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Instructions to Authors Copyright Transfer Agreement Authors Checklist


Enacted on December 16, 1999
Revised on February 24, 2015
Revised on March 24, 2018
Revised on December 27, 2018
Revised on September 27, 2019
Revised on April 9, 2020
Revised on June 15, 2020
Revised on August 8, 2022
Revised on April 18, 2024
  • 1. General
    Manuscripts for submission to The Korean Journal of Acupuncture should be prepared according to the following instructions. The Korean Journal of Acupuncture follows the 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals', if otherwise not described below.

    1-1. Types of Publication
    The Korean Journal of Acupuncture accepts high-quality studies related to the meridian and acupuncture point (acupoint) and also includes studies on Korean medicine in types of original articles, review articles, editorials, education and practice, short communications, case reports, commentaries, and letters to the editor.

    1-2. Handling of Manuscript and Publishing Order
    All manuscripts will be determined whether to be published by going through deliberation of editorial board after being reviewed by at least 2 reviewers requested by editorial board and 1 editor. The sequence of publication for accepted manuscripts follows the principle of final manuscript acceptance order based on manuscript types such as original articles, editorials, and review articles.

    1-3. Duplicate Publication and Unauthorized Publication
    The manuscript with same details in same language as the ones published in other scientific journals or periodic publications already cannot be contributed and the manuscript published in our journal cannot be reproduced voluntarily at other places. Duplicate publications are justifiable provided different languages were used with the approval of the authors and the editors of both journals.

    1-4. Publication Fee
    A designated publication fee can be charged for all manuscripts except requested manuscripts. And in case of desiring additional reprints, the expenses required for the productions shall be paid separately by the author.

    1-5. Statement of Human Rights
    When reporting research involving human participants, authors should indicate that the planning conduct and reporting of human research are in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration and approval to conduct research from ethics committee/institutional review board. The confidentiality of patients must be protected in case of human participants are involved. Recording name, chart number and precise date should be avoided and one must be careful to maintain anonymity. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate approval from institutional animal care and use committee and whether institutional or national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

    1-6. Selection and Description of Research Participants
    Ensure correct use of the terms sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors), and, unless inappropriate, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex and 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.

    1-7. Role of Editorial Board
    Various inquiries related to sending and editing manuscript must be performed at the editorial board, the editorial board may request corrections to author on style and length of manuscript and the phrases or structure of paragraph may be corrected within the range of not influencing the manuscript by the decision of editorial board. All manuscripts are not returned after being submitted.

    1-8. Copyrights
    The copyrights of all published manuscripts are owned by The Society for Meridian and Acupoint.

    1-9. Data availability
    The data that support the findings of the publication are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

    1-10. Plagiarism prevention
    Since plagiarism is considered a breach of academic integrity and/or journalistic ethics, authors should clarify their sources when they cite published works. Authors should check similarity using Korea Citation Index (KCI) similarity check (https://check.kci.go.kr/) and submit the result report with their manuscript.


  • 2. Publication Period and Reception of Manuscript
    The journal is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December each year and manuscripts are received by editorial office at all times throughout the year. The submitting date of manuscript shall be the date manuscript was submitted at the editorial office and the acceptance of manuscript shall be the date when the revision has been completed after peer review process.


  • 3. Peer Review Process
    Manuscripts are reviewed by the Editorial Office to make certain that the submission contains all parts. The Editorial Office will not accept a submission if the author has not supplied all parts as described in the instructions. The manuscripts are then forwarded to the Editor-in-Chief. If the manuscript appears meritorious and appropriate for the Journal, the Editor-in-Chief assigns the manuscript to at least 2 appropriate experts of corresponding field for peer review. Editor-in-Chief, weighing the views of the reviewers and his or her own impressions of the manuscript, forwards a decision letter to the Editorial Office. This decision letter is then sent to the author by e-mail. Editorial Board will make a final decision on the approval for publication of submitted manuscripts and can request any further corrections, revisions, and deletions of the article text if necessary. Review and publication processes not described in the Instructions to Authors, will be incorporated into Editorial Policy Statements approved by the Council of Science Editors Board of Directors.


