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Instructions for Authors > For Authors and Reviewers > Instructions for Authors


Enacted in May 2016
Revised December 16, 2019
May 11, 2022
October 12, 2023
Recently revised May 30, 2024

A manuscript submitted for Clinical Ultrasound must satisfy the following requirements. Any matter not specified in these Instructions is governed by the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (http://www.icmje.org).

1. Manuscript Types, Author Qualifications, and Languages

Clinical Ultrasound publishes clinical or experimental research manuscripts (original articles), case reports, reviews, editorial, clinical images, and readers’ letters. Original manuscripts, case studies, clinical images and readers’ letters may be submitted by either clinical doctors or researchers. Reviews and discussions may be submitted at the request of the Publication Committee. A manuscript must be written in Korean or English. A manuscript written in Korean should use the terminology listed in the latest version of the Medical Terminology Database published by the Korean Medical Association. A manuscript written in English may be published as is after a review by the Publication Committee. The Korean Association of Clinical Ultrasound (KACU) reserves the copyrights to all manuscripts published in Clinical Ultrasound.

2. Research and Publication Ethics

Clinical Ultrasound follows the research and publication ethics guidelines set forth in the Ethics Guidelines of the Korean Association of Clinical Ultrasound, the Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals (https://www.kamje.or.kr/board/view?b_name=bo_publication&bo_id=13), and the Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines) of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

1) Registration of Clinical Trials
A clinical trial or study should be registered with a national clinical trial registry (https://cris.nih.go.kr/) or an agency certified by WHO or the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

2) Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest
The corresponding author should disclose all information on conflicts of interest that may affect interpretation of the findings, including any financial support from or affiliation with a pharmaceutical company, any political pressure from an interest group, or any academically related issue, to the editors. In particular, any and all financial support used for the research should be clearly disclosed.

3) Written Informed Consent
Copies of written Informed consent from patients and approval from the institutional review board should be retained. As required, an editor or a reviewer may request a copy of written consent or approval to resolve related issues.

4) Requirements Regarding Human and Animal Rights
A study on humans should be consistent with the ethical standards set forth in the Declaration of Helsinki 1975 (revised 2013) (available from: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medicalresearch-involving-human-subjects/). A study on animals including mammals or aves should be approved by the animal experiment ethics committee of the relevant institution, and conducted in accordance with Article 13 of the Animal Protection Act of the Republic of Korea or laboratory regulations equivalent thereto. An experiment plan approved by an animal experimental ethics committee should be available if required and requested by an editor or a reviewer.

5) Author Qualifications
A person listed as an author in a manuscript should satisfy the following requirements: 1) contribution to the basic concepts and design of the study, and analysis and interpretation of the data; 2) significant contribution to writing, revising key parts of, or improving on the manuscript; and consent to the content of the final manuscript. In the event that the number of authors exceeds six, descriptions of the roles of the respective authors should be provided when submitting the manuscript.

6) Originality and Duplicate Publication
A submitted manuscript should be original and may not be considered for simultaneous publication in any other journal. No part of a manuscript may be duplicated in any other journal without permission from the Editorial Committee once its publication is finalized. In the event that a manuscript published on Clinical Ultrasound is confirmed to be duplicated in another journal, that fact will be published in the journal, any institution the authors are affiliated with will be notified, and the author will be subject to a penalty.

7) Secondary Publication
It is possible to republish manuscripts if the manuscripts satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html).

8) Copyright Permission
When citing any figure or table from a published article, copyright permission must be obtained from the journal of publication, and a reference to the copyright permission should be included in the manuscript.

3. Process to Manage the Research and Publication Misconduct

When the Journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as a redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conf licts of interest, an ethical problem discovered with the submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and other issues, the resolving process will follow the flowchart provided by the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics; http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The Editorial Board of Clinical Ultrasound will discuss the suspected cases and reach a decision. Clinical Ultrasound will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

4. Review Process

All received manuscripts are reviewed for publication based on research quality, originality, and clinical and scientific significance. In general, a preliminary decision on publication is made within four weeks from receipt, and the reviewers’ opinions are provided using the corresponding author’s email address. A revised manuscript should be resubmitted by the corresponding author online, along with a description of how the manuscript was revised in accordance with the reviewers’ comments. A manuscript should be reviewed by at least two experts, and a reviewer may demand a second or a third review. In the event that a revised manuscript is not submitted within 8 weeks from the Editorial Committee’s decision on publication, the manuscript is deemed to have been withdrawn.

