The journal adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines), the ICMJE Recommendations (https://www.icmje.org), and the Good Publication Practice Guideline for Medical Journals (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=13). Furthermore, all processes addressing research and publication misconduct shall follow the flowchart of COPE (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). Any attempts to duplicate publications or engage in plagiarism will lead to automatic rejection and may prejudice the acceptance of future submissions.

Table of Contents

• 1. Statement of Human and Animal Rights
• 2. Protection of Privacy, Confidentiality, and Written Informed Consent
• 3. Conflicts of Interest
• 4. Authorship
• 5. Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication
• 6. Secondary Publication
• 7. Management of Research and Publication Misconduct
• 8. Editorial Responsibilities

1. Statement of Human and Animal Rights

Any investigations involving humans and animals should be approved by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) or the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Animal Care Committee, respectively, of the institution where the experiment was performed. Such approval, the approval number, and IRB or REC institution name should be stated in the Methods section of the manuscript. For those investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/). Archives of Pediatric Critical Care (APCC) will not consider any studies involving humans or animals without appropriate approval. Informed consent should be obtained, unless waived by the IRB, from patients who participated in clinical investigations. 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). 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.

2. Protection of Privacy, Confidentiality, and Written Informed Consent

The ICMJE has recommended the following statement for the protection of privacy, confidentiality, and written informed consent: The rights of patients should not be infringed without written informed consent. Identifying details (patient's names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other personal or identifying information, protected healthcare information) should not be published in written descriptions. Images of human subjects should not be used unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and explicit permission has been given as part of the consent. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurances that such alterations do not distort scientific meaning. If consent has not been obtained, it is generally not sufficient to anonymize a photograph simply by using eye bars or blurring the face of the individual concerned.

3. Conflicts of Interest

The corresponding author of an article is asked to inform the editor of the author’s potential conflicts of interest that may influence the interpretation of data. A potential conflict of interest should be disclosed in the manuscript even when the authors are confident that their judgments have not been influenced in preparing the manuscript. 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.

4. Authorship

An author is considered an individual who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study and whose authorship continues to have important academic, social, and financial implications. To be listed as an author, authorship credit should be based on one’s contribution substantially to all four categories established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE): (1) conception and design, or acquisition, 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; 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. If any persons do not meet the above four criteria, they may be listed as contributors in the Acknowledgments section.

• • A list of each author’s role should accompany the submitted paper. The contributions of all authors must be described using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT; https://credit.niso.org/).
• • Correction of authorship: Any requests for such changes in authorship (adding author(s), removing author(s), or re-arranging the order of authors) after the initial manuscript submission and before publication should be explained in writing to the editor in a letter or email from all authors. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper. Each author must complete the copyright assignment.
• • Role of corresponding author: The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all of the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing the details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and conflicts of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely manner and after publication should be available to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information or questions about the article.
• • Recommendations for working with people with personal connections: Authors who intend to include minors (under the age of 19) or their family members (such as spouse, children, and relatives) in their research, including when publishing or presenting papers jointly with them, should clearly indicate this in the cover letter. For further information, please refer to the “Guidelines for Preventing Illegitimate Authorship” by the National Research Foundation of Korea (https://www.cre.re.kr/).

5. Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication

Manuscripts that are under review or have been published by other journals will not be accepted for publication in APCC, and articles published in this journal are not allowed to be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any type of publication without the permission of the Editorial Board. When a similar article has been already published elsewhere or in this journal, its copy should be submitted to the editorial office with the relevant manuscript. The editorial board of the APCC will decide whether the relevant manuscript has been previously published and examine whether it can be published in this Journal.
Figures and tables can be used freely if the original source is verified according to the Creative Commons Non-Commercial License. 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. Similarity Check is used to screen submitted manuscripts for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication upon arrival. If plagiarism or duplicate publication is detected, the manuscript will be rejected, the authors will be announced in the journal, and their institutions will be informed. There will also be penalties for the authors.
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 journals.

6. Secondary Publication

It is possible to republish a manuscript if it satisfies the condition of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations, available from: https://www.icmje.org/ as follows:
(1) Certain types of articles, such as guidelines produced by governmental agencies and professional organizations, may need to reach the widest possible audience. In such instances, editors sometimes deliberately publish material that is also published in other journals with the agreement of the authors and the editors of those journals.
(2) Secondary publication for various other reasons, in the same or another language, especially in other countries, is justifiable and can be beneficial provided that the following conditions are met. The authors have received approval from the editors of both journals (the editor concerned with secondary publication must have a photocopy, reprint, or manuscript of the primary version). The priority of the primary publication is respected by a publication interval of at least one week (unless specifically negotiated otherwise by both editors).
(3) The paper for secondary publication is intended for a different group of readers; therefore, an abbreviated version could be sufficient. The secondary version faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the primary version. The footnote on the title page of the secondary version informs readers, peers, and documenting agencies that the paper has been published in whole or in part and states the primary reference. A suitable footnote might read: “This article is based on a study first reported in the [title of a journal, with full reference].”

7. Management of Research and Publication Misconduct

When the Journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, or complaints against editors, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by the COPE (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). Discussions and decisions on suspected cases are conducted by the Editorial Board.

8. 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 ensuring that there is no plagiarism and no fraudulent data in publications. Editors maintain the following responsibilities: the responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; no conflicts of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; the acceptance of a paper when reasonably certain; promoting the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and the preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.