Enacted: Aug 30, 2007
First revision: May 25, 2009
Second revision: Feb 8, 2013
Third revision: Dec 30, 2021
Fourth revision: Feb 18, 2022
Fifth revision: Feb 8, 2023

Table of Contents

• 1. GENERAL INFORMATION
• 2. RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION ETHICS
• 3. COPYRIGHT
• 4. MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION
• 5. PEER REVIEW PROCESS
• 6. ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGE
• 7. EDITORIAL POLICY

GENERAL INFORMATION

Annals of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ACNM), the official scientific journal of the Korean Society of Surgical Metabolism and Nutrition (KSSMN) and Korean Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (KSPEN), is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published three times per year, on the first day of April, August, and December, with the purpose of publishing research and therapeutic achievements in the field of Clinical nutrition and metabolism. ACNM publishes original articles, case reports, reviews, interesting images, editorials, and letters to the editor. All manuscripts for ACNM must be submitted through the on-line Submission System website (https://e-acnm.org/). Authors have to log into their account in the on-line system, which will lead the authors through the submission process.

For the policies on research and publication ethics, follow the policies established by the ‘Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals’ (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=13&per_page=) or the ‘Ethical Guidelines on Good Publication’ (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) or Ethical Considerations in ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/index.html), especially those on the disclosure of conflicts of interest, statement of informed consent, statement of human and animal rights, Institutional Review Board (IRB), authorship, originality, duplicate publication, and clinical trials registry. Any attempt to duplicate publication or any plagiarism will lead to automatic rejection, may prejudice the acceptance of future submissions, and may be highlighted within the pages of the journal.

RESEARCH AND PUBLICATION ETHICS

Protection of human and animal right

While reporting experiments that involve human subjects, it should be stated that the study was performed according to the Helsinki Declaration (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/) and approved by the IRB of the institution where the experiment was performed. A written informed consent should be obtained from all subjects. In the case of an animal study, a statement should be provided indicating that the experiment process, such as the breeding and the use of laboratory animals, was approved by the REC of the institution where the experiment was performed or that it does not violate the rules of the REC of the institution or the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources, Commission on Life Sciences, National Research Council, http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/labrats/index.html). The authors should preserve raw experimental study data for at least 1 year after the publication of the paper and should present this data if required by the editorial board.

Conflict of interest

A conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) their actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). All authors should disclose their conflicts of interest, i.e., (1) financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony), (2) personal relationship, (3) academic competition, and (4) intellectual passion. The conflicts of interest may occur during the research process; however, the important point is the disclosure itself. Disclosure allows the editors, reviewers, and readers to approach the manuscript with an understanding of the situation under which the research work was processed (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). Even when there is no conflict of interest, it should also be stated. When the manuscript is accepted for publication, ACNM will decide whether the disclosure will be communicated in the published paper (after consulting with the corresponding author).

Personal information protection

The rights of patients should not be infringed without written informed consent. Identifying details should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or his/her parents or guardian) provides written informed consent for publication. However, complete patient anonymity is difficult to achieve; therefore, informed consent should be obtained in the event that anonymity of the patient is not assured. For example, masking the eye region of patients in photographs is not adequate to ensure anonymity. If identifying characteristics are changed to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should take note of this. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article. The ICMJE has recommended the following statement for the protection of privacy, confidentiality, and written informed consent.

Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism

Redundant publication is defined as “reporting (publishing or attempting to publish) substantially the same work more than once, without attribution of the original source(s)." Characteristics of reports that are substantially similar include the following: 1) “at least one of the authors must be common to all reports (if there are no common authors, it is more likely plagiarism than redundant publication)," 2) “the subjects or study populations are the same or overlapped," 3) “the methodology is typically identical or nearly so," and 4) “the results and their interpretation generally vary little, if at all." When submitting a manuscript, authors should include a letter informing the editor of any potential overlap with other already published material or material being evaluated for publication and should also state how the manuscript submitted to ACNM differs substantially from other materials. If all or part of your patient population was previously reported, this should be mentioned in the Methods, with citation of the appropriate reference(s).

Authorship

Authorship credit must be based on the ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). An author is considered as an individual who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study and whose authorship continues to have important academic, social, and financial implications. 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 designing of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; (2) drafting or revising of the work 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. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship and, except in the case of complex large-scale or multicentre research, the number of authors should usually not exceed six. Any persons who do not meet the 4 criteria above should be placed as contributors in Acknowledgments section.

Policies on research and publication ethics that are not stated in the Instructions can be found in the Guidelines on Good Publication (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines) or Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (https://www.kamje.or.kr/en/main_en).

