Journal of Medicine and Life Science

General information

Journal of Medicine and Life Science (JMLS), abbreviated “J Med Life Sci,” is the official publication of the Institute for Medical Science at Jeju National University. It is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal focused on delivering high-quality scientific research on general medicine. It is published mainly in Korean but also publishes English articles.

The journal was launched in December 2003 andoperated under the name “The Cheju Journal ofMedicine” (pISSN 1738-1010) until May 2009. Thejournal’s name was changed to “The Journal of Medicineand Life Science” in May 2009. The journal has beenpublished exclusively online since March 2019 (eISSN2671-4922), and the journal’s name was changed to “Journal of Medicine and Life Science” in April 2021.

The journal was published twice a year: on June 30^th and December 31^st until 2018, and three times a year: on April 30^th, August 31^st, and December 31^st from 2019. It has been published four times a year: on March 31^st, June 30^th, September 30^th, and December 31^st since 2023, and has been rescheduled to three times a year: on January 31^st, May 31^st, and September 30^th from January 2024. Special issues may be published when necessary. Anyone who would like to submit a manuscript to the JMLS is advised to read this journal’s aims and scope section carefully. Manuscripts for submission to the JMLS should be prepared according to the instructions that follow. For issues not addressed in the journal’s instructions, the author is referred to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/).

Aims and Scope
Research and Publication Ethics
Copyrights/Open-Access/Deposit/Archiving Policy
Manuscript Submission
Editorial and Peer Review Process
Manuscripts Accepted for Publication
Further Information

Aims and scope

JMLS aims to publish scientific research articles from various medical science disciplines, with a specific interest in the d isea ses, medical conditions, and healthcare system of Jeju Island. Readers can access published articles at http://e-jmls.org, and authors can submit their articles at http://submit.e-jmls.org. The JMLS’s articles are open-access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium when the original work is properly cited.

Research and publication ethics

The jou rna l ad heres to the g uidelines a nd best practices published by professional organizations, including Recommendations from the ICMJE and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by COPE, DOAJ, WAME, and OASPA; http://doaj.org/bestpractice/). Manuscripts submitted to this journal must comply with the following research and publication ethics:

