Publication Ethics

            KJKS is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and academic integrity, and follows the ethical publishing policies of The Korean Academy in alignment with internationally recognised standards and the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
          

The journal operates a rigorous double-blind peer review process to ensure fairness, objectivity and confidentiality. All submissions are evaluated solely on scholarly merit, originality and relevance to the journal's scope — never on the author's institution, nationality, career stage, or connection to the publisher.

Ethical standards cover, but are not limited to:

Originality and the avoidance of plagiarism
Proper authorship and acknowledgement of contributions
Disclosure of conflicts of interest
Ethical conduct of research involving human participants, including learners, classroom and interview data
Data transparency and research integrity
Disclosure of generative AI use in writing, translation or analysis
Confidentiality in peer review
Responsible and independent editorial decision-making
Handling of complaints, corrections and misconduct

All participants in the publication process — authors, reviewers, editors and the publisher — are expected to comply with these standards.

Ethics Oversight

Ethical matters are referred in the first instance to the Editor-in-Chief, who is responsible for the integrity of what the journal publishes. Where the Editor-in-Chief has a conflict of interest, or where the matter concerns the Editor-in-Chief, it passes to the publisher, The Korean Academy, which appoints an independent person with no involvement in the case to consider it.

Where an author, reviewer or editor is affiliated with a university or other institution, serious allegations may also be referred to that institution's research integrity office. Every ethics decision, and the reasons for it, is recorded in writing.

A note on this journal's particular position

          The Korean Academy is a teaching institution, and some KJKS authors and reviewers will be its students, alumni or staff. Rather than pretend otherwise, the journal declares these connections and removes the conflicted person from the decision.
          
          Students of The Korean Academy may submit their manuscripts to this journal, and are welcome to. What follows is identical to what follows for anyone else: double-blind review by two independent reviewers, with the manuscript assigned to an independent handling editor who selects those reviewers and takes the decision alone. Acceptance is determined by the outcome of that review and by nothing else. Submitting as a KORA student confers no advantage, and the connection to the publisher confers no disadvantage.
          
          Equally, no KORA student is required or expected to publish here. Any coursework requiring a research project may be satisfied by submitting to any appropriate venue, or to none.

Ethics Statement

The duties below apply to everyone involved in publishing an article in KJKS. They are drawn from COPE's core practices and are sent to every author on acknowledgement and to every reviewer on invitation.

Duties of

Authors

Originality. Submit only original work that is not published elsewhere and is not under consideration by another journal. Text reused from your own earlier work must be quoted or paraphrased and cited like any other source.
Authorship. Everyone listed must have contributed substantively and approved the submission; everyone who qualifies must be listed. Contributions are declared using CRediT terms on the title page.
Data integrity. Present genuine data. Fabrication, falsification and selective reporting are misconduct. Retain your raw data and be prepared to supply it if asked.
Research ethics. Obtain informed consent and, where your institution requires it, ethics approval — before collecting data. Learners and interview participants must not be identifiable in the published article.
Disclosure. Declare funding, conflicts of interest, any connection to The Korean Academy, and any meaningful use of generative AI. Language polishing counts as meaningful use.
Permissions. Obtain written permission for third-party material — figures, images, long quotations, test instruments — before submission.
Correction. If you discover a significant error in your own published work, tell the journal promptly and cooperate in correcting the record.

Duties of

Editors

Independence. Decide on scholarly merit alone. The publisher supports production and dissemination; it does not influence editorial decisions or the peer review process.
Fairness. Judge manuscripts without regard to the author's race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, institution, career stage or political outlook.
Confidentiality. Disclose nothing about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the author, the reviewers and the editorial office.
Conflicts. Step aside entirely from any manuscript you are connected to — no reviewer selection, no access to reports, no decision. This applies most strictly to an editor's own submissions.
Separation of fees and decisions. Never raise an invoice before a decision to accept, and never learn whether a fee has been paid or waived while handling a manuscript.
Reviewer selection. Choose reviewers for expertise in the manuscript's specific subject, never for availability alone.
Accountability. Investigate credible allegations whenever they arise, including after publication, and correct the record where needed.

Duties of

Reviewers

Confidentiality. Treat the manuscript as an unpublished, confidential document. Do not share it, discuss it outside the editorial process, or use its content before publication.
No AI upload. Do not upload a manuscript, in whole or in part, to any generative AI service. This is a breach of confidentiality, not a grey area.
Competence. Accept only what you are qualified to assess, and tell the editor which parts of a manuscript fall outside your expertise.
Conflicts. Decline where you have collaborated with, supervised or been supervised by a likely author within three years, share a department, have a close personal relationship, or stand to gain from the outcome.
Objectivity. Support every criticism with an argument and a location in the text. Personal criticism of an author is not acceptable.
Promptness. Return the report within 21 days, or decline early so the editor can approach someone else.
Alertness. Report suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated data, missing consent or undisclosed AI use to the editor — describing what you saw, without accusing or investigating.

Duties of

The Publisher

Non-interference. The Korean Academy supports the journal's production, dissemination and preservation, and does not influence editorial decisions or peer review.
Support for integrity. Provide the similarity-checking, record-keeping and editorial resources that ethical publishing requires.
Transparency. Publish fees, licensing, ownership and editorial policy openly, and never claim an index, identifier or metric the journal does not hold.
Preservation. Maintain the published record so it survives changes to journal management or hosting.
Escalation. Appoint an independent person to consider any matter in which the Editor-in-Chief is conflicted.

Malpractice Policy

This policy sets out what KJKS treats as research and publication misconduct, how an allegation is handled, and what follows if it is upheld. It applies to submitted and published work alike, and there is no time limit on investigating a credible allegation.

