Last updated in January 2016
Enacted in March 2001

The contribution regulations for the Journal have been based on the ‘Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org)’, which were revised in October 2008 by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Matters unspecified in this document will follow the general principles of writing and editing of biomedical publication.

The Journal publishes original articles, review articles, special articles, letters to the editor, and other categories of articles. Review articles and special articles are published upon request of the Editorial Committee. The manuscript type should be specified on the front page of the manuscript by its author.

(1) Original article: Must be an article that shows a new insight by an original study. It should include introduction, methods, results, discussion, acknowledgments (if necessary) and references in order. Other matters should follow the regulations set forth in this Instructions.

(2) Review or Special article: Must be an article that sums up the current state of the research on a particular topic. Its topics and authors are decided by the Editorial Committee, which entrusts the chosen authors with contribution. Its structure is advised to follow that of the original article.

(3) Letter to the editor: May include constructive criticism or opinion on a specific article published in the Journal or opinions on general matters associated with the Journal or on specific academic subjects.

Review and handling procedures related to all research ethics including ethics regulations and plagiarism, duplicate publication, and research misconduct will be followed according to the ‘Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (http://kamje.or.kr/publishing_ethics.html)’ stipulated by the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE).
1) Ethical review and informed consent
If the research involves human participants, it must comply with the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki (adopted in 1964; amended in 2008; http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm) and in principle must undergo scrutiny of an independent Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Research Ethics Committee (ERC) which reviews the ethical issues of the human experiment. However, in clinical studies, the approval of the IRB or ERC and participant’s consent must be received and specified in the text.

2) Privacy and confidentiality
Every author must protect privacy and confidentiality of study participants. The personal information regarding the identity of a study participant must not be disclosed in any form: article, photo or pedigree. However, if a study participant’s personal information is indispensable as scientific information, it must be explained to the study participant or his/her legal guardian, written informed consent should be obtained from him/her before publication, and his/her approval must be specified in a published article. At the time of explanation, a manuscript to be published, including photos, must be offered to a study participant and be approved by him/her. Description materials including photographs should not disclose study participant’s name, english initials, and hospital identification number.

3) Redundant publication/ duplicate submission
An article that has been already reported in another journal or is being reviewed by another journal, and an article that has a redundant material previously published in the journal will be rejected. If the article contains similar work that has already been reported in another publication or has been published in the journal, the author should include copies of such material along with the submitted article. The Editorial Committee will decide on the matter of secondary publication of the submitted article and then consider for its acceptance. Also, the author can not submit a published article to another journal without authorization. Only under the conditions for secondary publication stipulated in the ‘Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals’ this may be allowed.

4) Authorship and contributorship
Every author must meet the authorship standards set forth in the ‘Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals’. He/she has a duty of verifying that his/her article has not yet been published and is not the same as any existing one. All persons designated as authors must fulfill all three conditions that they had contributed to 1) conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and 3) final approval of the version to be published. All contributors participating in the research not meeting the authorship standards must be listed in ‘Acknowledgments’ section after receiving their permission. If the number of authors exceeds seven, the corresponding author must submit in writing the role of every author, and this must be approved by the Editorial Committee. If any author is added during review, he/she must be approved by the Editorial Committee and no author can be revised or added after the article has been accepted.

5) Conflicts of Interest and Financial Disclosures
Each author has a duty to disclose direct or indirect conflicts of interest in the subject matter discussed in the submitted article. All authors must reveal all possible conflicts of interest that related to research such as consultation fees and stocks when submitting their article and should provide all of their personal signatures to verify that they have revealed so. A financial grant or support received for research purposes should be disclosed at the bottom of the title page and all conflicts of interest such as consulting fees and stocks associated with study should also be disclosed at the bottom of the title page or in acknowledg-ment section. The corresponding author is required to confirm whether his/her or his/her co-authors have any conflict of interest to declare, and to provide appropriate details to the Editorial Committee.