1. Authorship and Author’s Responsibility: Authorship criteria are 1) substantial contributions to the study’s conception and design, data acquisition, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content. All authors must grant final approval for the manuscript version to be published. They must also agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work and ensure that any questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Authors should meet either 1 or 2 to be considered authors and agree to the responsibilities listed above.; A ny requests for changes in authorship (adding author(s), deleting author(s), or re-arranging the order of authors) after initial manuscript submission and before publication should be explained in writing to the editor in a letter or e-mail signed by all authors of the paper. A copyright assignment must be completed by every author.; There is no limitation on the number of authors. Persons who do not meet the authorship criteria may be indicated as contributors in the Acknowledgments section. Descriptions of co-first authors or cocorrespond ing authors are also accepte dif the corresponding author believes that contributions to the manuscript warrant such roles.; The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review processes to respond to editorial queries and critiques of the work in a timely manner. The corresponding author should cooperate with any requests from the journal for data, additional information, or questions about the paper even after the paper is published.
2. Originality, Plagiarism, and Duplicate Publication: All manuscripts submitted to the JMLS should be original work that should not be published or be under consideration for publication by any other scientific journal. In whole or in part, accepted manuscripts should not be duplicated in any other scientific journal without the permission of the JMLS Editorial Board. Figures and tables can be used freely if the original source is verified according to the Creative Commons license.; It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from a journal that is not open-access. Submitted manuscripts are screened for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication using Crossref Similarity Check (https://www.crossref.org/getstarted/similarity-check/) upon their submission.; If plagiarism or duplicate publication are detected in manuscripts submitted to this journal, the manuscripts may be rejected, the authors’ details published in the journal, and their institutions will be informed. There will also be penalties for the authors violating this regulation. Anyone who violates this regulation and/or general ethical principles of research will be banned from submitting papers to this journal for two years.
3. Secondary Publication: It is possible to republish manu scripts if they satisfy the condition of secondary publication as per Recommendations from ICMJE. These are:
4. Conflict-of-interest Statement: The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of their study’s data. A conflict of interest exists when an author or the author’s institution, reviewer, or editor, has financial or personal relationships that could inappropriately influence or bias their actions. Such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties. These relationships vary from being negligible to having great potential for influencing judgment. Not all relationships represent a true conflict of interest.; On the other hand, the potential for a conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects their scientific judgment. Financial relationships such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and are most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, or the work itself.; Conf licts of interest can occur for other reasons as well, such as persona l relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). If there are any conflicts of interest, the authors should disclose them in the manuscript. Conflicts of interest may manifest during the research process itself; even for these, it is important to provide disclosure. The disclosure helps editors, reviewers, and readers approach the manuscript with an understanding of the situation and background of the completed research.
5. Statement of Human and Animal Rights: Clinical research should be conducted in accordance with the requirement of an institutional or regional “Clinical Trial Ethics Committee” that reviews the ethics of clinical research. Clinical research must also be conducted in accordance with the WMA Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (https://www.wma.net/whatwe-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Clinical studies that do not meet the Helsinki Declaration will not be considered for publication.; For publication, human participants’ identifiable information, such as patients’ names, initials, hospital numbers, dates of birth, or other protected healthcare information, should not be disclosed. If you want to publish a facial photo of a subject, cover their eyes and delete information about the subject from radiographs. If it is not possible to cover the patient’s eyes, it can be published with the consent of the patient.; For animal participants, research should be performed based on the National or Institutional Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and the ethical treatment of all experimental animals should be maintained. In principle, it should be stated in the manuscript that the experimental process does not conflict with the ethics committee regulations of the research institute or the Animal Protection Act.
6. Statement of Informed Consent and Institutional Review Board Approval: Copies of written informed consent should be kept for studies involving human participants. For clinical studies with human participants, there should be a certificate, an agreement, or approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the institution with which the author is affiliated. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct. In addition, for studies conducted with human participants, the method by which informed consent was obtained from the participants should be stated in the Methods section.
7. Registration of Clinical Trial Research: It is recommended that any research that deals with a clinical trial be registered with a primary national clinical trial registration site, such as http://cris.nih.go.kr, or other sites accredited by the World Health Organization as listed at http://www.who.int/ictrp/en/ or ClinicalTrial.gov (https://clinicaltrials.gov), a service of the US National Institutes of Health.
8. Process for the Management of 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 conflicts of interest, an ethical issue 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 Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts/). The discussions and decisions concerning the suspected cases will be carried out by the Editorial Board. For other related matters, the regulations of the Jeju National University Research Ethics Committee apply.
9. Editorial Responsibilities: The Editorial Board will cont i nuou sly work to monitor and safeguard the following publication ethics: guidelines for retracting articles; maintaining the integrity of academic records; precluding 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: to reject and accept articles; to avoid any conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; to promote the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and to preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
10. Data Sharing Statement: We adopt the ICMJE Recommendations for data sharing statement policy (http://icmje.org/icmjerecommendations.pdf). Authors may refer to the editorial, “Data Sharing statements for Clinical Trials: A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors,” in JKMS vol. 32, no. 7:1051-1053 (https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2017.32.7.1051).

Copyrights/Open access/Deposit/Archiving policy

1. Copyright: Copyright to all published material belongs to the Institute for Medical Science at Jeju National University. The authors are required to agree to copyright transfer after their manuscript passes review. When the copyright transfer agreement is submitted to the journal, it is recognized that the author has approved the publication of the manuscript.
2. Open-access Policy: JMLS is an open-access journal, and full-text PDF files are available on the official website (http://e-jmls.org). Articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited. To use any tables or figures published in JMLS in other periodicals, books, or media for scholarly and educational purposes, permission from the publisher of the JMLS is not necessary.
3. Deposit Policy: According to the deposit policy (self-archiving policy) of Sherpa/Romeo (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk), authors cannot archive pre-print (i.e., pre-refereeing) but may archive post-prints (i.e., final draft post-refereeing) and publisher’s version/PDF.
4. Archiving Policy: JMLS provides the electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal’s content by archiving in the National Library of Korea for the event that the journal is no longer published.

Manuscript Submission

Authors should submit manuscripts via the JMLS electronic manuscript management system (http://submit.e-jmls.org). Please log in first as a member of the system and follow the presented directions. Manuscripts should be submitted by the corresponding author, who should indicate the address, phone number, and e-mail address for correspondence on the title page of the manuscript. The revised manuscript should be submitted through the same web system using the same identification numbers.

Online submission process:: 1) Go to http://submit.e-jmls.org.
2) Log in (or click the ‘registration’ option, if you are a first-time user of http://submit.e-jmls.org).
3) Click on ‘new submissions’.
4) Check and confirm the “author’s manu script checklist.”
5) Proceed with the following 8-step process.; If you have any questions about the online submission process, contact the Editorial Office by e-mail at jmls. jeju@gmail.com or by telephone at +82-64-754-8023.