Duplicate publication

Manuscripts are only accepted for publication in journals if they have not been published elsewhere. Manuscripts published in this journal should not be submitted for publication elsewhere. If the author(s) wishes to obtain a duplicate or secondary publication for various other reasons, such as for readers of a different language, he/she should obtain approval from the editors-in-chief of both the first and second journal. It is mandatory that all authors 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, the ‘Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals' (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=13&per_page=) should be followed.

COPYRIGHT

Copyrights ownership is to be transferred to The Korean Society of Surgical Metabolism and Nutrition and The Korean Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. If the journal retains copyright, it should detail the journal’s position on the transfer of copyright for all types of content, including audio, video, protocols, and data sets. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The corresponding author must sign and submit the copyright transfer agreement form upon submission. The paper will not be published until the copyright transfer is complete.

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

General principles

Languages
Manuscripts should be written in English. Medical terminology should conform to the most recent edition of Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary.

Word processors and format of manuscript
Manuscripts must be submitted as MS-WORD (2003 or higher) files using a normal, plain format in grammatically correct English. Manuscripts must be typed in English, doubles-paced and 11 point type, and all pages must be numbered consecutively. Each section should begin on a separate sheet and follow in that order. The title page should be separated from the main text manuscript file.

Abbreviation of terminology
Abbreviations should be avoided as much as possible. One word should not be expressed through an abbreviation, although more than two words may be expressed through an abbreviation. The full term for which the abbreviation stands should be used at its first occurrence in the text. Abbreviations should not be present in the title. Common abbreviations, however, may be used, such as DNA.

Units
The use of International Standardized (SI) units is encouraged. These are available at NIST (https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/index.html). Arabic numbers should be used, and all units use SI unit (International Systemic of Units). Use a comma after thousands (ex. 10,000).

Machine and equipment
When the use of reagents or devices is reported in the text, the name of the manufacturer should be indicated. Regarding devices, reagents, and medicine, information on manufacturing company should be provided in parenthesis.

Statistics
Statistical methods must be described and the program used for data analysis, and its source, should be stated.

Original articles

The manuscripts for original articles should be organized in the following order: Title page, Abstract, Main text, ORCID, Authors’ contribution, Conflict of interest, Funding, Acknowledgments, References, Tables, Figure legends, and Figures.

Title page
Title page is comprised of the title of the article, full name of each author and authors’ affiliations. For authors with different affiliations, 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. Also include the name, email, and ORCID ID of the corresponding author, and the place and date of any scientific meetings where the material may have been presented. All sources of financial and material support should be presented at the bottom of the title page. ACNM requests to include all authors’ ORCID ID in the title page. To obtain an ORCID, authors should register at the ORCID website: https://orcid.org. Registration is free for all researchers.

Abstract
All manuscripts should contain a structured abstract. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words in length and must have the following headings: Purpose, Methods, Results, Conclusion. The quotation of references must not be included in the abstract. A maximum of 5 keywords should be listed, immediately after the abstract, in alphabetical order. These words should be drawn from the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terminology in the United States National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) MEDLINE database (https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search). The first letter of the keyword should be capitalized and the remaining letters should be lower case; they should be separated by a semi-colon, without a period at the end of the last word.

Main text
The main text of the original article should include Introduction Methods, Results, and Discussion sections.

• 1) Introduction should provide a brief background and aims of the study.
• 2) Methods should clearly provide your selection of the observational or experimental participants, including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population in the case of clinical research. In addition, give statistical methods and provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published. Give reasons for using new or modified methods. Methods of clinical trial should be presented with the approval of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and informed consents from patients enrolled in that trial. 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.
• 3) Results are listed according to the order of figures and tables presenting the results of study. Do not repeat all data in the figures or tables in the text of the results section and emphasize the important results briefly.
• 4) Discussion should be limited to important aspects of the study that follow from them. Do not repeat in detail data or previously given information in the Results section. Avoid content unrelated to the results. In Discussion section, conclusion should be presented in a clear and concise manner and help the reader understand why your research should matter to them after they have finished reading the paper. A conclusion is not merely a summary of your points or restatement of your research problem but a synthesis of key points.

ORCID
All authors are required to provide his/her “Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)", when submitting a manuscript to ACNM. During the submission process, authors will have the option to either create an ORCID ID or associate an existing ORCID ID to their account. To learn more about ORCID, please visit https://orcid.org/about.

Authors’ contribution
The journal uses the CRediT taxonomy to define authors’ contribution. Each author on a paper may have one or more CRediT contribution roles. CRediT author contribution statements should be provided during the submission. For more details on CRediT, see https://casrai.org/credit/.

