Annals of Clinical Microbiology, The official Journal of the Korean Society of Clinical Microbiology

6

Weeks in Review

2

Weeks to Publication
Indexed in KCI, KoreaMed, Synapse, DOAJ
Open Access, Peer Reviewed
pISSN 2288-0585 eISSN 2288-6850

For Reviewers

Peer review and publication process

The review and publication processes that are not described below will be incorporated into the Editorial Policy Statements, approved by the Council of Science Editors Board of Directors available from https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/.

1. Screening before review

If the manuscript does not fit the aims and scope of the Journal or does not adhere to the Instructions to authors, it may be returned to the author immediately after receipt and without a review. Before reviewing, all submitted manuscripts are inspected by Similarity Check powered by iThenticate (https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/), a plagiarism-screening tool. If a too high a degree of similarity score is found, the Editorial Board will do a more profound content screening. The criterion for similarity rate for further screening is usually 15%; however, the excess amount of similarity in specific sentences may be also checked in every manuscript. The settings for Similarity Check screening are as follows: It excludes quotes, bibliography, small matches of 6 words, small sources of 1%, and the Methods section.

2. Number of reviewers

One or two reviewers will be selected from the list of reviewers recommended by the corresponding author. Manuscripts are then peer reviewed by at least two experts in the corresponding field. A third reviewer will be assigned if there is a discrepancy between the two reviewers. The Editorial Board selects and recruits reviewers based on expertise, publication history, and past reviews.

3. Peer review process and the author response to the reviewer comments

Type of peer review is a double-blind peer review. The author and reviewer cannot identify each other. The names of reviewers are not posted in the published article. Reviewers are anonymous. The review period is 3 weeks. Usually the first decision is made within a week after completion of the review. The Editorial Board’s decision after the review will be one of followings: Accept, Minor revision, Major revision, or Rejection. The Editorial Board may request the authors to revise the manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments. If there are any requests for revision of the manuscript by the reviewers, the authors should do their best to revise the manuscript. If the reviewer’s opinion is not acceptable or is believed to misinterpret the data, the author should reasonably indicate that. After revising the manuscript, the author should upload the revised files with a reply to each item of the reviewer’s commentary. The author’s revisions should be completed within 3 weeks after the request. If it is not received by the due date, the Editorial Board will notify the author. To extend the revision period beyond 3 weeks, the author should negotiate that with the Editorial Board. The manuscript review process can be provided for up two rounds. If the authors wish further review, the Editorial Board may consider it. The Editorial Board will make a final decision on the approval of the submitted manuscript for publication and can request any further corrections, revisions, and deletions of the article text if necessary. Statistical editing is also performed if the data requires professional statistical review by a statistician.

4. Review process for in-house submissions

All manuscripts from editors, staff, or Editorial Board members are subject to the same review process as other submissions. During the review process, they will not be involved in the selection of reviewers or the decision-making process. Editors will not handle their manuscripts even if they have been commissioned.

5. Processing after acceptance

If the manuscript is finally accepted, the proofreading will be sent to the corresponding author after professional manuscript editing and/or English proofreading. Proofreading should be performed again for any misspellings or errors by the authors. Before final proofreading, the manuscript may appear at the journal homepage as an Epub ahead of print with a unique DOI number for rapid communication. The Epub ahead of print version will be replaced by the replacement XML file and a final PDF.

6. How the journal handles complaints and appeals

The policy of ACM 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, and legal problem. If any individuals or institutions want to inform the cases, they can send a letter via the contact page on our website: https://www.acm.or.kr. For the complaints or appeals, concrete data with answers to all factual questions (who, when, where, what, how, and why) should be provided.

Who is responsible to resolve and handle complaints and appeals?

The Editor, Editorial Board, or Editorial Office is responsible for them. A legal consultant or ethics editor may be able to help with the decision making.

What may be the consequence of remedy?

It depends on the type or degree of misconduct. The consequence of resolution will follow the guidelines of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE).

7. Direct marketing

Journal propagation has been done through the journal website and distribution of an introduction pamphlet. Invitations to submit a manuscript are usually focused on the presenters at conferences, seminars, or workshops if the topic is related to the journal’s aims and scope.