5. Copyright

Once the journal decides to publish a manuscript, the KACU reserves the copyright on the manuscript, and the manuscript may not be published in another journal without written permission. A copyright release form should be prepared and submitted to the office of the Editorial Committee by e-mail upon approval of publication.

6. Online Submission Rules

All manuscripts should be submitted to Clinical Ultrasound by logging in at the Clinical Ultrasound online submission website (http://submit.clinicalultrasound.org/) and following the instructions therein. A failure to comply with these rules may result in the return or delayed publication of the manuscript.

7. Manuscript Preparation

1) Word Processor and Manuscript Format
All manuscripts must be written in Korean or English using plain and concise expressions. Manuscripts should be prepared using Microsoft Word or another major word processor program with a font size of 12 point and double spacing (200%), on A4 or letter size with a 3-cm margin on the top, left, right, and bottom. All pages of the manuscript should be numbered, including the cover. Metric units should be used when preparing a manuscript. The following guidelines apply to the associated research methods in the following table, including randomized controlled studies, diagnostic studies, meta-analyses, observational studies, and non-randomized controlled studies.

2) Research Method-Specific Submission Guidelines

Initiative Type of study Source
CONSORT Standards of Reporting Trials https://www.equator-network.org/
STARD Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies
PRISMA Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
STROBE Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology
MOOSE Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology

8. Original Articles

An original article reports the findings of basic and clinical studies. Even though the length of an original article is not limited, the Editorial Committee may restrict excessive figures or tables. An original article manuscript consists of the following parts: Title Page, English Abstract and Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Summary, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, and Figures. When submitting a manuscript, a statement that the manuscript has not been previously published or redundantly submitted to another journal in full or in part should be included. It should also include a statement that the authors’ analysis and manuscript preparation have not been affected by any conflict of interest including any financial support from or affiliation with a pharmaceutical company, any political pressure from an interest group, or any academically related issue.

1) Title Page
The title page should indicate the title of the article, the names of all authors, and their affiliations. The title of the article should consist of the minimum number of words needed, including the keywords, required to communicate the content of the article, and should not exceed 40 characters in Korean and 120 characters in English, excluding spaces. The title should not include abbreviations or acronyms, and the specifics of the experiment animals, if used, should be disclosed in the title. The running title should not exceed 50 characters in English, excluding spaces. In the case of a multiinstitution study written by authors with different affiliations, the institution where the study was mainly conducted will be listed as no. 1, and the other institutions will be presented in numerical order by adding superscript numbers to the names of the relevant authors starting with no. 2. The names, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, fax numbers, and email addresses of the corresponding authors should be provided.

2) English Abstract and Keywords
The abstract of an original article should be written in English and consist of four parts: Background/Aims; Methods; Results; and Conclusions. The abstract should not exceed 250 words. Acronyms should be kept to a minimum and clearly comprehensible. Five or less English keywords should be selected from among indexed words in the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) of Index Medicus. Note that the keywords not registered at the MeSH index can be written after confirmation by the Editorial Board.

3) Introduction
The Introduction should briefly describe the background of the study, and mention the findings of articles and researchers closely related to the study. It should also clearly describe the subject matter covered by the study.

4) Materials and Methods
The Method should be described briefly, but with sufficient details to allow other researchers to replicate the study. The sources of all and any special chemicals and reagents used for the study should be listed in the following order: manufacturer, city (state), and country. If required, information on institutional review board approval and patient consent should be disclosed. This section should also explain the statistical analysis methods and the criteria for statistical significance.

5) Results
The Results should be provided in a logical manner using figures and tables. The content of the figures and tables should not overlap.

6) Discussion
The Discussion section should briefly describe and discuss the study data and findings. While analogical reasoning is allowed, it should be related to the study findings. The descriptions in the Findings section should not be repeated here.

7) Summary
In the case of a manuscript written in Korean, the Korean abstract should be prepared in the same format as the English abstract, and consist of the Background/Aims, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Five or less Korean keywords should be provided as well. In the case of a manuscript written in English, the abstract in Korean is not applicable.

8) Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements may be added to mention persons who made significant contributions to the study but not to the extent to include them as authors. All funding used for the study must be mentioned in the acknowledgments.

