Enacted March 1, 2003
Revised on January 1, 2023
Aims and Scope
Aims: Journal of Urologic Oncology aims to free humanity suffering from urologic neoplasms from the agony of diseases.
Scope: It publishes practical, timely, and relevant clinical and basic science research articles addressing any aspect of urologic oncology, including follows: prostate cancer; urothelial cancer; kidney cancer; testicular cancer; other genitourinary malignancies; epidemiology, etiology, and pathogenesis; and the detection, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of urologic oncologic diseases.
Regional scope: Its regional scope is mainly Korea, but it welcomes submissions from all over the world.
Its readership includes urologists, oncologists, radiologists, and clinicians treating patients and to those involved in research on diseases of urologic oncology.
Its publication type includes original articles, review articles, editorials, rapid communications, brief reports, and letters to the editor.
About the Journal
The Journal of Urologic Oncology (JUO; pISSN 2951-603X, eISSN 2982-7043) is the official journal of the Korean Urological Oncology Society and is an international peer-reviewed journal. The ISO abbreviated journal name is J Urol Oncol. JUO is published three times per year, on the last day of March, July, and November. The journal periodically publishes supplemental issues devoted to areas of current interest to the urologic oncology community. It was first published on March 31, 2003 with Volume 1 and Number 1 under the name Korean Journal of Urological Oncology (pISSN 2234-4977, eISSN 2233-5633), and it was renamed as Journal of Urologic Oncology in April 2023. For submission instructions, subscription, and all other information, please visit http://www.e-juo.org.
1. Research Ethics
All manuscripts should be prepared with strict observation of the research and publication ethics guidelines presented by the Council of Science Editors (https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE; https://www.icmje.org/), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME; https://www.wame.org/), and the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE; https://www.kamje.or.kr/en/main_en).
Any study including human subjects or human data must be reviewed and approved by a responsible institutional review board (IRB). Authors should refer to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/) for all investigations involving human materials.
Animal experiments should also be reviewed by an appropriate committee for the care and use of animals (e.g., the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee). Studies with pathogens requiring a high degree of biosafety should pass review by a relevant committee (e.g., the Institutional Biosafety Committee). JUO always requests the submission of copies of informed consent forms from human subjects in clinical studies or IRB approval documents.
2. Conflicts of Interest
A conflict of interest exists when an author or the author’s institution, reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence or bias his or her actions. Such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties. These relationships vary from being negligible to having a great potential for influencing judgment. Not all relationships represent a true conflict of interest. Nonetheless, the potential for conflict of interest can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, and paid expert testimony are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, or the science itself. Conflicts can occur for other reasons as well, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/). If there are any conflicts of interest, authors should disclose them in the manuscript. Conflicts of interest may occur during the research process; however, it is important to provide disclosure. If there is a disclosure, editors, reviewers, and readers can approach the manuscript with an understanding of the situation and background of the completed research.
The Editor will decide whether information on the conflict should be included in the published paper. If necessary, before publishing such information, the Editor will consult with the corresponding author. In particular, all sources of funding for a study should be explicitly stated.
3. Authorship and Contributorship
Authors are required to clearly state their contributions to a manuscript in the cover letter. To be listed as an author, one should have contributed substantially to all four categories established by the ICMJE: (1) conception and design, or acquisition, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) 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.
Each author should be accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done. In addition, each author should be able to identify which coauthors are responsible for specific other parts of the work and should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of any coauthors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.
When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. Authors are responsible for replying to all questions asked by reviewers or editors that relate to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work. All persons who have made a substantial contribution, but who are not eligible to be considered authors, should be named in the acknowledgments. Authors are expected to consider carefully the way authors should be listed and ordered before submitting their manuscript, and to provide a definitive list of authors with their original submission. Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made before the manuscript has been accepted—and only if approved by the journal Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (1) the reason for requesting a change in the list of authors; and (2) written confirmation (by email or letter) from all authors saying that they agree with the addition, removal, or rearrangement.