Authors should be aware of the information that must be included in the contents of the research according to the study design and must reflect them in their articles. Authors should refer to STROBE (http://www. strobe-statement.org) for observational studies, CONSORT (http://www.consort-statement.org) for randomized controlled trials, STARD (http://www.stard-statement.org) for studies of diagnostic accuracy, and QUOROM (http://www.consort-statement.org/Initiatives/MOOSE/moose.pdf) and MOOSE (http:// www.consort-statement.org/Initiatives/MOOSE/moose.pdf) for systemic reviews and meta-analyses.

Once publication of the manuscript has been decided, the copyright will be deferred to the Korean Society of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, and the copyright of the manuscript published will belong to the Society. The Society is entitled to publish, distribute and print a manuscript in the journal or other media. If the publication of a manuscript has been decided, every author must sign and submit the ‘copyright transfer form’, which must be downloaded from the Society homepage, to confirm that its copyright is assigned.

1) Manuscript format
A word processor (Hangul Word or Microsoft Word) should be used when preparing a manuscript. The manuscript must be written on ISO A4 sized paper (212×297 mm), which has a margin space of at least 2.5 cm (1 inch) in the top, bottom, left and right, in a type size of 10 points, and from left to right in double space. The manuscript must be faithful to orthography. Page number must be written in from the title page.

2) Language and terms
A manuscript must be written in Korean or English. Academic terms should follow the standards described in the ‘Essential Medical Terminology (2005)’ published by the Korean Medical Association and the ‘Scientific and Technical Terminology’ published by the Ministry of Education. If necessary, Chinese characters may be used in combination using parentheses, and only if it is difficult to find corresponding Korean words, English words may be used. In principle, drugs should be written in generic names.

3) Generic names, numbers and measurement units
Personal, geographical and generic names must be written in original language, if possible, and numbers must be written in Arabic numerals. The measurement units such as length, height, mass and volume should be indicated in the metric system (meter, kilogram, liter etc). Temperature must be indicated in centigrade and blood pressure in mmHg. Units for blood and clinical laboratory test measurements should be expressed in the ordinary scale or by International Units (SI). A space is required between a measured value and its unit.

4) Sequence headings of the article
The contents of an original article must be arranged in order of 1) Title page, 2) Title page with title alone, 3) English abstract and key words, 4) Introduction, 5) Methods, 6) Results, 7) Discussion, 8) Acknowledgments (if necessary), 9) Korean abstract and key words, 10) References, 11) Tables, 12) Figure legends and 13) Figures. The contents of a review and special article must be arranged in order of 1) Title page, 2) Title page with title alone, 3) English abstract and key words, 4) Introduction, 5) Main text, 6) Conclusions, 7) Acknowledgments (if necessary), 8) Korean abstract and key words, 9) References, 10) Tables, 11) Figure legends and 12) Figures. A manuscript must not exceed 10,000 letters (including blank spaces), excluding title pages, tables, figures and references. The number of tables and figures in total should not exceed more than eight.

5) Title page
The title page should include the article title, authors’ names and institutional affiliations, contact information for corresponding author(s) (name(s), mailing address, telephone, mobile phone and fax numbers, and e-mail address), source of financial grant or support, English title, English authors’ names, the highest academic degrees and institutional affiliations, a word count for the text only (excluding abstract, acknowledgements, figure legends, and references), word counts for English and Korean abstracts, and the number of figures and tables. An English author name must be placed in order of first name and family name, with its syllables separated from each other and their first letters capitalized. In terms of academic degree, the highest degree must be placed after family name and separated from the name with comma.

6) Title
The title of the manuscript should use minimal amount of words to summarize the contents of the manuscript and should not be expressed as ‘A Study of ----’ or ‘A Discussion of ----’.

