Authors should not submit the same manuscript, in the same or different languages, simultaneously to more than one journal. 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 duplicate publication related to the papers of this journal is detected, the authors and their institutes will be informed, and there will also be penalties for the authors.

All participants in the publication and peer review process—not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members of journals—must consider their conflicts of interest when fulfilling their roles in the process of article review and publication and must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Conflict of interest also exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence his/her 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.
These conflicts of interest must be included as a footnote on the title page. Each author should certify the disclosure of any conflict of interest with his/her signature. Peer reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide editors with a current description of their financial interests or other conflicts (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Further guidance is available from COPE (https://publicationethics.org/files/A_Short_Guide_to_Ethical_Editing.pdf) and WAME (http://wame.org/conflictof-interest-in-peer-reviewed-medical-journals). If undisclosed conflict of interest is suspected in a submitted manuscript or published article, a committee composed of Editorial Board members will be held and discussed, and JMIS will follow the process of the applicable COPE flowchart (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

Clinical research should be conducted in accordance with the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication. For human, identifiable information, such as patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information should not be disclosed. For animal subjects, 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.

Copies of written informed consents should be kept for studies on human subjects. If the participant is not capable of providing it, a legal guardian, or parent can provide instead. All clinical studies involving human participants should include a certificate, agreement, or approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB). A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. For clinical studies with animal subjects, there should be a certificate, agreement, or approval from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB/IACUC approval and study conduct.

When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, a fraudulent undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and so on, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are carried out by the Editorial Board.

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 Research Ethics Council comprises the chairperson of the Publication Committee of The Korean Society of Endo-Laparoscopic & Robotic Surgery and committee members.

The council's responsibilities include:

1. Addressing issues related to research ethics, such as data falsification or fabrication, plagiarism, dual publication, and incorrect authorship attribution.
2. Conducting reviews of the research ethics concerning published papers. If any breaches of publication ethics are identified, a council meeting will be convened to investigate the matter.
3. Reporting the outcomes of council meetings to the board of directors.
4. Providing ethics education for editors and authors of the Journal of Minimally Invasive Surgery to promote best practices.