4. Readership
JUO is primarily for clinicians and researchers who seek tailored information to adopt in their research and practice, but its readership can be expanded to other roles: researchers can obtain knowledge on recent topics of clinical research in urologic oncology field and detailed research methods; clinicians in the field can receive new information and learn about recent developments in patient care; medical educators can access and adopt a variety of data for medical education; allied health professionals, including nurses, can obtain recent information for patient care in urologic oncology; medical students can understand the recent trends in the field and learn about interesting cases for their work; policymakers can reflect the results of the articles in nationwide health care policies for patients with urologic cancer; the public, especially family members of patients with urologic oncologic diseases, can learn about advances in the diseases affecting their family member in order to obtain better knowledge about the diseases and enhance their confidence in clinicians’ devotion to their family member’s care.
5. Redundant Publication and Plagiarism
A redundant publication is defined as “reporting (publishing or attempting to publish) substantially the same work more than once, without attribution of the original source(s).” The characteristics of reports that are substantially similar include the following: (1) “at least one of the authors must be common to all reports (if there are no common authors, it is more likely plagiarism than redundant publication),” (2) “the subject or study populations are often the same or similar,” (3) “the methodology is typically identical or nearly so,” and (4) “the results and their interpretation generally vary little, if at all.”
When submitting a manuscript, authors should include a letter informing the Editor of any potential overlap with other already published material or material being evaluated for publication and should also state how the manuscript submitted to JUO differs substantially from this other material. If all or part of the patient population was previously reported, this should be mentioned in the Materials and Methods, with citation of the appropriate reference(s).
The editorial committee checks similarity by using the iThenticate (http://www.ithenticate.com/) program for all submitted articles to prevent plagiarism. The editorial committee rejects any article suspected of plagiarism and asks the author to check whether it is plagiarized and resubmit as appropriate.
6. Obligation to Register Clinical Trials
A clinical trial defined as “any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome,” and clinical trials should be registered in a primary registry prior to publication.
JUO accepts the registration in any of the primary registries that participate in the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) (https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform), as well as https://www.anzctr.org.au/, www.clinicaltrials.gov, www.umin.ac.jp/ctr/index/htm and www.trialregister.nl. The clinical trial registration number shall be published at the end of the abstract.
7. Process for Identifying and Dealing With Allegations of Research 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 problem discovered 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 Editorial Board will discuss the suspected cases and reach a decision. We will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
JUO adheres to the research and publication ethics policies outlined in the International Standards for Editors and Authors (https://publicationethics.org/resources/resources-and-further-reading/international-standards-editors-and-authors) and the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/). Any studies involving human subjects must comply with the principles of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. Clinical research should be approved by the Institutional Review Board and obtain patient consent. A patient’s personal information generally cannot be published in any form. However, if it is absolutely necessary to use a patient’s personal information, the consent of the patient or his/her guardian will be needed before publication. Animal studies should be performed in compliance with all relevant guidelines, observing the standards described in the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
Cases that require editorial expressions of concern or retraction shall follow the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) flowcharts available from: http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts. If a correction is needed, it will follow the ICMJE Recommendation for Corrections, Retractions, Republications and Version Control available from: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/corrections-and-version-control.html as follows:
Honest errors are a part of science and publishing and require publication of a correction when they are detected. Corrections are needed for errors of fact. The minimum standards are as follows: First, the journal shall publish a correction notice as soon as possible, detailing changes from and citing the original publication on both an electronic and numbered print page that is included in an electronic or a print Table of Contents to ensure proper indexing; second, the journal shall post a new article version with details of the changes from the original version and the date(s) on which the changes were made through CrossMark; third, the journal shall archive all prior versions of the article, and this archive can be directly accessible to readers; and fourth, previous electronic versions shall prominently note that there are more recent versions of the article via CrossMark.
8. Handling Complaints and Appeals
The policies of the journal are 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 problems. If any individuals or institutions want to inform the journal about a relevant case, they can send a letter to the editor through https://www.e-juo.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.
What may be the consequences of resolution?