Editorial and Peer Review Process

All manuscripts are initially reviewed by the JMLS editor. Submissions that are clearly outside the scope of the JMLS will be declined without further review. Manuscripts that are so poorly written or incomplete that it hampers the review process will also be declined but with the option of resubmission if the relevant concerns have been addressed. The Editorial Board may request the corresponding author to enhance the quality of the manuscript. All submitted manuscripts are analyzed with plagiarism detection software prior to undergoing editorial review.

Manu scripts are sent to the two most relevant reviewers available to review the contents. The editor selects peer referees by recommendation of the JMLS’s Editorial Board members or from the Board`s specialist database. If the results of the first two reviewers differ, an additional review may be requested. The journal adopts double-blind peer-reviews, in which reviewers do not have access to the identities of the authors and vice versa.

All manuscripts from editors, employees, or members of the editorial board are processed in the same way as other unsolicited manuscripts. During the review process, they will not engage in the selection of reviewers and decision process. These manuscripts are reviewed by other institutions that are not related to the manuscript’s authors. Editors will not handle their own manuscripts, even if they are commissioned ones.

The existence of a manuscript under review is not revealed to anyone other than the peer reviewers and editorial staff. Peer reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality regarding the manuscripts they review and must not divulge any information about a specific manuscript or its content to any third party without prior permission from the journal’s editors.

Information from submitted manuscripts may be systematically collected and analyzed as part of research to improve the quality of the editorial or peer review process. Identifying information remains confidential. Final decisions regarding manuscript publication are made by an editor who does not have any relevant conflicts of interest. All correspondence, including the editor’s decision and requests for revisions, will be conducted via e-mail. The final decision regarding the publication of the manuscript is made by the Editorial Board, and the decision is either “accept,” ”minor revision,” ”major revision,” or ”rejection.”

Minor or major revisions of the manuscript may be recommended to the author based on the outcome of the review. If the author accepts the Editorial Board’s recommendation, the revised manuscript should be accompanied by a Response to Reviewers Comments Letter that includes responses to the reviewer’s comments and explanations regarding how the manuscript has been revised.

Upon resubmission, the Editoria l Board decides whether or not to publish the manuscript after a second deliberation. If the decision to request reexamination is repeated twice as a result of deliberation, this will be considered as the manuscript being rejected.

The duration of time for a first decision without review will normally be made within five days (median). Within 14 days of the reviewers’ agreement to review the submission, the reviewers’ comments will be sent to the corresponding author. Revised manuscripts must be submitted online by the corresponding author. Failure to resubmit the revised manuscript within 90 days of the editorial decision is regarded as a withdrawal. The Editorial Office should be notified if additional time is needed or if an author chooses not to submit a revision.

All authors are required to confirm the following publication conditions prior to their manuscript being considered:

a. If the manuscript does not introduce a new result or conclusion, then it should not have the same title as a previously published review article.
b. Once a case has been published in an original paper, it may not be reproduced as a case report. However, only in circumstances in which a novel diagnostic method, a novel therapeutic trial, or a previously unknown accompanying condition is found will the Editorial Board determine the possibility of acceptance.
c. Clinical trials on drugs with commercial implications will be reviewed by the proper subcommittee or subspecialty before being reviewed for publication.
d. Clinical letters of previously published cases will not be accepted. The Editorial Board will make an exception only if the case is very rare. The JMLS index should be reviewed before the submission of clinical letters.
e. Rejected manuscripts may not be resubmitted.
f. The manuscript will be rejected if the author does not address the comments made by the reviewer(s) or the manuscript does not follow the required guidelines.

