KMI International Journal of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries

Research and Publication Ethics

Preamble

The KMI International Journal of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (hereinafter referred to as the "the journal") is a peer-review journal of ocean policy studies and marine data analytics. The journal offers researchers, analysts and policymakers a distinct combination of legal, political, social and economic analyses. The journal covers a range of international, regional and national marine policies; management and regulation of marine activities including fisheries, ports and logistics; marine affairs, which encompass the topics of marine pollution and conservation as well as the use of marine resources. Editors of the journal are responsible for organizing and keeping guidelines of reviewing and accepting manuscripts submitted to the journal.

1. General rules

 The guidelines describe measures to set up ethics and hinder malpractices in the management of the journal.
 The guidelines apply to those who join the publication of the journal.
 The terms are defined as follows.

Forgery implies the behavior of distorting data.

Falsification implies the behavior of twisting the truth of research performance or findings by deforming research findings, processes, devices, etc., artificially transforming or deleting data arbitrarily.

KMI is an initialism for the Korea Maritime Institute.

Plagiarism implies the behavior of borrowing the concepts, research facts, results, etc., of other people without proper references or notations.

Display of unjustified manuscript and paper authors implies the behavior of granting authorship to a person who has not given or made a technical or scientific contribution to the content or results of research.

Double publication implies the act of publishing texts identical or similar to two or more academic journals.

Self-plagiarism implies a sort of Plagiarism in which an author republishes a previous work entirely or partially without referring to the previous publication.

The guidelines refer to the Ethical Guidelines.

2. Ethical rules for editors

Liability of editors: Editors should be responsible for deciding whether to respect authors’ character, independently as scholars, and publish submitted manuscripts and papers.
Fairness of paper treatment: Editors should treat manuscripts and papers fairly on the basis of manuscript and paper quality and the Ethical Guidelines regardless of gender, age, nationality, organization, prejudice, or personal relationship.
Objectivity of reviewer selection: Editors should assist the reviewers in utilizing their expertise and fair judgment to evaluate submitted manuscripts and papers. Editors should ensure manuscripts and papers evaluated as objectively as possible by avoiding the reviewers who may have an antagonistic or positive bias towards specific authors.
Non-exposure of the manuscripts and the paper review process: Editors should not expose information on authors or submitted manuscripts and papers to persons except reviewers until it is decided whether to publish the manuscripts and papers.

3. Ethical rules for reviewers

Honesty and punctuality of manuscript and paper review: Reviewers editors assigned to assess should evaluate the manuscripts and the papers reliably and notice the results to editors within a certain period of time. When considering themselves disqualified for review, reviewers should inform editors of the fact without hesitation.
Impartiality of manuscript and paper review: Reviewers should review the manuscripts and papers evenly in accordance with the objective criteria. The reviewers should not depreciate the manuscripts and the papers without sufficient basis or refuse them for the reason of colliding with their views or interpretations.
Validity of manuscript and paper review: Reviewers should respect the intellectual tendency of the author. The reviewers should clarify their judgments and explain in detail the reasons for supplementation in an evaluation sheet, if necessary.
Confidentiality of review and disallowance of prior citation: Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of the contents within the manuscripts and the papers. Except when seeking specialist advice for evaluation, it is recommended that reviewers do not show manuscripts and papers to others or discuss them on any level. Additionally, reviewers should not cite manuscripts and papers without authors' consent before the journal publication of the journal that includes the manuscripts and the papers.

4. Ethical rules for authors

Research wrongdoing: Authors may not forge, falsify or pirate manuscripts and papers, or display unreasonable authorship.
Double publication: Authors are not allowed to submit the studies previously published, nor those set to be published, nor those under review to other academic journals or publications. This principle does not apply to manuscripts and papers presented at research conferences, research reports, dissertations, nor those openly unpublished, etc. In this case, the fact should be notified to editors and readers.
Citation: Academic materials should be cited precisely and along with their clear and distinct sources. Data privately obtained should be cited only after receiving agreement from the person who produced the information. If the writings or ideas of others are cited or borrowed, respectively, the fact must be specified using footnotes.

5. Enforcement guidelines for research ethics

Vow of ethics keeping: Authors who submit their manuscripts and papers to the KMI or are entrusted with manuscript review and paper review will be considered to have pledged to keep these guidelines.
Report of ethics violation: If authors or reviewers have violated research ethics, the editor-in-chief of the journal, as a representative of KMI, should rectify the problems involving processes or results. If any problem has proved to be a clear violation of research ethics, the case should be assigned to the Ethics Committee of the journal. The editor-in-chief of the journal nominates the Director and four members of the Ethics Committee of the journal.
Composition and convocation of the Ethics Committee: The Director should convene a meeting of the Ethics Committee within seven working days after the appointment of the Director and the four members. The Director should be the Chair of the Ethics Committee meeting.
Request for attending and material submission: The Ethics Committee may request informer and suspect to submit materials and to attend its meeting. In this case, suspects should accept the request. The very non-acceptance of suspects violates research ethics.
Right protection and confidentiality of informer and suspect: The identities of informer shall not be disclosed to any third person directly or indirectly. Care should be taken lest the suspects' honor or rights should be infringed on until verification is completed on whether they are involved in any wrongdoing.
Judgement of the Ethics Committee meeting: The Ethics Committee meeting can discuss with more than half of the members present and vote on the contents and results with two-thirds of the members or more present.
Report of the Ethics Committee meeting: The Director shall prepare a results report of the Ethics Committee meeting and submit the result to the editor-in-chief of the journal in five working days following the judgement.
Notice of the judgement and decision of editor-in-chief to the author: The editor-in-chief of the journal shall accept the Judgement of the Ethics Committee meeting if any prejudice or private interest of the Ethics Committee is not found. The Judgement of the Ethics Committee includes ethics violations, measures and sanctions for the ethics violation. The editor-in-chief of the journal shall notice the judgement of the Ethics Committee and the final decision of the editor-in-chief to the author in five working days after the arrival of the judgement. If the editor-in-chief of the journal finds any prejudice or private interest of the Ethics Committee, the editor-in-chief re-appoints the Director and four members of the Ethics Committee of the journal.
Opposition of the author: If the author or the information provider of the ethics violation is not satisfied with the judgement of the Ethics Committee and the decision of the editor-in-chief, the author or the information provider may file up the objection to the editor-in-chief. In that case, the editor-in-chief shall give notice of the objection to the Director within seven working days after the filing. The Director shall review the case within 12 working days after the notice is given by the editor-in-chief.
Measures and sanctions for ethical violations: The Ethics Committee shall apply measures and sanctions in accordance with the types, contents, and degrees of the intention of ethical violations, such as amendment or prohibition of publication in the journal, cautions or warnings, and restrictions of submission of an article to the journal.

6. Date of Enforcement

The guidelines shall come into effect as of the 29th of May, 2021.