with the study, including stocks or consultation arrangements with pharmaceutical companies, should be stated, and any political pressure from special interest groups or academia-related issues should be clearly declared at the end of the text, under a subheading entitled “Conflicts of interest”. If no financial support or political or academic pressures affect the study, a statement declaring no conflicts of interest should be included under the aforementioned subheading.

STATEMENT OF INFORMED CONSENT

Human study must conform to the current ethical standards and should be approved by the appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB). A statement concerning IRB approval and consent procedures must appear at the beginning of the “Methods” section. Authors may be questioned about the details of consent forms or the consent process, if necessary. On occasion, the Editor-in-Chief may request a copy of the approved IRB application from the author(s).

STATEMENT OF HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

Clinical research studies involving human resources must state that the work was done in accordance with the Ethical Principles for Medical Research involving Human Subjects outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki in 1975 (last updated in 2008, see http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html). Clinical studies that do not meet the Declaration of Helsinki will not be considered for publication. Human subjects, including the patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth and other protected healthcare information, must not be identifiable under any circumstances, for any case. Animal research studies must state that the work was performed according to the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals must conform to the guidelines provided by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC).

AUTHORSHIP

All authors of the article should have contributed significantly according to the following three criteria: 1) significant contributions to the concept and design of the study, as well as to the acquisition/gathering and analysis and interpretation of the data; 2) drafting the article or critical revision of the article’s important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. All authors must meet the above three criteria. All contributors who do not meet the above criteria but have contributed to the article may be listed in the “Acknowledgments” section.

ORIGINALITY, DUPLICATE PUBLICATION AND EMBARGO POLICY

All submitted manuscripts should be original and should not be considered by other scientific journals for publication at the same time. Accepted manuscripts should not be duplicated in whole or in part in any other scientific journal without permission from the Editorial Board. If duplicate publications related to the papers of this journal are detected, sanctions against authors may range from requesting their institutions to assess the facts or requesting a Letter to the Editor-in-Chief of the counterpart journal acknowledging the error and voluntarily withdrawing a paper, to a ban on publication in EnM of up to 3 years. The final sanction against the author(s) may be discussed in the Editorial Board meeting.

All contents of an accepted article must be strictly confidential and may not appear in the media, either in print or electronic form, before the article’s embargo date. All authors and funding institutions should conform to this policy and should not distribute the results of their work prior to the embargo date. If an embargo break is the result of any action by an author/researcher, he/she risks the withdrawal of the accepted article. Violations of the embargo policy may also jeopardize future acceptance of manuscripts to be published in EnM. Generally, embargoes on journal articles lift the day and the time the article is published, either online or in print (whichever comes first), by EnM, the official journal of the Korean Endocrine Society.

CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRY

We strongly recommend, as a condition of consideration for publication, registration in a public trials registry. Trials must be registered to the appropriate registry at or before the onset of patient enrollment. This policy applies to any clinical trial starting enrollment after January 1, 2006. For trials that began enrollment before this date, we request registration by April 1, 2006, before considering the trial for publication. We define a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship/s between a medical intervention and a health outcome. Studies designed for other purposes, such as studies on pharmacokinetics or major toxicity (e.g., phase 1 trials), are exempt from this process.

Registries include: 1) the registry sponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine (www.clinicaltrials.gov); 2) the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number Registry (www.controlledtrials.com); 3) the Australian Clinical Trials Registry (www.actr.org.au); 4) the Chinese Clinical Trials Register (www.chictr.org); 5) the Clinical Trials Registry-India (www.ctri.in); 6) University Hospital Medical Information Network (UMIN) (www.umin.ac.jp/ctr); and 7) the Clinical Research Information Service-Republic of Korea (CRIS) (cris.nih.go.kr/cris). Reporting of randomized controlled trials should follow the guidelines of the CONSORT Statement (www.consortstatement. org).