  • 4. Submission of Manuscript

    4.1. Manuscript preparation
    Manuscripts should be submitted in file format of Hangeul 2002 or higher version, or any word processor software compatible with that. In case of submission with incompatible file format, extra editing fee besides publication fee may be requested. Manuscripts should be typed in paper with double spacing and font size of 10 with margins of 2.5 cm (1 in.) on each side, top and bottom. Pages should be numbered in series from the title page. All paragraphs should be indented by 2 and it is not recommended to spacing typing with space bar in the beginning of paragraph. Other detailed instructions are as follows.

    4.2. Final draft
    Accepted manuscript shall be transferred to designated publisher to edit for the final draft. The final draft shall be sent to the corresponding author to proofread it.


  • 5. Length of Manuscript
    The length of manuscript shall be not exceeding 6 pages with A4 size (210×297 mm) white paper. If the length of draft exceeds 8 pages, extra publication fee will be charged to the author.


  • 6. Organization Style of Manuscript
    The manuscript should be organized in the order of title page, abstract, keywords, main texts, acknowledgements, references, table, figure, and figure legends (except for clinical & case report and reviews) while the main text is divided into title, introduction, materials (subject) and method, result, discussions and conclusion (summary).

    6-l. Title Page
    On the title page, the followings are listed.
    1. 1) Brief Korean and English title communicating the contents well: All words must be capitalized except for prepositions and articles.
    2. 2) Full name of authors in Korean: First author comes first and co-authors follow.
    3. 3) Affiliation of authors
    4. 4) Full names and affiliations of authors in English
    5. 5) Name and address of corresponding author (including Phone, Fax and E-mail address) should be written in English.
    6. 6) Funding support: Please provide a funding statement. Describe the sources of funding that have supported the work. Also, describe the role of any sponsors or funders. If they had no role, include this sentence at the end of your statement: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If you did not receive any funding for this work, please state "The author(s) received no specific funding for this work."
    7. 7) Conflicts of interest: Please declare any conflicts of interest as described in the Research Ethics Rules (http://www.kjacupuncture.org/authors/sub03.html). If no competing interests exist please include the following text in your article “The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.”
    8. 8) Data availability: The authors must provide a data availability statement and data should be made available upon reasonable request.
    9. 9) Running head: Running head should be inserted at the end of the title page no more than 10 characters in case of Korean and no more than 5 words in case of English.

    6-2. Author
    The person listed on manuscript as the author of manuscript must be qualified as an author. Each author must be the person who has participated adequately in the study to the extent of being able to take responsibility for the details of study. The author is qualified only in case of
    1. 1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
    2. 2)Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
    3. 3) Final approval of the version to be published; AND
    4. 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 are classified as the first author, corresponding author and co-author while the order marked on manuscript shall be in the order of first author and co-author. The corresponding author is marked separately at the bottom. The editor may inquire as to what work each author was in charge of in the study. All authors should enter their positions and Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID), and ORCID identifier can be registered at https://orcid.org.

    6-3. Abstract
    All manuscripts should contain an English abstract of no more than 350 words. The abstract should be written in a form of Objectives, Methods, Results, and Conclusions including the following details. Editorials may not contain the abstract.
    1. 1) Objectives: Describe briefly and clearly with l-2 sentences on why this study was performed and what is the object to be accomplished. The objective written here must correspond with title of manuscript and details stated in the introduction.
    2. 2) Methods: Describe specifically on what has been done and how in order to accomplish the objective described in the first paragraph. What materials are collected, how these materials are analyzed and how bias was adjusted are written.
    3. 3) Results: The details on how the results observed and analyzed using the method described in previous paragraph should be logically described while presenting specific data.
    4. 4) Conclusions: The results derived from the outcome of this study are summarized with 1-2 sentences and this must be the one corresponding to the objective of study described in the first paragraph.
    5. 5) The keywords of manuscript should be shown as no more than 6 words at the bottom of abstract. At this time, the keywords must use MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) listed on Index Medicus. The name of acupoint should be expressed with international standard code and for the name of herbal prescription, Korean or Chinese name should be parenthesized.

