Research Ethics Rules of
Korean Society of Rural Planning Corp.
Research Paper Ethics Rules
The Society of Rural Planning Corp. is the society that has the goal to improve and popularize the studies and skills related to the rural planning area to promote the sustained rural development through fostering the pleasant and comfortable rural community.
The true academic development of the rural area can be realized only when fairly evaluating the result of precious academic research, accepting those values, and sharing those contents with everybody. Therefore, the most important business to achieve the purpose of the Society of Rural Planning establishment is to periodically publish and contribute to the professional journal by selecting and issuing the research papers having the academic research result of the rural planning area according to the rigid standard.
To contribute the rural development in Korea through the higher level of journal publication, it is necessary to establish the ethical guidelines that the editorial board members as well as the authors and the reviewers of the journal should obey. The responsibility of the rural planning related to the whole community can be more sincerely performed by clarifying the ethics standard that the professionals should obey.
The contents of the ethical guidelines about the research paper established with these purposes have been customarily obeyed; however, it will be the opportunity for all related people to reconfirm the ethical level that the society pursues about the writing and evaluating the research paper as well as the edit of the journal.
Chapter 1 General Provisions
Article 1 (Social responsibility)
Understand that it is necessary to perform research and intellectual activities as an academic researcher, and there are responsibilities to contribute for the improvement of the life quality and welfare of the human beings and environmental conservation.
Article 2 (Basic research ethics)
It is necessary to pursue the basic principles such as honesty, integrity, and accuracy by understanding these are essential matters to secure the reliability when conducting all research activities such as proposal, plan, performance, and report of the result. The misconducts such as fabrication, falsification, distortion, plagiarism, duplicate publication, etc. should be rejected.
Article 3 (Principle of universality)
There must be no discrimination due to factors such as race, sex, religion, educational background, etc., but it should have equal rights and obligations.
Article 4 (Dignity maintenance as a professional)
Maintain pride and dignity as a professional who contributes to create new knowledge and improve human welfare.
Article 5 (Observance of legislation)
Sincerely obey the rules decided by the related legislation as well as the rules described by the ethics code and internationally used principles.
Article 6 (Respect for the subject)
Contribute to the improvement of human welfare by realizing the environmental conservation and its importance when dealing with the natural environment.
Article 7 (Recording and preservation of research data)
Sincerely record the data and samples used and produced during the research procedure from the first step to the final step and preserve them during the fixed period.
Article 8 (Author indication and intellectual property)
The author indication is limited to the people who actually participate in research such as idea suggestion, design, performance, interpretation, etc.; others' research achievements referred and quoted during the research procedure should be appeared in the presented paper to respect the original author's right and intellectual property.
The authors indicated have the corporate responsibility about the paper.
Article 9 (Right and obligation about the society)
There is the right to take an advantage that occurs from announcing new discovery or the achievement of the research and intellectual activity to the society; on the other hand, there is the obligation to accept the matters that the society requires.
Article 10 (Countermeasure for “conflicts of interest”)
For the conflicts of interest that occur in the research and intellectual activity procedure or have the possibility to occur, announce this in advance and give priority to the public interest rather than the private interest.
Article 11 (Creation of the research environment)
Actively participate to create the environment of intellectual freedom, impartiality, openness, and mutual respect to perform the responsible research and intellectual activity.
Article 12 (Research Ethics Education)
Responsible person for research and intellectual activities is required to train the participants to practice this code of ethics faithfully.
Article 13 (Definition of the term of research misconduct)
The researchers should not purposely falsify or fabricate the data to get the result that they want to have; the error of the research data by accident or the act purposely distorting the research result for the researcher's private benefit, although the research data is accurate, are applicable to the research misconduct. The research misconduct is as follows:
- ①Fabrication - The act to falsely make the non-existing data or research result and record or report it.
