The JACS adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) and the ICMJE Guidelines (http://www.icmje.org).
1. Editorial Responsibilities
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.
2. Double Blind Peer Review Process
The Editorial Office of Journal of Acute Care Surgery receives and reviews all submitted manuscripts, and all submitted manuscripts are considered confidential. The submitted manuscripts are initially screened for the format. All submitted manuscripts are screened for duplication through Crosscheck (https://app.ithenticate.com). Once the manuscript is provisionally accepted, it is sent to the two most relevant referees for review. The referees are selected by the editor from the Editorial Board's database or the board members' recommendation. The referees are then requested to evaluate based on originality, validity, presentation, and importance and interest, and, when considered necessary, statistics.
Acceptance of a manuscript depends on the evaluation, critiques, and recommended decision made by the referees. A referee may recommend 'accept', 'minor revision', 'major revision' and 'reject'. Upon opposing recommended decisions between referees, or author and referee(s), the Editor-in-Chief has the full right to decide whether the manuscript will be published in the journal. Three repeated decisions of 'major revisions' are regarded as a 'reject' and rejected papers will not be considered further.
The reviewed manuscripts with comments, recommended directions, and revisions are returned to the corresponding author. The corresponding author is to submit the revised manuscript accompanied by point-to-point replies to the comments given by the editor and how the revisions have been made. There should be a reasonable explanation for any noncompliance with the recommendations. In cases where references, tables, or figures are moved, added or deleted during the revision process, renumbering must be done so that all references, tables, and figures are cited in numeric order. If the revised paper is not received within 2 months of decision, the manuscript is considered to have been withdrawn.
When the final decision on the acceptance of the manuscript is made, the Editorial Office notifies the corresponding author. The peer-review process takes approximately 8-12 weeks.
3. Manuscript Originality
Manuscripts are considered with the understanding that no part of the work has been published previously in print or electronic format and the paper is not under consideration by another publication or electronic medium. All in press or submitted works that are pertinent to the manuscript under consideration by the journal (including those cited in the manuscript under consideration) must accompany the submission. Related manuscripts that have been submitted elsewhere during the period of revision must accompany revised manuscripts. Failure to provide copies of related manuscripts under consideration elsewhere may delay the review process and may be grounds for rejection. Under no circumstances will any paper be considered that contains any data that have been submitted for publication elsewhere.
4. Open Access and Creative Commons Attribution License
Every peer-reviewed article appearing in this journal will be published open access. This means that the article is universally and freely accessible via the internet in perpetuity, in an easily readable format immediately after publication.
All articles will be published under the following license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0.
Author rights
For open access publishing, this journal uses an exclusive licensing agreement. Authors will transfer copyright to Journal of Acute Care Surgery, but will have the right to share their article in the same way permitted to third parties under the relevant user license, as well as certain scholarly usage rights.
5. 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 https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check. All manuscripts submitted to Journal of Acute Care Surgery may be screened, using the iThenticate tool, for textual similarity to other previously published works.
6. Data Sharing Policy
To foster transparency, we encourage you to state the availability of your data in your submission. This may be a requirement of your funding body or institution. If your data is unavailable to access or unsuitable to post, you will have the opportunity to indicate why during the submission process, for example by stating that the research data is confidential.
JACS follows the data sharing policy described in “Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials: A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors” (https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2017.32.7.1051).
7. Preprint Policy
Manuscripts to JACS cannot have been published previously, and are not being considered for publication by other journals including preprint.
8. Archiving Policy
The article of JACS has been archived in the Korea Citation Index (https://www.kci.go.kr). In accordance with the deposit policy (self-archiving policy) of Sherpa/Romeo (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk), authors are not permitted to archive preprints (i.e., versions prior to refereeing), but they are allowed to archive post-prints (i.e., final drafts after refereeing). Authors may archive the publisher's version/PDF.