    6-4. Main Text
    In the original article, the main text should be in the order of introduction, materials (subjects) and methods, results, discussion, conclusion and reference while each item can be combined or omitted out of necessity. Reviews or case reports may not follow this order. In the introduction, the objective of study and a brief background on this must be mentioned. The method should include materials such as animals for experiment, methods, experimental devices (state manufacturer and model) and procedure, while they must be described adequately and in detail for other researchers to reproduce in case of being performed using the same method and the statistical analysis of results must be also written. The result should be described in the same order as the order of figures but must not write the table of text or data of figure by repetition while only the important observational results should be emphasized and summarized. The discussion should be prepared based on new and important aspects of study as well as the conclusion from them, but the literary review irrelevant with results should be avoided.
    1. 1) Terminology: Scientific terminologies should be in Korean if possible and can be written in English or Chinese only in case there is trouble with translating them.
    2. 2) Abbreviation: Only standard abbreviations are used. Avoid use of abbreviations in title of manuscript and abstract. While using the abbreviation for the first time in the text, mark the abbreviation using parentheses after writing the full name first and can be only marked as abbreviation afterwards. While it is ideal to avoid using abbreviations that are not generally used if possible, but the abbreviations of standard measuring unit is an exception.
    3. 3) Marking proper nouns, numbers and measurement units: name of people, places and other proper nouns should use original language if possible while the Arabic numbers are used for numbers and metric units are used for weights and measures. The temperature is written in Celsius and blood pressure is written in mmHg. The measurements of hematology and clinical biochemistry should use metric units of SI(International System of Units) method. The measured values and unit indications must be spaced in English but not so in Korean.
    4. 4) Name of drugs: Use general name rather than product name as a general rule. But the product name can be used only in case it is important for evaluation of results or tracking study.
      • a. Use the International standard code as a general rule in English expression of the name of acupoints. In case of using an additional name for the acupoint, it is recommended to use the Korean name.
        For example: LI4, or 합곡(LI4).
      • b. The herbal prescription should be written by Romanized Korean name first and the Chinese pinyin name should be parenthesized with the first letter capitalized. And words that stand for formulations such as tang, san or hwan should be indicated by lower case letters after using the hyphen(-).
        For example: Chungpyesagan-tang(Qingfeixiegan-tang)
    5. 5) Category Classification
      The categories of text are classified with below two types.
      • a. In Korean, the text is classified with Arabic numerals.
        For example: 1, 2, 3, 1), 2), 3), ①, ②, ③
      • b. In English, the text is classified with roman numerals.
        For example: I, II, III, 1, 2, 3, a, b, c

    6-5. Figures and Tables
    The title of figure and table should be written in English while the same rule applies for texts in the table. The first letter of the first word in each title of figure and table should be capitalized and the rest is marked with lower case letters. The table should be prepared without inserting horizontal lines. A number should be attached to the table according to the order quoted in the text while the title cannot use abbreviations as a general rule. The explanation on category is inserted to legend and not inserted to heading. Non-standard abbreviations used in tables should be alphabetically defined in the table legend. Table and figure are placed in order after the text and their location is indicated in the text. The legend is written in English as a general rule. The figure must be submitted with ones that are clearly prepared as professional design and abbreviate the word “Figure” to “Fig.” (e.g., Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3, etc.). Tables or figures (including photographs) shall be no more than 10 all together and the exceeding expenses should be paid by the author in avoidable cases.