- ②Falsification - The act to make the research contents be untruthful by distorting or omitting the research data or research result through falsifying the opinion of the respondent in the survey related to the research
- ③Distortion - The act to reach the untruthful conclusion by purposely exaggerating or reducing the part of research data for the private benefit rather than the development of the study.
- ④Plagiarism - The act to intactly use the part of or the whole of the other's research data already presented or published or use by changing them into the different form regardless of the used language without revealing the exact source.
- ⑤Duplicate publication - The act to repeatedly publish the author's own same research result without the citation in the same language or different language or use most of the research data or sentences.
Article 14 (Investigation of the research misconduct and post treatment)
- ① when there is a concrete information or a necessity of the investigation, the editor shall organize the investigation committee through the decision of the editorial board.
- ② The investigation committee should consist of three to seven committee members who have sufficient professional knowledge and experience in the corresponding research area.
- ③ The external personnel should be appointed as an investigation committee member who have the professionalism and objectivity in principle.
- ④ The person who have the relation with the investigated matter shall not be appointed as a investigation committee member.
Article 15 (Action about the research misconduct)
- ① When the members recognize that the data of their paper is misused or falsely presented, they need to report this to the society to be taken an action.
- ② When recognizing the member's unethical act or receiving the complaint, the editor shall organize the investigation committee and investigate the actuality.
- ③ When the investigation committee judges the matter as a research misconduct, it is necessary to verify this through the attendance of a majority of the current members and the agreement of more than 2/3 of the members present.
- ④ The investigation committee shall decide the disciplinary action and its level and report this decision to the chair. The chair shall make the final decision and appropriately announce and execute it.
- ⑤ The types of the disciplinary action is as follows; more than two of them among these can be combined and decided to execute.
- (A) Academic society membership deprivation
- (B) Academic society membership suspension for a certain time period
- (C) Published article or other publication cancellation
- (D) A public apology
- (E) Related action order for correction
- (F) Caution or warning
- ⑥ (Assurance of opportunity to state an opinion)The investigation committee provides an opportunity to summit or state an opinion to the examinee about misconduct and offers an opportunity to make correction if the misconduct occurred by mistake without intentionality.
- ⑦ (Notice of the result) The chief editor makes a notice in written form about the investigation result of the committee and sends notification to the related persons such as examinee, informant, etc. without delay.
Chapter 2 Research Ethics Committee
Article 1 (Purpose)
Research ethics committee (hereinafter referred to as “the Committee”) is to be constituted for observation of research ethics and prevention from misconduct in publishing the collected papers.
Article 2 (Composition)
The Committee is to be composed of members within 9 persons including President of the Society, senior vice president, full-time director and chairman of the Compilation & Publication Committee. President of the Society becomes the Chairman of the Research Ethics Committee (hereinafter referred to as “Chairman”). However, in case of absence of President of the Society, chairman of the Compilation & Publication Committee acts instead of the chairman of the committee.
Article 3 (Function)
The Committee is to reestablish the regulations about investigation of research misconduct of the results contributed to and published in the Society, its standards, punishment, follow-up treatment, prevention and education, and protection and confidentiality of the informer and etc. and deliberates and resolves the relevant issues.
Article 4 (Operation)
If report of research misconduct and related issues occur, the Chairman has to convene a committee, and deliberates and resolves on the relevant matters. If it is necessary to seek advice about the field of study where research misconduct occurred, an advisory committee may be composed with members within five experts in the field and receive advice on research misconduct. But those who have conflict of interest in the report and related matters are to be excluded from the advisory committee.
Article 5 (Rights)
The Committee may request attendance and submission of evidence for the statement to the informer, examinee, witnesses and reference witness. And the informer, examinee, witnesses and reference witness have to comply with such request.
Chapter 3 Research Misconduct
Article 1 (Research Misconduct)
Researchers should not deliberately falsify or forge the data in order to achieve the desired conclusion. Even in the case of erroneous research data by mistake or even if the research data is correct, the act of deliberately distorting the results for the benefit of private profit of the researcher is research misconduct. Research misconducts are as follows.