The consequences depend on the type or degree of misconduct. The consequence of resolution will follow the guidelines of the COPE (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).
The Editorial Board of JUO will discuss suspected cases and reach a decision. JUO will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
9. Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections
Post-publication discussions can be conducted through letters to the editor. If any readers have a concern about any articles published, they can submit a letter to the editor about the issue. If any errors or mistakes in the article are found, the article can be corrected through an erratum, corrigendum, or retraction.
10. Policies on Data Sharing and Reproducibility
Authors have the option to share with readers the datasets used in their research. Authors wishing to do so may deposit their data in a publicly accessible repository and include a link to the DOI within the text of the manuscript, as well as in an optional category in the Structured Disclosures section. For example, “Data sharing: The data analyzed for this study have been deposited in Harvard Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu) and are available at DOI.”
1. General Guideline
Authors are requested to submit their papers electronically by using online manuscript submission.
The corresponding author is responsible for the submission and revision of the manuscript. An ID is required for processing and can be generated on the homepage.
All authors should sign the Submission Agreement form to certify that the contents of the manuscript have not been published and are not being considered for publication elsewhere. If any research grant has been given by any private company or group, this information should be described on the form. All authors must sign their own signatures. The form can be downloaded at the homepage of JUO (https://www.e-juo.org), and should be submitted at the time of paper submission.
Regarding author information, the list of authors in the manuscript should include only those who were directly involved in the process of the work. Authors can refer to the guideline by Harvard University in 1999 to find details on authorship (https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Sites/Ombuds/files/AUTHORSHIP%20GUIDELINES.pdf).
The decision of whether to publish a submitted manuscript will be made solely by the Editorial Board.
Professional editing in English is recommended for non-native speakers. The editorial office may request English editing. For accepted manuscripts, we may provide copy editing free of charge.
All published papers become the permanent property of the Korean Urological Oncology Society. The copyrights of all published materials are owned by the Korean Urological Oncology Society. Permission must be obtained from the Korean Urological Oncology Society for any commercial use of materials. Every author must sign the copyright transfer agreement forms.
2. Reporting Guidelines for Specific Study Designs
For specific study designs, such as randomized control studies, studies of diagnostic accuracy, meta-analyses, observational studies, and non-randomized studies, authors are encouraged to consult the reporting guidelines relevant to their specific research design. A good source of reporting guidelines is the EQUATOR Network (https://www.equator-network.org) and NLM (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/services/research_report_guide.html).
1. Formatting by Manuscript Type
Summary Table of Manuscript Types
Type | Abstract | Max. words of the main text |
Max. tables |
Max. references |
||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Max. words | Max. key words | Format | ||||
Review Article | 300 | 6 | Unstructured | 3,500 | 5 | 100 |
Original Article | 300 | 6 | Structured | 3,000 | 5 | 30 |
Topic Article | 300 | 6 | Free | 3,500 | 5 | 40 |
Rapid Communication | 200 | 6 | Unstructured | 1,500 | 2 | 15 |
Brief Report | 200 | 6 | Unstructured | 1,500 | 2 | 15 |
Editorial | x | x | x | 500 | - | 10 |
Letter to the Editor | x | x | x | 500 | - | 10 |
Note: Exceptions may be made to the above specifications according to the decision of the editorial committee.
2. Title Page
The title page contains the article title, and full names of all authors with their institutional affiliations both. The type of manuscript (original article, review article, letter to the editor, brief communication) should also be indicated. If the work includes multiple authors with different affiliations, the institution where the research was mainly conducted should be spelled out first, and then be followed by footnotes in superscript Arabic numerals beside the authors’ names to describe their affiliations in the consecutive order of the numbers.
The title page also contains the postal address and email address of the corresponding author at the bottom of the page, as well as information on any previous presentation of the manuscript in conferences and funding resources, if necessary.
The title should be concrete and not exceed 20 words, and the running title should not exceed 50 characters, including spaces.
3. Abstract
Abstracts for articles presenting clinical or laboratory research should contain the following sections: purpose, materials and methods, results, and conclusion. However, these sections are not necessary for other types of studies.
