AB adheres to the guidelines and best practices published by professional organizations, including ICMJE Recommendations and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (https://doaj.org/bestpractice). Furthermore, all processes of handling research and publication misconduct (or when faced with cases of suspected misconduct) shall follow the applicable Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) flowchart (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). Any attempts to duplicate publications or engage in plagiarism will lead to automatic rejection, may prejudice the acceptance of future submissions, and may be highlighted within the pages of the journal.

Authorship
According to the ICMJE recommendation, authorship credit should be based on the following four criteria: (1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and (2) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (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. Authors should meet all four criteria.

• Correction of authorship: After the initial submission of a manuscript, any changes whatsoever in authorship (adding author(s), deleting author(s), or re-arranging the order of authors) must be explained by a letter to the editor from the authors concerned. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper. A copyright assignment must also be completed by every author.
  AB does not correct authorship after final acceptance unless a mistake has been made by the editorial staff.
• It is mandatory to specify the roles of authors in “AB Author Declaration Form” when submitting a paper.
• Role of corresponding author: The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all of the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing the details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and conflicts of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely manner and after publication should be available to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information or questions about the article.
• Corresponding author and first author: AB allows multiple corresponding authorship (maximum two) for one article. Only one designated author should correspond with the editorial office for one article. AB accepts notice of equal contribution for the first author when the study was clearly performed by co-first author.
• Contributors: Any researcher who does not meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship discussed above but contributes substantively to the study in terms of idea development, manuscript writing, conducting research, data analysis, and/or financial support should have their contributions listed in the Acknowledgments section of the article.
• Recommendations for working with people with personal connections: Authors who intend to include minors (under the age of 19) or their family members (such as spouse, children, and relatives) in their research, including when publishing or presenting papers jointly with them, should clearly indicate this in the cover letter. For further information, please refer to the "Guidelines for Preventing Illegitimate Authorship" by the National Research Foundation of Korea (https://www.cre.re.kr/).

Scientific Misconduct
The authors should be responsible for the credibility of all allegations of scientific misconduct, e.g., suspected fabrication or falsification of data, double publication, or plagiarism. Submitted manuscripts must not have been previously published and not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. No part of the accepted manuscript should be duplicated in any other scientific journal without the permission of the editorial board of AB. Submitted manuscripts are screened for possible plagiarism or duplicate publication by Crossref Similarity Check upon receipt by the journal. If a redundant or duplicate publication is attempted or occurs without such notification, the submitted manuscript will be rejected immediately, and the incident will be announced in the AB, and their institutions may be informed. There will also be penalties imposed by AB ethics committee. It is the responsibility of the authors to request permission from the appropriate authority for any material that is being reproduced. This requirement applies to text, figures, tables, and audio and/or video.

With any allegation raised by the reviewers, readers, or the third party, editor-in-chief together with the AB ethics committee will first attempt to address the matter with the corresponding author(s). In case this fails to resolve the situation satisfactorily, the editor-in-chief will contact the institution of the corresponding author to request an investigation; the editor-in-chief may also contact the coauthors and/or the funder(s) of the published research.

Secondary Publication
It may be justifiable to republish manuscripts if they satisfy the conditions of secondary publication of the ICMJE Recommendations (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations).

Statements of Animal Rights and Ethical Approval
When conducting experiments on animals, authors should adhere to the local or national requirements for the care and use of laboratory animals. All animal experiments should be reviewed by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) of the organization at which the experiment was carried out. The manuscript must include the statement of IACUC compliance that should appear as the first item in the Methods section. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copy of the document to resolve the questions about IACUC approval and its related issues. AB retains the right to reject any manuscript on the basis of unethical or misconduct of animal studies. It is also recommended that the sex of animals and, if any, influence or association of sex on the results of the study should be described.

Conflict of Interest Statement
All participants in the publication and peer review process—not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members of the AB—must consider their conflicts of interest when fulfilling their roles in the process of submission, article review, and publication and must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest.
All authors should disclose their conflicts of interest, i.e., (1) financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony), (2) personal relationships, (3) academic competition, and (4) intellectual passion.
Authors must include these conflicts of interest on the title page and certify the disclosure of any conflict of interest with their signatures. If the undisclosed conflict of interest is suspected in a submitted manuscript or published article, a committee composed of Editorial Board members will be held and discussed, and AB will follow the process of the applicable COPE flowchart (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

Process for Managing Research and Publication Misconduct
When the AB faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, a fraudulent undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problems with a submitted (or published) manuscript, the AB will follow the flowcharts provided by the COPE (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The discussion and decision on the suspected cases will be carried out by ethics committee of AB.

Editorial Responsibilities
The Editorial Board will continuously work to monitor and safeguard publication ethics: provision of guidelines for retracting articles; maintenance of the integrity of the academic record; preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards; publication of corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed; and exclusion of plagiarism and fraudulent data. The editors maintain the following responsibilities: responsibility and authority to reject and accept articles; confirmation of no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept; promotion of publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found; and preservation of the anonymity of reviewers.