1. General Principles
2. Cover Letter: The cover letter accompanying the manuscript must specify the manuscript type and include statements on ethical issues and conflicts of interest and complete contact information for the corresponding author. The cover letter should include the following statement: “All authors have read and approved the submitted manuscript. The manuscript has not been submitted or published elsewhere in whole or in part, except as an abstract (if relevant).”; The cover letter may include the names of up to three potential reviewers whom the authors would like to suggest, especially members of the Editorial Board. The authors may also include the names of up to three reviewers whom they would like not to evaluate their submission. The journal editor ultimately decides who will review the manuscript.
3. Article Type: • Original Article
Original articles are papers reporting the results of basic or clinical investigations, which are sufficiently well documented to such an extent that they would be acceptable to critical readers. The manuscript should be prepared according to the Recommendations of the ICMJE. The manuscript should be in the following sequence: Title page, Abstract, and Key words, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Ack nowledgment, References, Tables, and Figure Legends.; • Review Articles
Reviews may be written by the Editorial Board ’s invitation a nd shou ld provide concise reviews of important subjects related to medical research. Reviews are organized as follows: Title page, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Main text, Conclusion, Acknowledgments, References, Tables, and Figure legends.; • Case Report
Case reports are organized as follows: Title page, Abstract, and Keywords, Introduction, Case Report, Discussion, Acknowledgment, References, Tables, and Figure legends.; • Letter
A letter is a type of brief communication on any topic that attracts the attention of the journal’s readers. It should be brief, clear, and conclusive. No abstraction is required, and the body of the letter need not take any particular structure.
Requirements for article type
4. Title Page: The title page should contain the following information:
5. Abstract and Keywords: The abstract should concisely describe the purpose, methods, results, and conclusion of the study in a non-structured format. Abbreviations, if needed, should be kept to an absolute minimum, and their first use should be preceded by the full term in words. The abstract should not include footnotes, references, or tables. The abstract can be modified by an English language reviewer appointed by the Editorial Board. For the selection of keywords, refer to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH; https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search).
6. Introduction: The introduction should provide the background of the study and state the specific purpose of the research and the hypothesis tested by the study. It may mention previous publications that are closely related to the article.
7. Materials and Methods: The materials and study design should be presented in detail. In experimental research, methods should be described in such a manner that the experiments can be reproduced by other researchers in the same field. The sources of special chemicals or preparations should be given (name of company, city, state, and country).; Clinical studies or experiments using laboratory animals or pathogens should have approval from the relevant committees. A statement concerning IRB approval and consent procedures must be presented in this section.; Authors must clearly describe the selection of observational or experimental participants (healthy individuals or patients, including controls), including eligibility and exclusion criteria and a description of the source population. Because the relevance of such variables as age, sex, or ethnicity is not always known at the time of study design, researchers should aim for the inclusion of representative populations in all study types and should, at a minimum, provide descriptive data for these and other relevant demographic variables.; Ensure the correct usage of the term sex (when reporting biological factors) and gender (identity, psychosocial or cultural factors), and, unless inappropriate, report the sex and/or gender of study participants, the sex of animals or cells, and describe the methods used to determine sex and/or gender. If the study was done with an exclusive population, for example, a study with only one sex, the authors should justify why this is the case, except in obvious cases (e.g., prostate cancer). Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity and justify their relevance.
8. Results: This section should include a concise textual description of the data presented in the tables and figures. Excessive repetition of table or figure content should be avoided.
9. Discussion: Observations pertaining to the results of research and other related materials should be interpreted for your readers. Emphasize new and important observations; do not merely repeat the contents of the results. Explain the meaning of the observed results along with their limits, and within the limits of the research results, connect the conclusion to the purpose of the research. In a concluding paragraph, summarize the result and its meaning.
10. Acknowledgment: The Acknowledgments section should contain brief statements of assistance and financial support. Any other matters associated with research funds, facilities, and drugs that were used in the study should also be mentioned in this section.
11. ORCID: Authors are recommended to have Open researcher and contributor IDs (ORCID). To receive an ORCID, authors should register on the ORCID website https://orcid.org.
12. References: References are cited on ly as necessar y, and the recorded references must be cited in the text. References are written in English regardless of the language used in the manuscript. References should be listed in the order they are cited in the text, with the corresponding number (Va ncouver or N Engl J Med style). If the reference is not in English, indicate the language used at the end of the document. When citing the author’s name in the text, write the last name in English. It is used as the superscript “1” when indicating references in the manuscript. If there are two references, insert a comma between the numbers, and if there are three or more, add a hyphen to indicate that they are consecutive numbers.; The reference style for journal articles is as follows:
names of authors, the full title of the article, journal name abbreviated in accordance with MEDLINE, year, volume, and page numbers. List all authors when there are six or less authors; when there are seven or more authors, list the first six and add “et al.” All authors must be listed by their last name and the initials of their first and middle names. In the title of the reference, only the first letter is capitalized, and except for the scientific name, italics are not used. In the case of journals listed in Index Medicus, the abbreviation is used for the name of the journal, and for non-registered journals, the unique abbreviation determined by the journal is used. Papers in press may be listed with the journal name and tentative year of publication.; The reference style for a chapter of a book is as follows:
author and title of the chapter, editor of the book, the title of the book, edition, volume, place, publisher, year, and page numbers. Only cite unpublished data or personal communications in the text and not include these in the reference list. Internet URLs should be as follows; authors’ names, website title, URL, and the date of the latest update. All other references should be listed as shown in the Recommendations from the ICMJE. Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of their references.
13. Tables
14. Figures and Figure Legends