- (A) (Forgery·Falsification) An act of forgery to create data that do not exist artificially or operating the research process artificially or modifying or deleting data arbitrarily are not permitted.
- (B) (Plagiarizing others) Plagiarizing others is not allowed in any cases. Plagiarism is to use unique contents written by others, which are not general knowledge, as if they are one’s own, without approval of the original author or without revealing the source intentionally or unintentionally, as in the cases of using the whole or some parts of already announced or published research data of others as they are, regardless of the language used, without revealing the exact origin or using them by changing them to different forms. The subject of plagiarism is unique thought (idea) contained in the works of others, unique expressions (words, phrases, clauses, sentences, graphs, charts, drawings, photographs and etc.), research ideas (hypotheses) or methods (analysis system or logics), theory and research results, data and investigation materials, etc.
- (C) (Self-plagiarism) Even if it is one’s own work, self-plagiarism comes under minor plagiarism, which is an act being out of ethical research practices as in the cases of using the whole or some parts of already announced or published research data of one’s own as they are, regardless of the language used, without revealing the exact origin or using them by changing them to different forms.
- (D) (Redundant publication and dual publication) Authors should not submit or attempt to publish their own research results that were published previously, regardless of domestically or internationally, (including research materials to be published or under review) as if they are new ones. If they intend to publish by using already announced research materials, they must provide information on such publication to the chief editor and confirm whether such materials come under redundant publication or dual publication. If the researcher uses his (her) own same research results in the same language or different other languages duplicately without indication of quotation mark or if most of the research data or sentences are same, such cases come under redundant and dual publication.
- (E) (Recognition of author’s achievement) Authors take responsibility as authors only for the research done or contributed by them actually and their achievements are recognized. The order of the authors are to be reflected according to the degree of their contribution to the study. On the other hand, in spite of an author’s contribution to the study or the writing, not recoding him (her) as a co-author also cannot be justified. Article 18 (Indication of citations and references) If you want to cite the published articles, you must describe them accurately and if they are not materials belonging to common sense, you must clearly disclose their origins. In case of citing the writings of others or borrowing (referring to) ideas, you must certainly disclose status of citations and references through footnotes.
- (F) (Distortion) It is an act to deliberately exaggerate or reduce some of the research data for personal interests rather than academic development and lead to reach a false conclusion.
Chapter 4 Ethical Guidelines for Editorial Board
Article 1 (Responsibility of editorial board)
The editorial board takes the responsibility for determining whether to publish the contributed papers and must respect the independence and personality of authors.
Article 2 (Fairness of editorial board)
The editorial board must treat papers that are submitted for publication in the journal fairly based only on the quality and contribution provisions of the papers regardless of any prejudice or personal friendship.
Article 3 (Objectivity in the selection of examiners)
Editorial Board should entrust evaluation of the submitted papers to the examiners with professional knowledge and fair judgment in the concerned field. When requesting for judgment, examiners with friendly or hostile relationship with the author must be avoided so that objective evaluation can be made. But examiners belonging to the same institution with the researcher are to be excluded from examination.
Article 4 (Secrete process of paper examination)
Editorial Board should not disclose matters about the auditors or the contents of the papers to anyone except for the examiners until whether publishing the submitted papers or not is determined.
Chapter 5 Ethical Guidelines for Examiners
Article 1 (Responsibility for paper examination)
Examiners are to evaluate the papers entrusted by the editorial board of the journal faithfully within a certain period of time and notify the result to the editorial board. If an examiner judges that he (she) is not a proper person for the paper examination, he (she) must notify the fact to the editorial board immediately.
Article 2 (Objectivity of paper examination)
Examiners should evaluate papers fairly based on personal academic conviction and objective criteria. They should not undervalue papers without sufficient reason or eliminate papers only because the papers do not match with their own viewpoint and interpretation.
Article 3 (Validity of paper examination)
Examiners should respect the independence and personality of the author as a professional. In their opinion for the evaluation of papers, they express their judgment of papers, but for the part requiring complementation, they need to describe the reason in detail.