<Examples of CRediT author statement>
Conceptualization: OOO, OOO. Data curation: OOO, OOO. Formal analysis: OOO, OOO. Funding acquisition: OOO, OOO. Investigation: OOO, OOO. Methodology: OOO, OOO. Project administration: OOO, OOO. Resources: OOO, OOO. Software: OOO, OOO. Supervision: OOO, OOO. Validation: OOO, OOO. Visualization: OOO, OOO. Writing – original draft: OOO, OOO. Writing – review & editing: OOO, OOO. (OOO: initial of author)

Conflict of interest
If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should disclose them in the manuscript following the Acknowledgments section. Disclosures allow editors, reviewers, and readers to approach the manuscript with an understanding of the situation and background of the completed research. Please consult the COPE guidelines (http://www.publicationethics.org/) on conflict of interest. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should include following sentence: “The authors of this manuscript have no conflicts of interest to disclose."

Funding
Funding for the research should be provided here. Providing a FundRef ID is suggested, including the name of the funding agency, the country, and if available, the number of the grant provided by the funding agency. If the funding agency does not have a FundRef ID, please ask the agency to contact the FundRef registry (e-mail: fundref.registry@crossref.org). A detailed description of the FundRef policy can be found at http://www.crossref.org/fundref/.

Acknowledgments
Persons or institutes that contributed to the papers but whose contribution was not significant enough to be coauthors may be introduced.

References
References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. References should be identified in text with full-size Arabic numerals on the line and in square brackets [ ]. Up to six authors may be listed. References with seven or more authors should list only the first six followed by “et al." Names should be separated by a comma and one space. References should follow the rules of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Journal titles that are not listed in the Catalog should follow the ISO abbreviation as described in “ISO 4:1997 Information and documentation--Rules for the abbreviation of title words and titles of publications" (http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=3569).

<Examples of CRediT author statement>
Journal
Coia LR, Engstrom PF, Paul AR, Stafford PM, Hanks GE. Longterm results of infusional 5-FU, mitomycin-C, and radiation as primary management of esophageal cancer. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys 1991;20:29-36.
Book
DeVita VT Jr, Hellman S, Rosenberg SA, eds. Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology. Vol 2. 4th ed. Lippincott, 1998.
Chapter in book
Ginberg RJ, Kris MG, Armstrong JG. Cancer of the lung. In: DeVita VT Jr, Hellman S, Rosenberg SA, eds. Cancer: principles and practice of oncology. Vol 2. 4th ed. Lippincott, 1993:673-758.
Electronic format
Lee OJ, Cho YH, Hwang J, Yoon I, Kim YH, Cho J. Longterm extracorporeal membrane oxygenation after severe blunt traumatic lung injury in a child. Acute Crit Care 2017 Feb 10 [Epub]. https://doi.org/10.4266/acc.2016.00472
Web sites
Sage Terapeutics. A study with SAGE-547 for superrefractory status epilepticus [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): U.S. National Library of Medicine; 2000 [cited 2016 Nov 12]. Available from: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02477618?term=NCT02477618&rank=1

Tables and figures
ACNM publishes in full color and encourages authors to use color to increase the clarity of figures. An individual should not be recognizable in photographs or X-ray films provided at the time of submission. Authors must submit figures and illustrations as electronic files. Images must be provided as TIF files or JPEG. Each figure must be of good quality, higher than 300 dpi resolution with good contrast and sharpness. Submit files of figures and photographs separately from the text of the paper. Number figures as “Figure Arabic numeral" in the order of their citation (ex. Fig. 1). If a figure is divided into more than two images, mark each figure with Arabic numerals and a capital letter (ex. Fig. 1A, Fig. 1B). Authors should submit line drawings in black and white. Figures should be explained briefly in the titles. Explain all nonstandard abbreviations in footnotes, and use the following symbols, in sequence: a, b, c, d, (ex. Rad = radiation; Chemo = chemotherapy; NS = not significant. *P<0.001). Brief title of tables and figures should be descript as the verse or phrase in the above line of tables and the section of figure legends, respectively. Only the first character of the title should be capitalized. The first character of each cell in tables is also capitalized. Figure legends must describe all abbreviations and acronyms used in the figure. This section should be typed on a separate page.

Case reports

The manuscripts for case reports should be organized in the following order: Introduction, Case report, Conclusion, ORCID, Authors’ contribution, Conflict of interest, Funding, Acknowledgments, and References.
Case reports describe unique and instructive cases that make an important teaching point or scientific observation, novel techniques, use of new equipment, or new information on diseases that are of importance to the clinical nutrition and metabolism. The length from introduction to conclusion should not exceed 1,500 words. The abstract should be one paragraph less than 200 words. The maximum number of references is 20, 6 for figures and 5 for tables.