Manuscripts Accepted for Publication

1. Final Version: After the paper has been accepted for publication, the author(s) should submit the final version of the manuscript. The names and affiliations of the authors should be double-checked, and if the originally submitted image files were of poor resolution, higher resolution image files should be submitted at this time. The EPS, JPG, PPT, or TIF formats are the preferred digital files for photographic images. Symbols (e.g., circles, triangles, squares), letters (e.g., words, abbreviations), and numbers should be large enough to be legible even after reduction to the journal’s column widths. All symbols must be defined in the figure captions. If references, tables, or figures are moved, added, or deleted during the revision process, renumber them to reflect the changes so that all tables, references, and figures are cited in numeric order.
2. Manuscript Corrections: Before publication, the manu script editor will correct the manuscript such that it meets the standard publication format of the JMLS. The author(s) must respond within seven days when the manuscript editor contacts the author for revisions. If the response is delayed, the manuscript’s publication may be postponed to the next issue. The author should doublecheck corrections in the content, title, affiliation, capitalization, locations of figures, and references. Corresponding authors are responsible for corrections made after publishing.
3. Gallery Proof: The author(s) will receive the final version of the manuscript as a PDF file. Upon receipt, within two days, the Editorial Office (or printing office) must be notified of any errors found in the file. Any errors found after this time are the responsibility of the author(s) and will have to be corrected as an erratum.
4. Feedback After Publication: If the authors or readers find any errors or contents that should be revised, the revision of these can be requested from the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board may consider erratum, corrigendum, or a retraction. If there are any revisions to the article, there will be a CrossMark description to announce the final draft. If there is a reader’s opinion on the published article in the form of a Letter to the editor, it will be forwarded to the authors. The authors may reply to the reader’s letter. Letters to the editor and the author’s reply may also be published.
5. How the Journal Handles Complaints and Appeals: The policy of the JMLS is primarily aimed at protecting the authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher of the journal. If not described below, the process of handling complaints and appeals follows the guidelines of the Committee of Publication Ethics available from: https://publicationethics.org/appeals.; Who complains or makes an appeal?
Submitters, authors, reviewers, and readers may register complaints and appeals in a variety of cases as follows: falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship dispute, conflict of interest, ethical treatment of animals, informed consent, bias or unfair/inappropriate competitive acts, copyright, stolen data, defamation, or legal issues. If any individuals or institutions want to inform particular cases, they can send a letter via the contact page on our website: http://e-jmls.org. For complaints or appeals, concrete data with answers to all factual questions (who, when, where, what, how, why) should be provided.; Who is responsible for resolving and handling complaints and appeals?
The Editor, Editorial Board, or Editorial Office is responsible for them. A legal consultant or ethics editor may assist with the decision-making.; What may be the consequence of resolution?
It depends on the type or degree of misconduct. The consequence of the adopted resolution will follow the guidelines of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE).
6. Page Charges: There are no page charges to authors. A ll color figures and tables will be reproduced in full color in the online edition of JMLS at no cost to the authors, but the complete cost in the printed version of the journal will be charged to the authors. Please contact the Editorial Office if you have any questions about potential fees.
7. Confirmation of Acceptance: Once the manuscript is at the publisher, confirmation of acceptance by the JMLS may be issued.
8. E-publication Ahead-of-Print: All accepted manuscripts are subject to copyediting. Before publication, page proofs are sent to the corresponding author, who is responsible for verifying the final manuscript contents, including all copyediting changes. Once a manuscript has been typeset, copyedited, and approved by the editor and the authors, it will soon appear online in our “Ahead-of-Print” section.

Further Information

Any correspondence, queries, or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the JMLS Editorial Office as follows:

Editor-in-Chief: Jay Chol Choi, MD., PhD
E-mail: jmls.jeju@gmail.com
Telephone: +82-64-754-8023

Other matters not specified in these regulations follow the decision of the Editorial Board.

The revised regulations will come into effect on April 17, 2018.

The revised regulations will come into effect on September 13, 2018.

The revised regulations will come into effect on March 5, 2019.

The revised regulations will come into effect on September 1, 2022.

The revised regulations will come into effect on January 1, 2023.

The revised regulations will come into effect on July 1, 2023.

The revised regulations will come into effect on January 1, 2024.