• Enacted in March 31, 2014
• Enacted in November 22, 2019
• Recently revised in March 1, 2020

Purposes

These ethical regulations aim to protect the integrity of research by setting forth the ethics-related matters regarding the findings to be published in the “Plant Breeding and Biotechnology (PBB)”, the official journal of the Korean Society for Breeding Science (KSBS). The journal adheres to the ethical guidelines for research and publication described in Guidelines on Good Publication (http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

Definition of terms

• 1. Research fraud refers to the forgery, falsifications, plagiarism, dual publication, improper inclusion or exclusion of authors, etc, as seen in the proposals, performances, result reports, presentations, etc. of the research. Detailed explanations are provided below.
  • 1) Forgery: Refers to the act of forging non-existent data or findings.
  • 2) Falsification: Refers to the act of distorting research contents or results by willfully fabricating, transforming, deleting or adding data.
  • 3) Plagiarism: Refers to the act of representing others' work as one's own. This includes cases of self-plagiarism, using identical ideas or data in subsequent publications.
  • 4) Dual publications: Refers to the publishing of identical research contents in different academic journals twice or more.
  • 5) Improper inclusion or exclusion of authors: Refers to not qualifying, without reasonable reason, a person who has contributed to the research contents or results in scientific or technical terms for authorship, or to qualifying a person who has not contributed to them in scientific or technical terms for authorship.
  • 6) Act of proposing, forcing or threatening another person to commit fraudulent acts.
  • 7) Other acts that are seriously out of line with the scope normally acceptable in academic research.
• 2. “The informant” refers to a person who recognizes and reports any research fraud to the Society.
• 3. “The examinee” refers to a person who is under investigation for research fraud according to the report of an informant or the cognizance of the Society, or to a person who has been found during an investigation to have potentially participated in research fraud. A reference or witness consulted during the examination shall not be referred to as an examiner.
• 4. “Examination” refers to a procedure to determine whether the Society needs to officially examine the suspicion of research fraud, and to verify whether the suspicion of research fraud is true or not.
• 5. “Judgment” refers to the procedure of making a decision based on the evaluation of evidence, and informing the decision to an informant and/or examinee.

Ethical requirements for authors

The KSBS recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

• • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• • Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• • 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.

• 1. (Author's responsibilities) Each author shall precisely provide and be responsible for only the results of the research he or she has actually carried out. The corresponding author shall represent all authors in answering for the accuracy of the data, evaluating exact contributions of each author, certifying approval of all authors for the submitted draft, and handling all correspondences and questions.
• 2. (Management of data and findings) Data shall be collected and recorded in reliable, valid and appropriate ways, and kept for a certain period of time to be available if necessary.
• 3. (Sequence of authors) Authors shall be arranged in order according to the extent of their contributions to the research, under mutual consent.
• 4. (Prohibition of dual publications) No author may attempt at the multiple publication of his or her study (including that planned to publish or under examination). When wanting to publish his or her study utilizing another already published in an academic journal, he or she shall offer the information on the previous publication to the editors of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology (PBB) and shall follow the editor's judgment of whether the act is double publication.
• 5. (Prohibition of plagiarism) Plagiarism of any kind is strictly prohibited.
• 6. (Author's revision of manuscript) Authors shall accommodate opinions of the editors and reviewers as much as possible, and when dissenting from the opinions, shall offer the grounds and reasons to the editors and reviewers.
• 7. (Conflict of interest statement) The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ inter-pretation of the data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connections to companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated.

Ethical requirements for editors

• 1. Editors shall be responsible for deciding whether to publish a contributed manuscript, ensuring the truthfulness and fairness of judgment, and respecting authors' integrity and independence as a scholar.
• 2. Editors shall entrust the judgment of the manuscript to objective and fair reviewers with expertise in the field. Reviewers with conflicts of interest shall be excluded.
• 3. Contents and authorship of all submitted manuscripts will be kept from public access until the final decision is made. In addition, identity of the editors and reviewers will not be released during or after the evaluation of a given manuscript.

Ethical requirements for reviewers

• 1. Within a period specified by the editors, reviewers shall carefully evaluate the manuscripts with which the editors have entrusted them and inform the editors of the results of the review. If a reviewer considers him- or herself to be unqualified for evaluation, he or she shall so inform the editors immediately.
• 2. Each reviewer shall evaluate every manuscript objectively and fairly in accordance with strict standards in terms of the quality, significance and interpretation of study. He or she may not exclude any manuscript from publication without specifying sufficient ground.
  • 1) Reviewers shall respect the integrity and independence of authors, and not use any expression that could be deemed insulting.
  • 2) Reviewers may not entrust the review to any third party, including members of their institute or laboratory.
  • 3) Reviewers may not keep or utilize any part of the manuscript for personal uses.
• 3. The review process will remain a secret. The reviewer may not use or disclose the contents of the manuscript without consent of the authors prior to publication. The reviewer shall not release the names of the editor and reviewer to the authors or to a third party.

Enforcement of ethical regulations

• 1. The Ethics Committee shall include editors of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology (PBB), and the chairman shall be recommended by the Board of Directors and confirmed by the Board of Representatives. The committee members other than the journal editors shall be appointed by the Society president upon recommendation of the chairman.
• 2. The Ethics Committee shall carefully examine cases of ethical violation by all means deemed necessary and recommend the president of the Society to take appropriate disciplinary action.
• 3. Any member who has been reported for violating ethical regulations shall cooperate with the investigation by the Ethics Committee. Non-cooperation with the examination may be considered to be admission of ethical violation.
• 4. Any member reported for ethical violation shall be given the opportunity to defend him/herself.
• 5. The Ethics Committee may not disclose the identity of any member in question until a final decision is made by the Society on the violation of ethical regulations.
• 6. When recommended to take disciplinary measures by the Ethics Committee, the president of the Society shall make a decision on the disciplinary details, which is to be approved by the Board of Directors.
• 7. The outcome of ethics investigations on research fraud shall be reported at the Society general meeting, and the records involved shall be maintained at the Society for five years from the time point when the disciplinary procedure has been completed. If the claim of research fraud turns out to be true, it shall be announced to the Society, and the exact measures to be taken, which may include some or all of the actions listed below, shall be determined by the Board of Directors.
  • 1) Notifying the researcher under investigation and his or her institute of the Society's official conclusion and demanding appropriate disciplinary measures.
  • 2) Announcing the official conclusion of the investigation in the first subsequent issue of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology (PBB).
  • 3) Announcing the withdrawal, cancellation, etc., of the article deemed to contain ethical violations or research fraud.
  • 4) Suspension or disqualification of Society membership for an appropriate duration.
  • 5) Prohibition of contributing articles to Plant Breeding and Biotechnology (PBB) for a specified period.
  • 6) Report to funding institutions or legal authorities if necessary.
  • 7) Other measures judged to be necessary by the Society.
• 8. If it is confirmed that no research fraud was committed, the Committee shall take appropriate measures to restore the honor of the researcher accused of ethical violation.
• 9. The revision of ethical regulations shall follow the rules amendment procedures of the Society. If ethical regulations are revised, each member shall be considered to have pledged to obey the new regulations without receiving individual confirmation.
  
  Process for managing 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, an undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problems with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and so on, the resolution process will follow the flowchart provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases are carried out by the Editorial Board.

• * Plant Breeding and Biotechnology (PBB) follows the international standards for editors and authors press release, https://plantbreedbio.org/policy/editorial_policy.php