7) Declaration of authors
If the authors are more than two, the names of authors should be listed according to their level of contributions and each separated by a comma. If the authors’ affiliations are different, they should be separated by commas according to the authors’ order. If the affiliations are different from that of the first author, the rest of the authors should be marked ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ and so forth in Arabic numerals by top upper right hand corner (superscript) immediately following the authors’ names and before their affiliations. The author responsible for correction of the submitted article should be the corresponding author. The corresponding author along with the first author must assume responsibility for making corrections of the submitted article during review process. If the corresponding author is not disclosed, then the Editorial Committee approves the first author to be the corresponding author. The author’s name in English should be written in the order of ‘given name surname’. If the given name is separated by a space, then capitalization of the first letter of each given name should be made.

8) English abstract and key words
English abstract should follow the sequence headings of 1) Background, 2) Methods, 3) Results and 4) Conclusions. It should be written according to the Korean abstract, but should not exceed over 250 words. At the bottom of abstract, identify three to ten key words from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of the US National Medical Library.

9) Introduction
State the purpose of the article and elaborate on its significance. Summarize the rationale and include only strictly pertinent references.

10) Methods

Identify the methods. Describe study participants, controls, or laboratory animals clearly and identify procedures in sufficient detail to allow other researchers to reproduce the results. Identify the apparatus or reagents used by giving the name of the product, followed by the name of the product company and the names of the city and country where the product company is located in parentheses. Give references to established methods, including statistical methods. Provide references and brief descriptions for methods that have been published but are not well known or substantially modified, and give reasons for using them and evaluate their limitations.

11) Statistics
Describe statistical methods with enough detail to verify the reported results. When possible, quantify findings and present them with appropriate indicators of measurement error or uncertainty (such as confidence intervals). Avoid relying solely on statistical hypothesis testing, such as the use of P values, which fails to convey important quantitative information. When the results of the data in the text are given, provide details specifically in terms of average, proportion, or correlation coefficient to describe the difference between study groups or the relevant size and direction of variables. Avoid nontechnical uses of technical terms in statistics, such as ‘random’, ‘normal’, ‘significant’, ‘correlations’ and ‘sample’. Specify the standard computer statistics program used.

12) Results
Present your results in logical sequence in the text, tables, and figures. Do not repeat in the text all data in the tables or figures, but describe important points and trends.

13) Discussion
Emphasize the new and important aspects of the study and the conclusions that follow from them. Do not repeat in detail data or other materials given in the Introduction or the Results section. Include the implications of the findings and their limitations, including implications for future research. Link the conclusions with the purpose of the study by discussing and comparing the relevant results of other research data. Avoid unqualified statements and conclusions not completely supported by the data. Propose new hypotheses when warranted and recommendations, when appropriate, may be included.

14) Acknowledgments
If necessary, persons who have contributed to the article but whose contributions do not meet authorship standards may be appreciated through acknowledgment section. Clearly state their contributing role for acknowledgement. For example, data collection, financial support, statistical analysis, analysis of experiment, and so forth. Authors should notify that their names will be in the Acknowledgement and are responsible for obtaining permission from persons acknowledged.

15) Korean summary and key words
Korean abstract should follow the sequence headings of background, methods, results and conclusions. It should be written appropriately to convey the key points of an article and should not exceed more than 1,000 letters. Key words ranging from 3 to 10 words should be attached at the bottom of the abstract and checked to confirm that it is listed under the MeSH of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