An abstract should include brief descriptions of the purpose, materials and methods, results, and conclusion, as well as a detailed description of the data. An abstract containing 300 words or less is required for original articles and review articles.
Abstracts can be revised by the decision of the Editorial Board, and some sentences can be modified as a result of revision.
A list of key words, with a minimum of 3 items and maximum of 6 items, should be included at the end of the abstract. The selection of key words should be based on Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) of Index Medicus and the website (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).
4. Introduction
The introduction should address the purpose of the article concisely, and include a presentation of the background relevant to the purpose of the paper. A more detailed review of the literature should be addressed in the discussion section.
5. Materials and Methods
The article should record the research plans, objectives, and methods in order, as well as the data analysis strategies and methods implemented to control bias. Sufficient details should be furnished for the reader to understand the method(s) without reference to another work described in the study.
When reporting experiments with human subjects, the authors must document the approval received from the local IRB. When reporting experiments with animal subjects, the authors should indicate whether the handling of the animals was supervised by the research board of the affiliated institution or a similar entity. The IRB approval number must be noted.
Photographs disclosing patients must be accompanied by a signed release form from the patient or the patient’s family permitting publication.
Authors should ensure correct use of the terms 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 gender. If the study was done involving an exclusive population, for example in only one sex, authors should justify why, except in obvious cases (e.g., prostate cancer). Authors should define how they determined race or ethnicity and justify their relevance.
6. Results
Only important findings observed or results that directly answer the study purposes should be described. Results should be presented logically, matching the order appearing in the Materials and Methods section. Tables and graphs should be used to show numerical data, while descriptive sentences should be reserved for only important data. Demographic data of study subjects, such as age and the sex/gender distribution, should not be mentioned in this section. The repetitive enumeration of findings shown in tables and graphs should be avoided. The past tense should be used.
7. Discussion
Logical answers to the questions raised in the Introduction section should be proposed. The Discussion should be limited to new and important issues raised by the study results. Citing references not related to the results should be avoided. Data/measurements already described in the Results section should not be repeated.
8. Conclusions
Conclusions should be comprehensive, be in accordance with the observations stated in the Results and Discussion sections, and befit the purpose of the study. A simple summary of the results should be avoided. An attempt at presenting future study directions or expected benefits is not recommended.
9. References
All references should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. In using in-text reference citation, each reference should be cited in square brackets as [1], [1,2], or [1-3]. The reference format should conform to the Vancouver form (N Engl J Med 1997;336:309-15; https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199701233360422).
Use the style of the examples below, which are based on the formats used by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) in Index Medicus. The titles of journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in Index Medicus. Authors should consult the List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus, published annually as a separate publication by the library and as a list in the January issue of Index Medicus. The list can also be obtained through the library’s web site: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/aim.html.
Avoid using abstracts as references. References to papers accepted but not yet published should be designated as “in press” or “forthcoming”; authors should obtain written permission to cite such papers as well as verification that they have been accepted for publication. Information from manuscripts submitted but not accepted should be cited in the text as “unpublished observations” with written permission from the source.
Avoid citing a “personal communication” unless it provides essential information not available from a public source, in which case the name of the person and date of communication should be cited in parentheses in the text. For scientific articles, authors should obtain written permission and confirmation of accuracy from the source of a personal communication.
The references must be verified by the author(s) against the original documents.
The “Uniform Requirements” style (the Vancouver style) is based largely on an ANSI standard style adapted by the NLM for its databases.
10. Tables
11. Figures
12. Units of Measurement
13. Abbreviations and Symbols
Use only standard abbreviations. Avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract. The full term for which an abbreviation stands should precede its first use in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement.
14. Author Checklist
Journal of Urologic Oncology has an online submission and peer review system at https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/e-juo.
Journal of Urologic Oncology reviews all manuscripts received. A manuscript is first reviewed for its format and adherence to the aims and scope of the journal. If the manuscript meets these 2 criteria, it is dispatched to 3 investigators in the field with relevant knowledge.