9) References
When citing references in the main text, they should be numbered in the order of citation with an Arabic number in brackets. The use of cited author names in the main body is not recommended. When this is of absolute necessity, the names of both Korean and foreign authors should be presented in English. For example, for articles with a single author, this should appear as: ‘Kim [1], Bailey [3]’; for articles with two or more authors: ‘Park et al. [2], Brougham et al. [4].’ In the event that a Korean author provided the bibliography in English, the format for foreign authors should be used. The cited literature should be listed in the References section in the order they appear in the main text. The names of up to six authors may be provided for each article. When there are seven or more authors, the first three authors should be listed followed by ‘et al.’ If a cited article is published online and its issue number and volume number have not been decided, the digital objective identifier (DOI) should be provided. The journal abbreviations in Index Medicus should be used for journal titles, and the NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine) should be used for any other formats not specified herein.

Journal articles:

  • 1. Yoo BM, Lehman GA. Update on endoscopic treatment of chronic pancreatitis. Korean J Intern Med 2009;24:169-179.
  • 2. Caselli RJ, Dueck AC, Osborne D, et al. Longitudinal modeling of age-related memory decline and the APOE epsilon4 effect. N Engl J Med 2009;361:255-263.

Entire book:

  • 3. Gilman AG, Rall TW, Nies AS, Taylor P. Goodman and Gilman’s the Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. 9th ed. New York: Pergamon Press, 1996.

Part of a book:

  • 4. Costa M, Furness JB, Llewellyn-Smith IF. Histochemistry of the enteric nervous system. In: Johnson LR, ed. Physiology of the Gastrointestinal Tract. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Raven, 1987:1-40.

Dissertation:

  • 5. Hong GD. The relationship between low serum cholesterol level and cancer mortality [dissertation]. Seoul (KR): Seoul National University, 2009.

Conference paper:

  • 6. Rice AS, Brooks JW. Canabinoids and pain. In: Dostorovsky JO, Carr DB, eds. Proceedings of the 10th World Congress on Pain; 2002 Aug 17-22; San Diego, CA. Seattle (WA): IASP Press, 2003:437-468.

Online publication:

  • 7. Suzuki S, Kajiyama K, Shibata K, et al. Is there any association between retroperitoneal lymphadenectomy and survival benefit in ovarian clear cell carcinoma patients? Ann Oncol 2008 Mar 19 [Epub]. https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdn059.

Online sources:

  • 8. American Cancer Society. Cancer reference information [Internet]. Atlanta (GA): American Cancer Society, c2009 [cited 2009 Nov 20]. Available from: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/CRI_0.asp.
  • 9. National Cancer Information Center. Cancer incidence [Internet]. Goyang (KR): National Cancer Information Center, c2009 [cited 2009 Oct 20]. Available from: http://www.cancer.go.kr/cms/statics.

10) Tables
Tables should be provided in English in a simple format without overlapping content, in a way that allows readers understand the table without reading the main text. When referring to a table in the main text, the reference should be placed at the end of the sentence and before the period [e.g., ...(Table 1).]. When placed in the middle of a sentence, it should be incorporated into the sentence (e.g., As shown in Table 1...). Tables should be included on separate pages, and numbered with Arabic numbers in the order they appear in the main text, followed by the title (e.g., Table 1. Subject characteristics according to glucose tolerance status).
For a table containing numerical values, the measurement unit should be provided at the top of each column. Appropriate statistical values should be included in tables. Abbreviations other than standard abbreviations should be provided in footnotes (e.g., EVR, early virologic response; SVR, sustained virologic response). In cases where separate explanations are needed, footnote superscripts should be provided on the right side of the relevant text as a letter (a, b, c, etc.) and the explanation should be provided in the footnote section below the table. An overall description of the table, abbreviations, and symbols should be provided below the table as separate lines, in that order.

11) Figures
High-resolution figures (600 dpi recommended for color images and 1,200 dpi recommended for drawings and graphs) should be submitted in EPS or TIF format. Photographs may be submitted in JPEG format as well. Each figure should be stored and submitted as a separate file. All figures and images should include descriptions, which should be provided on a separate page in full English sentences. Any characters in each figure should be presented in English as well. All symbols, arrows, and characters used in a figure should be written in contrasting colors to make them distinguishable from the background, and should be sufficiently clear so that they are legible even after resolution is reduced in the printing process. The staining method and scope number should be provided for all images taken with an optical microscope. In the case of an image taken with an electronic microscope, the scale indicating the scope number should be presented. All figures may be reduced, enlarged, or adjusted by the editors to make them suitable for publication. A reference to a figure in the main text should be provided at the end of the sentence and before the period [e.g., ...... (Fig. 1).] When including it in the middle of a sentence, it should be incorporated into the sentence (e.g., As shown in Figure 1...). When citing multiple figures at the same time, the following example should be followed: (Fig. 1 and 2). When citing a figure with statistics, the following example should followed: ( p = 0.005, Fig. 4). When citing a figure with multiple parts, the following example should followed: (Fig. 1A and 1B).