Reviews

Reviews are usually requested by the Editor in Chief. However, unrequested reviews could be considered after contacting the Editor in Chief by e-mail to determine the appropriateness of the review to ACNM. The abstract must have the following headings: Purpose, Current concept, Conclusion. The main text consists of the Introduction, Main body, and Conclusion sections. The number of references should be limited to 80. Otherwise, it keeps the style and format of original articles but the details may be more flexible depending on the contents.

Interesting images

The “Interesting images” section presents clinically interesting or informative images regarding nutrition or metabolism. The section is intended to share experiences and relevant commentary rather than report a specific case or study. The section should include the title, names and affiliations of authors, main text, images, image legends, author contributions, conflict of interest, acknowledgment, fundings, keywords, and references. The length of the main text should not exceed 500 words, and there should be no more than four figures and five references.

Editorials

Editorials provide invited perspective on an area of clinical nutrition and metabolism, dealing with very active fields of research, current interests, fresh insights and debates. An abstract is not required and a brief unstructured text should be prepared. Although editorials are normally invited or written by an Editor, unsolicited editorials may be submitted. The length should not exceed 1,000 words and 10 references.

Letter to the editor

Letters to the Editor should include brief constructive comments that concern a published article; a short, freestanding opinion; or a short, interesting case. Letters to the Editor should be submitted no more than 1 year after the relevant paper has been published. Body text should not exceed 1,000 words and should have less than 10 references. Responses from the author of the relevant paper may be provided. The responses should have the same format of Letters to Editor.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

The decision on the acceptance of unsolicited manuscripts is based on the results of a peer review by two or more experts in the corresponding field. To ensure unbiased review, reviewers receive manuscripts without the authors’ names. Editors don't assign reviewers who are from the same institution as the authors to avoid any potential conflict of interest and to ensure an unbiased review process. When the editorial board requests revisions, authors should complete the revision within 4 weeks or else it will be considered as withdrawn by the author. The editorial board will make the final decision on approval for the publication of submitted manuscripts and the publication order of accepted manuscripts.
The editorial board considers ethics, rationality, originality, and scientific significance in accepting submitted manuscripts, and can request further corrections, revisions, and deletions of articles, if necessary. ACNM follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals available at: http://www.icmje.org/, if otherwise not described below.
The editorial board may request authors to correct English to reach a certain standard and authors should accept the request. The Editorial Board can request any further corrections, revisions, and deletions of the article text if necessary. Statistical editing is also performed if the data requires professional statistical review by a statistician.
If an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will receive the proof and typeset for the publication. Please note that the author is responsible for all statements made in their work, including changes made during the editorial process – authors should check proofs carefully.

Handling of the in-house manuscript

All manuscripts from editors, employees, or editorial board members are processed the same way as other unsolicited manuscripts. During the review process, they will not engage in the selection of reviewers and the decision process. Editors will not handle their manuscripts even if they are commissioned ones.

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGE

There is no article processing charge to author. However, this policy could be changed in the future.

EDITORIAL POLICY

The editorial board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and excluding plagiarism and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; avoiding any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promoting publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.
The editor assumes that all authors listed in a manuscript have agreed with the following policy of ACNM on submission of manuscript. Except for the negotiated secondary publication, manuscript submitted to the journal must be previously unpublished and not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Under any circumstance, the identities of the referees will not be revealed. If a new author should be added or an author should be deleted after the submission, it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all of the authors concerned are aware of and agree to the change in authorship. All published manuscripts become the permanent property of the ACNM and must not be published elsewhere without written permission.

Secondary publication

It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html).

Similarity check

Similarity Check is a multi-publisher initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality. To find out more about Similarity Check, visit http://www.crossref.org/crosscheck.html. All manuscripts submitted to ACNM may be screened, using the iThenticate tool, for textual similarity to other previously published works.

Publication process after acceptance

If an article is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will receive the proof and typeset for the publication.
Please note that the author is responsible for all statements made in their work, including changes made during the editorial process – authors should check proofs carefully. ACNM recommends authors to keep the corrections to a minimum.
Note that proofs should be returned within 48 hours from receipt of the first proof.

Appeals of decisions

Any appeal against an editorial decision must be made within 2 weeks of the date of the decision letter. Authors who wish to appeal against a decision should contact the editor-in-chief, explaining in detail the reasons for the appeal. All appeals will be discussed with at least 1 other associate editor. If consensus cannot be reached thereby, an appeal will be discussed at a full editorial meeting. The process of handling complaints and appeals follows the guidelines of COPE available from (https://publicationethics.org/appeals). ACNM does not consider second appeals.