    6-6. References
    The authors have responsibility to check whether the bibliography included in the manuscript is quoted precisely and completely. All references are prepared in English as a general rule. But the preparation in Korean can be allowed only in case of old classic literature, book, report and scientific paper without English names in original work quoted. English preparation of reference should be prepared by referring to WHO-IST and WHO international Standard for acupuncturing parts published by WHO.
    ※ WHO International Standard terminologies (WHO-IST)
    https://www.who.int/westernpacific/publications
    The reference should be organized by putting serial numbers according to the order quoted in the text, indicate by putting into half-parenthesis as Arabic numeral in a form of superscript number at the end of quoted phrase, but should be written by corresponding with serial number of reference at the end. Six authors can be listed. If more than 6 authors are listed, list only 6 names with ‘et al.’. English names of author should be written as last name first and the rest should be initialized. And the number of references should be 40 or less in case of original article as a general rule. The style of reference is as follows:
    1. 1) Original articles: Name of author. Title. Name of journal. Published year ; volume(issue) : starting page-ending page. Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
      Smith CA, de Lacey S, Chapman M, Ratcliffe J, Norman RJ, Johnson NP, et al. Effect of acupuncture vs. sham acupuncture on live births among women undergoing in vitro fertilization: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2018 ; 319(19): 1990-8. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.5336
    2. 2) Books: Name of author. Name of book. Editions. Place : Publisher. Published year : starting page-ending page.
      Colson JH, Armour WJ. Sports injuries and their treatment. 2nd ed. London : Academic Press. 1986 : 155-6.
    3. 3) Book chapters: name of author. Chapter name : name of editor. name of book. editions. place : publisher. published year : starting page-ending page.
      Foster DW. Diabetes mellitus. In: Fauci AS, Braunwald E, Isselbacher KJ, Wilson JD, Martin JB, Kasper DL, Hauser SL, Longo DL. Harrison's textbook of medicine. 14th ed. New York : McGraw-Hill. 1998 : 2060-81.
    4. 4) Data of Electronic Media
      Morse SS. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 1995 Jan-Mar[cited 1996 Jun 5] ; 1(1) : [24 screens]. Available from: URL: https://www.cdc.gov/eid/


  • 7. Manuscripts other than original article
    The length of manuscript shall be not exceeding 4 pages with A4 size (210×297 mm) white paper except reviews and letters to editor. If the length of draft exceeds 4 pages, extra publication fee will be charged to the author. General details shall be according to original article.

    7-1. Review articles
    Review articles aim to provide the reader with a balanced overview of an important subject.

    7-2. Editorials
    Editorials are invited articles or comments concerning a specific paper in the Journal or a topical issue in the field.

    7-3. Education and Practice
    Education and Practice is concerned with the provision or practice of acupuncture and meridian within a medical or allied clinical context. Their aim is to improve the theoretical understanding or practical application of acupuncture and meridian.

    7-4. Short communications
    Short communications are short reports of significant research. The figures and tables should be limited as 2 or less.

    7-5. Case reports
    1. 1) The order of manuscript should be A. Title and Author (Affiliation, Name); B. English Abstract and Keywords (2 to 5); C. Introduction; D. Case; E. Discussion; F. Summary; G. Acknowledgements; H. Reference; I. Table; J. Figure.
    2. 2) English abstract and summary shall be no more than 150 words without subheadings.
    3. 3) The discussion should focus on specific part emphasized by the case and a lengthy literary review should be avoided.
    4. 4) The number of references should be no more than 20.

    7-6. Commentaries
    Commentaries include a comment on specific published paper, general interest or personal opinions on specific trend of the field related to health. And references should be limited as 10 or less.

    7-7. Letters to the Editor
    Constructive criticism or opinion is described on specific paper published on the journal within 6 months, the manuscript should be prepared within 1 page of A4 size (210×297 mm) paper and reference should be limited as 5 or less.

    For the policies on the research and publication ethics not stated in this instructions, 'Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=7&per_page=)' or 'Guidelines on good publication (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines)' can be applied.

September 2024, 41 (3)