12) Video
Video clips should have straightforward file names, such as "Video 1***" or "Video 2***," with the appropriate file extension like ".mov" or ".mpg." Authors are allowed to submit a maximum of 20 video clips. Verify that video clips are compatible with both Windows and MAC computers by testing playback on different computer systems from the ones used for creation. Individual video files should have a minimum resolution of 480 x 320 pixels; smaller clips will not be accepted. They should also not exceed 2 GB in size. Files smaller than 15 MB will be rejected unless special arrangements with the editorial board have been made. Approval for files larger than 2 GB will be determined at the end of the review process. Authors may optionally include supplemental still images corresponding to the video clips, complete with legends. Ensure that the file names for the video clips reference the relevant figure number(s).

9. Case Report

Case reports describing cases that are clinically significant and very rare may be published. A case study should report a topic that is important for medical researchers, and ideally should include illustrations to help readers understand the content. A case study should consist of the following sections: Title Page, English Abstract and Keywords, Introduction, Case, Discussion, Summary, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, and Figures. A case study may not exceed ten authors, and the English abstract should be 150 or fewer words, with no specified format. The combined number of figures and tables may not exceed five, and the number of references is up to 15 (negotiable).

10. Review

A review is a discussion focused on a specific topic, and submitted solely at the request of the Publication Committee. A review should consist of the following sections: Title Page, English Abstract and Keywords, Introduction, Body, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, and Figures. The English abstract should be 200 or fewer words, with no specified format. The main text should not exceed 7,500 words including the References, Tables, and Figures.

11. Editorial

A discussion is written about a specific article recently published in Clinical Ultrasound, and the latest knowledge and opinions in the relevant field, at the request of the Publication Committee. A discussion covers topics with new insights and issues actively researched in all areas of clinical ultrasound. Such a submission should not exceed 2,000 words excluding the references, tables, and figures.

12. Images in Clinical Medicine

The Images in Clinical Medicine serves the purpose of showcasing cutting-edge imaging techniques that aid in evaluating unusual aspects of common medical conditions or diagnosing rare cases. These images should depict pathological and radiographic findings of exceptional quality, offering a comprehensive view of the disorder.

The manuscript structure for an Images in Clinical Medicine should follow this sequence: a title, a concise summary of the presentation highlighting key clinical features and essential laboratory results, a detailed description of imaging features, especially those pivotal for diagnosis or management, a brief discussion covering the disease or the diagnostic and therapeutic processes involved, and the complete names and institutional affiliations of the authors. The manuscript should include no more than two figures and involve a maximum of five authors, with the total word count not exceeding 500 words.

The option to publish supplementary video clips also available online. These clips should effectively convey the primary findings within a reasonable duration and be discussed in the accompanying text. Authors are expected to incorporate appropriate labels (e.g., arrows, anatomical structure abbreviations) in the video clips.

Authors must ensure the removal of any patient-identifying information, such as names, hospital names, or hospital numbers, from the figures, figure legends, and text to maintain patient privacy and confidentiality.

13. Reader’s Letter

A reader may submit a reader’s letter to provide constructive criticism or comments regarding a specific article published in the journal, expedite the publication of new medical findings, or briefly describe exceptional yet educational cases. However, the Publication Committee decides whether to publish a reader’s letter. The manuscript for a reader’s letter should consist of the title, main body, keywords, references, tables, and figures without an abstract, and should not exceed a single A4 page. The combined number of figures and tables should not exceed three, and the number of references is restricted to five.

14. Publication Fee and Printing Fee

A publication fee is not required for an original article or a case study. However, the authors should bear the expenses incurred from design, engraving, color printing, or special printing expenses required for the article. A supplement may be made at the authors’ request in 30 copies or more, and the expenses should be borne by the authors. A quotation sheet for supplements may be submitted when sending the proof of the manuscript to the corresponding authors.


Editorial Office
The Korean Association of Clinical Ultrasound
#1711, Hanshin Building, 12, Mapo-daero, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea 04175
TEL: +82-2-702-4001, Fax: +82-2-373-1106, E-mail: journal@kacu.or.kr
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