Research and Publication Ethics

The Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology is the official journal of the KRS (Korea Radioactive Waste Society). This journal is dedicated to upholding ethics and trust to maintain a high level of scientific integrity. This document describes the general guidelines which the authors, editors, and reviewers should follow when publishing articles. The guidelines for authors address originality, plagiarism, duplication, authorship, conflict of interest, etc. The guidelines for editors and reviewers are also described. The detailed guidelines comply with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines).

Authors

Originality, plagiarism, and duplication
The submitted journal articles should be original, neither published previously nor considered to be published in another scientific journal. No part of the submitted manuscript should be duplicated elsewhere without the permission of the Editorial Board. Presenting another’s ideas and results without referring to their works shall be avoided. Any overlap in the manuscript with other articles is unacceptable.
If plagiarism or duplication is detected, the manuscript will be rejected. The authors and affiliated organizations will be informed by the journal. There will be penalties for the authors.

Authorship
Authorship is limited to only those who have substantially contributed to the conception and design of the study, data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation. Those who have contributed to the manuscript with other activities shall be in a list of co-authors. These other activities may include: significant participation in the study, drafting the article and/or revising it critically, or final approval of the version to be published.
The author marked as the point of contact for correspondence is responsible for ensuring the quality of the article and accountability for the work.

Disclosure and Conflicts of interests
The authors should disclose any financial or other substantial conflict of interest that could influence the interpretation of the data. Examples are financial support from or connections to companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academic related issues. All sources of financial support applicable to the study should be explicitly stated.

Citations and references
Authors should describe accurately their sources when they reference the information or results of other published articles. This enables the readers to confirm the origin of the information. When reproducing information (figures and/or tables, etc.) from other sources, citation and documentation of written permission for their use must be provided. Information shared commonly by the public through the internet may be cited with proper internet citations.

Revision of manuscripts
Authors should incorporate the comments and recommendations from reviewers on the manuscript if their comments are acceptable. Refutation of comments may be communicated with appropriate documentation through the review process.

Additional Information
Authors shall follow the instruction manual for manuscript preparation. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate data, analysis, or interpretation is unacceptable and will disqualify a submission. When instances of ethical misconduct have been confirmed, the ethics committee will ban the author from future submissions to the journal and will subsequently notify the author’s sponsoring organization.
Similarity Check powered by iThenticate (https://www.ithenticate.com), a plagiarism-screening tool, is used for screening article submission for plagiarism.
Cases of research and publication misconduct are handled in accordance with the flow chart of COPE (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts).

Editorial Board Members

The editorial board determines the acceptability of submitted articles for publication by ensuring the articles have been adequately reviewed. The editorial board selects appropriate experts to review the articles with fairness and without prejudice. Experts known to have close relationships to the authors shall not be selected as reviewers. The editorial board shall not disclose the manuscript to anyone except the reviewers until the article has been accepted for publication.

Reviewers

The reviewers shall handle the submitted manuscript in a judicious manner. Any prejudice or bias shall be avoided during the review process. The reviewer shall evaluate the submitted articles carefully and with scientific integrity. If necessary, questions, comments, or recommendations shall be provided by the reviewers in a reasonable and detailed manner to ensure that the manuscript authors understand the opinions clearly. The reviewers shall not disclose the contents of the submitted article to anyone until the article has been accepted for publication.
For articles authored by a member of the board or by someone who shares affiliations with the members of the editorial board, non-biased reviewers with no relationships or shared affiliations with the authors are carefully chosen. In such cases, the manuscript editor is responsible for selecting the appropriate reviewers, and the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for making the final decision on the publication of the article.

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