Journal of Urologic Oncology adopts double blind review, which means that the reviewers and authors cannot identify each others’ information. The authors’ names and affiliations are removed during peer review. Assuming the manuscript is sent to reviewers, Journal of Urologic Oncology waits to receive opinions from at least 2 reviewers. In addition, if deemed necessary, a review of statistics may be requested. The acceptance criteria for all papers are based on the quality and originality of the research and its scientific significance. Acceptance of the manuscript is decided based on the critiques and recommended decision of the reviewers.
An initial decision will normally be made within 4 weeks of receipt of a manuscript, and the reviewers’ comments are sent to the corresponding author by email. The corresponding author must indicate the alterations that have been made in response to the reviewers’ comments item by item. Failure to resubmit the revised manuscript within 4 weeks of the editorial decision is regarded as a withdrawal. A final decision on acceptance/rejection for publication is forwarded to the corresponding author from the editor.
All manuscripts from editors, employees, or members of the editorial board are processed same to other unsolicited manuscripts.
During the review process, submitters will not engage in the decision process. Editors will not handle their own manuscripts although they are commissioned ones.
We neither guarantee the acceptance without review nor very short peer review times for unsolicited manuscripts. Commissioned manuscripts also were reviewed before publication.
1. Registration for Submission
Any manuscript that has many errors or does not follow the guideline for submissions will be returned to the author without review. Any manuscript registered is given a registration number, which will be emailed to the corresponding author. Once the Editorial Committee requests an author to revise his or her manuscript, the author should resubmit the revised manuscript using our online submission system.
2. Review
The manuscript will be reviewed by two or three reviewers (one reviewer and one editor) blind to the name and affiliation of the authors. The review process is limited to 3 times; a decision for revision at the third review means the manuscript is no longer eligible for publication.
3. Revision by Authors
Upon the Editorial Committee’s request, authors should revise and resubmit the revised manuscript accompanied by a cover letter indicating clearly what alterations have been made in response to the reviewer’s comments and stating satisfactory reasons for noncompliance with any of the recommendations of the editors. No reply within 45 days after the request for revision will be assumed as a withdrawal of the manuscript and the review process will be terminated. In this case, a new submission is required if authors desire further review of their manuscript by the Editorial Committee. The review process will require 3 months on average.
4. Conclusion of Review
Once the manuscript is accepted for publication in JUO, a certification of publication stating that the manuscript will be published can be issued on demand by the author(s).
5. Printing
The authors should proofread and edit their accepted manuscript carefully before printing, and can still request additional corrections at this stage. The Editorial Committee makes the final edits and decides whether to publish the manuscript and the order in which the manuscript is published.
6. Article Processing Charge
1. Copyright Policy
All published papers become the permanent property of the Korean Urological Oncology Society. Copyrights of all published materials are owned by the Korean Urological Oncology Society. Permission must be obtained from the Korean Urological Oncology Society for any commercial use of materials. Every author must sign the copyright transfer agreement forms.
2. Open Access
All articles published in JUO will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. All articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
3. Repository Policy
According to the deposit policy (self-archiving policy) of Sherpa/Romeo (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/), authors cannot archive preprints (i.e., prerefereeing), but they can archive postprints (i.e., the final draft postrefereeing). Authors can archive the publisher’s version/PDF.
Authors are advised to refrain from posting manuscripts during pre-publishing in institutional repositories, or websites, before and during the submission process. They may, however, post the PDF version of the publisher’s final format without embargo after publication. Authors should always clearly attribute JUO as the original source of publication and provide accurate citation details when posting, reusing, or distributing published open access articles elsewhere. The URL/DOI of the published article in addition to the version of record should be deposited when posting an author’s published article to any repository.
Editor-in-Chief: Cheol Kwak
Editorial Office
Department of Urology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul National University College of Medicine, 101 Daehak-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 03080, Korea
TEL: +82-2-2072-0817, FAX: +82-2-742-4665
Email: journal@e-juo.org