What counts as misconduct

Plagiarism — using another person's words, ideas, data or figures without attribution, including material translated from another language.
Self-plagiarism — reusing substantial parts of your own published work without quotation and citation.
Duplicate or redundant publication — publishing the same work more than once, or submitting to more than one journal at a time.
Fabrication and falsification — inventing data, altering results, or manipulating images.
Selective reporting — omitting findings that do not support the argument.
Citation manipulation — citations added to inflate a metric rather than to support an argument.
Authorship misconduct — gift, guest or ghost authorship, or omitting someone entitled to authorship.
Undisclosed conflicts — including undeclared funding or an undeclared connection to The Korean Academy.
Undisclosed generative AI use, or listing an AI system as an author.
Ethics breaches — research with human participants conducted without required consent or approval.
Peer review misconduct — fake, coerced or manipulated review; breaching confidentiality; misappropriating content from a manuscript under review.
Paper mills — manuscripts produced or brokered for sale.

Similarity screening

Every submission passes a similarity check before it goes to review. A similarity score is a starting point, not a verdict: a high score caused by quoted material, standard method descriptions or a well-referenced literature review is not plagiarism, while a low score containing one stolen paragraph is. Reports are read by an editor, who looks at what overlaps and whether it is attributed.

How an allegation is handled

Recording. The concern is recorded in writing and assessed by an editor with no connection to any party. Allegations are considered on the evidence, whoever raises them — including anonymously.
Notification. The corresponding author is told what has been alleged, shown the evidence, and given at least 21 days to respond. No conclusion is reached before that response is read.
Assessment. The response is weighed against the evidence. Further expert opinion may be sought, and the manuscript may be put on hold meanwhile.
Institutional referral. Where the response is inadequate and the matter is serious, we contact the authors' institution. The journal investigates publication conduct; it does not adjudicate research misconduct on an institution's behalf.
Outcome. A decision is taken, recorded with its reasons, and communicated to everyone involved — including the person who raised the concern, so far as confidentiality allows.

Possible outcomes

No further action Request for clarification Correction or corrigendum Expression of concern Rejection before publication Retraction Referral to the author's institution Bar on future submissions

Corrections, concerns and retractions

A published article stays published. When something is wrong with it we say so on the record — we do not delete the article and we do not quietly replace the file.

CorrectionJournal error: An error introduced by the journal in production. The article is corrected and a dated notice is published and linked in both directions.
CorrigendumAuthor error: An error by the authors that does not affect the conclusions. The article is corrected and a notice published and linked.
Expression of ConcernUnder investigation: A credible concern is being investigated and the outcome is not yet clear. The article stays online with a linked notice, which is removed if the concern is resolved.
RetractionFindings unreliable: Findings are unreliable through error or misconduct, or the work is plagiarised, duplicated, produced through compromised review, or unethically conducted. The article stays online, watermarked RETRACTED, with a notice stating who retracted it and why.
RemovalExceptional only: Only where content is defamatory, unlawful, or presents a real risk to a person's safety or privacy. The metadata and a notice remain; the full text is withdrawn.

          Retraction notices are free to read and linked from the article. The version of record is never silently altered — every change is dated and visible. Authors are told before a notice is published and may respond, and where the journal and the authors disagree about the reason, both positions appear in the notice. Any Article Processing Charge is refunded where a retraction is attributable to the journal.
        

Protection for those who report

Anyone who raises a concern in good faith is protected from retaliation by the journal, and their identity is kept confidential so far as the investigation allows. Raising a concern that turns out to be unfounded is not itself misconduct; raising one you know to be false is.

Complaints Procedure

Editors get things wrong, and processes fail. There is a route for saying so, and using it never disadvantages a future submission.

Appealing an editorial decision

Write to the editorial office within 30 days of the decision, quoting your manuscript ID. An appeal must identify one of the following:

a factual error in a reviewer's report;
a misunderstanding of the manuscript by a reviewer or editor;
a failure of the journal's stated process.

Disagreement about the significance or interest of the work is not usually grounds for appeal — that is a judgement the editors are appointed to make. Appeals are considered by an editor who took no part in the original decision, who may seek a further review. You will receive a reasoned answer within 30 days, and that decision is final.

Complaints about anything else

Editorial conduct, delays, fees or invoices, the review process, the behaviour of a reviewer, the accuracy of this website: write to the editorial office setting out what happened and what you would like done about it.

Who handles what

Complaint about a reviewer or the review processHandled by the handling editor; if unresolved, by the Editor-in-Chief.

Complaint about an editor's conduct or a decisionHandled by the Editor-in-Chief.

Complaint about the Editor-in-ChiefReferred to the publisher, The Korean Academy, which appoints an independent person with no involvement in the matter.

Complaint about fees, invoices or waiversHandled by the Managing Editor, separately from any editorial decision.

Allegation of misconductFollows the Malpractice Policy, assessed by an editor unconnected to any party.

Complaint about the publisherReferred to The Korean Academy's management, with the outcome reported to the Editor-in-Chief.

Timelines

Stage	What happens	Timeline
Acknowledgement	We confirm receipt and say who will handle the matter	5 working days
Investigation	Evidence gathered; everyone named is given a chance to respond	Up to 21 days
Outcome	A reasoned written answer, with any action to be taken	Within 30 days
Escalation	Where you remain dissatisfied, referral to the publisher	On request

Where a matter is genuinely complex we will say so and give a revised date rather than let the 30 days pass in silence.

Records and learning

Complaints and their outcomes are recorded internally. Where a complaint reveals a fault in our process, we change the process and say so — publicly, if the fault affected published work.

Where to write

Complaints and appeals: admission@thekoreanacad.com, with KJKS Complaint or KJKS Appeal in the subject line and your manuscript ID if you have one. If your complaint concerns the Editor-in-Chief, say so in the first line and it will be passed to the publisher unopened by them.