Article 4 (Secrecy of paper examination and prohibition from quoting in advance)
Examiners must keep the examining papers secret. Except for the cases to obtain special advice about the evaluation of the paper, they should not show the paper to others or discuss contents of the paper with others. In addition, they should not quote the contents of the paper without consent of the author before the paper is published in the journal.
Chapter 6 Deliberation and Disposal Procedure of Research Misconduct
Article 1 (Research misconduct investigation)
If members recognize that data in their papers are misused or published falsely, they should report thereof to the Society so that proper actions would be taken. If it is recognized that a member has done unethical behaviors or a complaint has been received, the chief editor constitutes the investigation committee and investigates the facts. If the investigation committee determines the case as research misconduct, this case is to be resolved by the consent of more than two thirds of present members with presence of majority of registered members.
Article 2 (Disposal of research misconduct)
The investigation committee is to determine whether to take disciplinary actions or not and the level of disciplinary actions based on the investigation results, and report thereof to the President. Accordingly, the President makes the final decision and announces and executes the decision properly. If there is a specific report or an investigation is necessary, the chief editor constitutes an investigation committee through the decision of the editorial board. The investigation committee is to be composed of members from 3 to 7 persons with rich professional knowledge and experience in the concerned field of research. In principle, as investigation committee members, external personnel with expertise and objectivity should be appointed. However, those having interest in the investigation issue may not be appointed as investigation committee members.
Article 3 (Confirmation of research misconduct of submitted paper)
In order to prevent from research misconduct of the papers submitted to this collected papers, if the submitted paper is judged to be research misconduct after confirmation by using the prevention system of paper plagiarism, its examination is to be rejected.
Article 4 (Confirmation of research misconduct of published paper)
If there is a report of research misconduct of the published papers and such research misconduct is confirmed, the Compilation & Publication Committee collects relevant data and checks on the authenticity of research misconduct finally.
Article 5 (Deliberation and disposal procedure of research misconduct) As for the cases where research misconduct is finally confirmed, the Compilation & Publication Committee reports relevant information to the chairman of the Research Ethics Committee and requests review of them. The Committee judges whether the case is research misconduct or not after deliberation of the information and determines disciplinary actions. Then contents of decision resolved in the Committee and its reason are to be notified to the relevant researcher.
Article 6 (Raising an objection)
If the researcher who has received judgment of research misconduct is to raise an objection to the decision of the Committee, he (she) can raise an objection in writing only once within 90 days from the notification date.
Article 7 (Re-deliberation)
The content of resolution to which objection has been raised by the researcher who received judgment of research misconduct are to be re-deliberated in the Committee and its results are notified to the researcher.
Article 8 (Confidentiality)
Overall matters about identify of the informer of research misconduct are not to be disclosed to outside. And until the case is judged not to be a research misconduct or final decision is made, identity of the concerned researcher and deliberation contents are not to be disclosed.
Chapter 7 Disciplinary Actions for Research Misconduct
Article 1 (Disciplinary actions for research misconduct)
The Committee may enforce the following disciplinary actions for research misconduct.
- (A ) Deprival of society membership or its suspension for a period of time
- (B ) Limitation of paper submission for 3 years
- (C ) Cancellation of papers published through the Society or other publications
- (D ) Various orders for corrective measures including public apology
- (E ) Caution or warning
Article 2 (Notification of results and guarantee of an opportunity to state)
The chief editor writes the decision of the Committee on the investigation results and notifies thereof to relevant people such as the examinee and the informer without delay. The investigation committee gives the examinee an opportunity to submit opinions about facts of suspicion or explain them, and gives the opportunity of correction quickly and actively if the case is because of undeliberate mistake.
Article 3 (Follow-up management) The Committee should manage the records of research misconduct and confirm whether disciplinary actions are enforced or not continuously.
- Supplementary Provision -
This guideline enters into force from the date of its promulgation.
