Research and Publication Ethics

Research Ethics

Social responsibility

Members of the Korean Society of Food Preservation (KoSFoP) are responsible as researchers and scientists for intellectual advancements and research. They should recognize that all new knowledge and interventions generated will contribute to the improvement of the food science and industry. They should provide accurate affiliations and positions of all the researchers involved. If authors are under the age of 16, they should provide their accurate final affiliations, positions, and years of enrollment.

General research ethics

Members of the KoSFoP are responsible for reporting honest, truthful, and accurate results to guarantee the reliability of their research. They must adhere to the general research ethics for conducting all research activities, including research proposal, planning, performance, and reporting.

Scope of research misconduct

Research misconduct (hereinafter referred to as “misconduct”) involves fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, inappropriate authorship, repeated publication, and other unfair activities. Members of the KoSFoP must not submit or publish the results of such misconduct in the Food Science and Preservation (FSP; official abbreviation: Korean J Food Preserv).

- “Fabrication” is the act of creating false data or research results that do not exist.

- “Falsification” is the act of artificially manipulating research materials, equipment, processes, etc. or arbitrarily modifying data, thereby resulting in distorted research or research results.

- “Plagiarism” is the act of using the ideas, research works, results, etc. of others without due approval or without properly attributing them to the original authors.

- "Inappropriate authorship" is the act of granting authorship to those who have not made any scientific or technical contributions to the research contents or results without justifiable reason, or omitting those who have.

- “Repeated publication” is the act of publishing results that are identical or substantially similar to that of an author’s previous research published in other journals without stating the initial research sources.

- “Other unfair activities” include “Interfering with an investigation,” which is the act of intentionally disrupting an investigation of an alleged misconduct of a person or harming the informant.

The Research Ethics Committee

This committee shall be composed of five or more members, including the chairperson. The chairperson of this committee is appointed by the president of the society. Members of this committee are experts in the field of deliberation and are temporarily appointed by the president at the request of the chairperson. However, the author and the research director of the paper, subject to review, cannot become members.

Operations of the Research Ethics Committee

The operation of this committee includes the following: i) Enactment of research ethics regulations and proposal of amendments; ii) Preparation of self-regulations on research ethics standards, scope of misconduct, response methods for misconduct, verification procedures, etc.; iii) Investigation and deliberation of research misconduct; iv) Recommendation of disciplinary measures for research misconduct to the board of directors; V) The committee shall be established with the attendance of two thirds or more of the enrolled members, and resolutions shall be adopted with the consent of more than half of the members present. In the case of a tie, the chairperson participates in the voting of a resolution. When it is necessary to revise the ethics regulations, amendments are deliberated and decided by the board of directors.

Researcher's dignity and observance of the law

Members of the KoSFoP should contribute to the creation of new knowledge and technology and maintain their pride and dignity as professional experts in the food science and industry. Members must abide by the regulations, research ethics, and internationally accepted principles upheld by the KoSFoP during their entire research work and intellectual endeavors.

Statement of human and animal rights

When reporting research involving human subjects, authors should declare that the experiments were carried out in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975 (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/), revised in 2013. According to the Declaration, ethical approval from the local institutional review board (IRB) or other appropriate ethics committee should be obtained prior to undertaking the research to confirm that the experiment meets national and international guidelines. At a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or IRB must be stated in the “Institutional Review Board Statement” of the manuscript. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should state that “All institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.” However, for studies that do not involve human or animal subjects, the following statement must be included “This study did not require IRB/IACUC approval because no humans or animals were involved.”

Preservation of research data

The researcher must faithfully record the data of the results and samples used or produced during the research process and preserve them for a designated period of time. The KoSFoP permanently preserves published papers and related materials, and they may be made available to the public, if necessary.

Publishing Ethics

The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge.

Editorial policy

Manuscripts submitted to the FSP must be original research, and the original data must be made available for review by the editor, if necessary. By submitting a manuscript to the FSP, the authors guarantee that they have the authority to publish the work and that the manuscript, or one with substantially the same content, has not been published previously, and is not being considered or published elsewhere.

Research integrity

Authors who conduct research and present results and reviewers who evaluate research results must perform their roles in a transparent and sincere manner without violating their conscience as scholars.

Data management

Authors shall confirm the ownership of the data and authorization to use the data prior to collecting the necessary data. In addition, authors must carry out the study with a clear understanding of the obligation and right imposed upon the collection or disclosure of data. Data should be collected and recorded through appropriate measures in a reliable and valid manner and must be retained for a certain period of time for other researchers to verify the results and assessable to be used for other purposes by publicly presenting the findings.

Presentation of research results

All research results should be accurately reported with a thorough and reasonable explanation. An honest and transparent evaluation must be conducted to examine whether research methods and researcher opinions are adequately presented in the findings or results of the study.

Retention of copyright

In principle, copyright is granted to authors who have made significant contributions to the research. However, the KoSFoP, the publisher of the journal and publications of symposiums, has the right to use copyright materials in case the findings are useful for public interest, such as education.

Ethical considerations

Once accepted, the manuscripts are not allowed to be reproduced in part or whole without permission from the journal’s editorial team. Articles are not allowed to be reproduced for commercial purposes without the permission of the journal publisher. Manuscripts involving experimental work on humans or animals should meet the relevant regulations or requirements imposed by institutional or governmental authorities, and this should be clearly stated in the manuscript. Any unusual hazards inherent in the chemicals, equipment, and procedures used in the investigation should be clearly identified in the manuscript reporting the work. For policies related to the research and publication ethics not stated in these instructions, the KoSFoP will assist with the detection of "Plagiarism" by using CrossCheck or help to undertake further necessary actions for checking similarities.

Authorship and affiliations

The FSP follows the recommendations for authorship by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE; http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). The order of authorship shall be determined pursuant to the contributions made to the research upon mutual consent of the corresponding authors involved. In addition, authors should be able to explain their reasoning behind such orders of authorship. In principle, the author’s affiliation is the institution where the research was conducted.

Responsibility of the corresponding author

The corresponding author or the senior author shall take primary responsibility for the accuracy of data, the list of all authors, author approval of the final manuscript, and all the exchanges and responses to questions by representing their co-researchers. In addition, corresponding authors must be fully aware that mistakes and omissions made by them and their co-researchers will have a great influence on their careers.

Prohibition of distortion of references

The author may use parts of other researchers’ studies in their research paper by citing the original text or its translated version. The author shall take all possible measures to ensure the accuracy of all stated sources and list of references. Cited references must only include those references that are directly related to the contents of the research paper. The author shall not deliberately include irrelevant references to intentionally increase the citation index of articles or journals and the probability of publication of the manuscript. The author shall not be biased by including only those references that are favorable to the data or theories of their articles. The author has ethical responsibility to cite references contradicting their point of view.

Responsibilities and obligations of the Editorial Board

The editorial board shall be responsible for all the decisions made on accepting papers submitted for publication in the FSP and must secure sincerity in the review and publishing processes. The board shall respect the author as an independent scholar and evaluate fairly in accordance with submission guidelines. The board shall not disclose any confidential information, such as the contents of the manuscript and personal information of the author to any third party, including other reviewers, until the decision on acceptance for publication has been made.

Procedures and contents of disciplinary sanctions

In cases where disciplinary sanctions need to be applied, the chairperson of the ethics committee shall convene the meeting and conclusively determine whether disciplinary sanctions should be imposed and the forms of sanctions. Once the sanction is finalized, the member may be suspended his/her membership. Once the sanction is finalized, the member may be suspended or deprived from research paper submission and member’s qualification and such measures may be informed or publicized to the subject or his/her affiliated institution and journals