The journal adheres to the guidelines and best practices published by professional organizations, including ICMJE Recommendations and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing(joint statement by the Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE; the Directory of Open Access Journals; the World Association of Medical Editors; and Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association; https://doaj.org/bestpractice). Furthermore, all processes of handling research and publication misconduct shall follow the applicable COPE flowchart (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

Statement of Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

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. Ultrasonography 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, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. If experiments involve animals, the research should be based on national or institutional guidelines for animal care and use. Original articles submitted to Ultrasonography 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. Ultrasonography can request an approval by the institutional review board or animal care committee for the other types of articles when necessary. For policies on any issues of research and publication ethics not stated in these instructions, the Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) should be applied. The content of each article is the responsibility of the authors and not of Ultrasonography.

Authorship and Author’s Responsibility

The corresponding author 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 requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering 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 way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication. Authors are responsible for the whole content of each article. Co-authorship should be based on the following 4 criteria:

1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
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.

If any persons who do not meet above 4 criteria, they may be listed as contributors in Acknowledgments section. There is no limit to the number of authors, and in principle, only one author should contact the editorial board. In the case of multi-center or multi-disciplinary research, up to two corresponding authors are allowed. Ultrasonography does not allow adding authors or changing the first or the corresponding authors once its decision of ‘Accept as it is’ is made. If any author wishes to be removed from the byline, he or she should submit a letter signed by the author, as well as all other authors, indicating his or her wish to be deleted from the list of authors. Any change in the name order in the byline requires a letter signed by all authors indicting agreement with the same.

Conflict of Interest

The authors should disclose all potential conflicts of interest including any research funding, other financial support, and material support for the work, if any exists, in the unblinded full title page. If there is a disclosure, the editors, reviewers, and reader can approach the manuscripts after understanding the situation. If manuscripts from Editor-in-Chief or other editorial board members are submitted, it is also treated through same process with other manuscripts. However, those authors are not involved in the peer reviewer selection, review process, or final decision.

Originality and Duplicate Publication

Manuscripts under review or published by other journals will not be accepted for publication in Ultrasonography , and articles published in this journal are not allowed to be reproduced in whole or in part in any type of publication without permission of the Editorial Board. Figures and tables can be used freely if original source is verified according to Creative Commons Non-Commercial License. It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from a different journal that is not open access. Regarding duplicate publication, plagiarism, and other problems related to publication ethics, "Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals" (http://kamje.or.kr/publishing_ethics.html) should be followed.

Secondary Publication

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the condition of secondary publication of the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors', available from: http://www.icmje.org/publishing_4overlap.html as followings: Certain types of articles, such as guidelines produced by governmental agencies and professional organizations, may need to reach the widest possible audience. In such instances, editors sometimes deliberately publish material that is also being published in other journals, with the agreement of the authors and the editors of those journals. Secondary publication for various other reasons, in the same or another language, especially in other countries, is justifiable and can be beneficial provided that the following conditions are met. The authors have received approval from the editors of both journals (the editor concerned with secondary publication must have a photocopy, reprint, or manuscript of the primary version). The priority of the primary publication is respected by a publication interval of at least 1 week (unless specifically negotiated otherwise by both editors).

The paper for secondary publication is intended for a different group of readers; an abbreviated version could be sufficient. The secondary version faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the primary version. The footnote on the title page of the secondary version informs readers, peers, and documenting agencies that the paper has been published in whole or in part and states the primary reference. A suitable footnote might read: “This article is based on a study first reported in the [title of journal, with full reference].”

Process to Manage the 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 problem with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and etc., The resolving process will be followed by flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are done by Editorial Board.

Registration of Clinical Trial Research

Any research that deals with a clinical trial should be registered with a primary national clinical trial registration site such as Korea Clinical Research Information Service (CRiS, https://cris.nih.go.kr), other primary national registry sites accredited by World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/) or ClinicalTrial.gov (https://clinicaltrials.gov/), a service of the US National Institutes of Health.

Data Sharing Statement

Ultrasonography accepts the ICMJE Recommendations for data sharing statement policy (http://icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). Authors may refer to the editorial, "Data Sharing statements for Clinical Trials: A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors," in JKMS vol. 32, no. 7:1051-1053 (https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2017.32.7.1051).

Editorial Responsibilities

Editorial board will continuously work for monitoring/safeguarding publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standard; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed; no plagiarism, no fraudulent data. Editors are always keeping following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to rejected/accept article; no conflict of interest respect to articles they reject/accept; acceptance of a paper when reasonably certain; promoting publication of correction or retraction when errors are found; preservation of anonymity of reviewers. Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the entire journal content, appoints and administers the Section Editors and other editorial board members, makes the final decision on publication and processes allegations on scientific misbehaviors and misconducts. Deputy Editor supports the Editor-in-Chief for the journal integrity and Section Editors process articles according to subject areas with the initial screening of manuscripts, check for plagiarism and invite the peer reviewers. Statistics Editor checks and advises on the statistical results in the manuscripts. Manuscript Editor performs a technical review of accepted manuscripts prior to publication and Layout Editor is responsible for the final layout and printing of the manuscripts. Consulting editors advise on journal policy, editing and publication.