16) References
References should be listed in the order they were referred to in the main article and should be marked with each number at the top right upper hand corner (superscript). The reference cited in the text should be numbered as in the list of references at the top upper right hand corner and should be followed by a right parenthesis, ‘)’. If there is more than one reference cited coincidentally, then a comma is used to separate the numbers and only the last number is closed with a right parenthesis. If a consecutive number of references is cited together, then a hyphen ‘-’ should be used between the first and the last number. If an author is cited, a superscript should directly follow the author’s name. If no author is cited, then a number will be marked after the last word of the sentence. A particle should follow the superscript. Commas and periods should be placed in front of the superscript. If more than one author is cited and ‘et al.’ was used for abbreviation, then the superscript should follow the abbreviation. Cited references will be limited to a maximum of thirty (30). Should authors need to exceed this limit, they should submit a written explanation to the editorial board and proceed only once permission is granted. The references should be listed in English. If there are six or less authors in a reference, then all the names of the authors should be listed. If there are seven or more authors, list the initial six authors, and then abbreviate the rest of the authors with ‘et al’. If the reference is in Korean, then list the English version listed in the reference. If there is no official English bibliography of the Korean reference, then 1) it should be listed following the Roman alphabet notation of the Korean text (http://www.hangul.or.kr/M4-4.htm), or 2) attach them in parentheses after translating the contents in proper English by listing it according to the Roman alphabet notation. In principle, the name of the English journal should be listed in the abbreviation used in the U.S. National Library of Medicine (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals) and the name of the Korean journal should be listed in the abbreviation used in the Korean Medical Journal Information of the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (http://journals.koreamed.org). The abstract may not be used as a reference, but if unavoidable, the author should make a note that only the abstract has been referred to. If the article has been approved but not yet published and is referred to, then it should be listed as ‘in press’ or ‘forthcoming’. If the article has been submitted, but has not been determined for its publication and needs to be referred to for certain information in the article, then it should be listed as ‘unpublished observation’ and requires the authors’ approval.

Every manuscript must be submitted through the electronic submission system (http:///esubmit.healthpro. or.kr) of the Society. Author’s check list should also be filled out and submitted with the manuscript. An article must be drawn up in a ‘cover letter’ file and a text file including title page. An author must log in online, upload the two files of an article, input article title and author information and confirm author’s checklist. The author’s checklist must be filled out and sent to the next address by post. The date of manuscript submission is a date a manuscript arrives at the Editorial Committee.

Editorial Committee
Korean Society for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
(Zip code: 05505) Department of Family Medicine, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine Tel: +82-2-3010-3820.

Upon submission of a manuscript, the Editorial Committee will review the article whether its contents meet the objectives of the Journal, and the article can be rejected at this initial review process. The Editorial Committee will entrust two or more experts with review of articles and will decide their acceptance for publication with the help of experts’ recommendations. Based on comments from reviewers and editors, authors may be asked to revise their manuscripts. Authors are required to submit a revised manuscript and a letter of explanation regarding how they have dealt with all comments and questions raised by reviewers and editors through the electronic submission system. The Editorial Committee or the editor-in-chief may entrust an statistical expert with statistical review of articles at the final stage of review, and ask authors to revise their manuscripts, if necessary. The acceptance for publication should be decided by the Editorial Committee after its thorough review process, and the editor-in-chief must deliver an official approval of acceptance for publication. The Editor-in-chief must entrust proofreaders of references and English abstracts with proofreading of articles accepted for publication and send certificates of acceptance to authors by email.

The resubmission period for a manuscript sent to its author for revision must be three months, and if three months are exceeded, the manuscript must be judged again as a new manuscript.

Page proofs will be sent to corresponding authors by the Editorial Committee. Authors must send them back within 48 hours after reading them carefully and revising them if necessary. The revision of page proofs must be limited to the errors of typesetting, and it is prohibited to change or to add new contents to the article. Authors are responsible for the contents of page proofs.

The Society will charge review fees for all the submitted articles and publication fees for all the accepted articles (for review 50,000 Korean Won; for publication 200,000 Korean Won for articles without funding and 400,000 Korean Won for articles with funding) except articles requested by the Editorial Committee. Additionally, if the article exceeds 6 pages of the journal, additional fees (50,000 Korean Won per extra page) will be charged. Authors must bear the expenses required for design, special print and separate volume.

If necessary, requests to publish corrections should be sent to the Editorial Committee within one month of journal publication. Corrections are reviewed by editors and authors and published in the next issue of the journal.

Other matters unspecified in these regulations must follow the decisions of the Editorial Committee.