The official journal title is the Clinical Pain.

The Clinical Pain has an online submission and peer review system at https://clinical-pain.com/html/.

Clinical Pain 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 two criteria, it is dispatched to at least two investigators in the field with relevant knowledge. Assuming the manuscript is sent to reviewers, Clinical Pain waits to receive opinions from at least two reviewers. In addition, if deemed necessary, a review of statistics may be requested. If the opinions of the two reviewers are different, the editorial office selects a third reviewer for additional peer review. The authors’ names and affiliations are removed during peer review. 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 2 months of receipt of a manuscript, and the reviewers’ comments are sent to the corresponding author by e-mail. 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 2 months 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 are also reviewed before publication. We adopt double-blind peer review for all manuscripts, in which not only authors but also reviewers do not know each other.

i. Information about the ownership: This journal is owned by the publishers, the Korean Association of Pain Medicine (KAPM) and the Korean Association of Neuromusculoskeletal Ultrasound Society (KANMS).

ii. Management team of the journal:
This journal is managed by a team listed on the editorial board.

The governing body is the journal's editorial board. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors and members of journal management team are displayed on the About (Editorial Board) tab of journal homepage, and the contact information for the Editor and editorial office is on the About (Contact Us) tab.

i. Copyright policy: All published papers become the permanent property of the Korean Association of Pain Medicine (KAPM) and the Korean Association of Neuromusculoskeletal Ultrasound Society (KANMS). Copyrights of all published materials are owned by the KAPM and the KANMS. Permission must be obtained from the KAPM and the KANMS for any commercial use of materials. Every author should sign the copyright transfer agreement forms.

ii. This is an open-access journal distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited for non-commercial purpose.

iii. Deposit policy: According to the deposit policy (self-archiving policy) of Sherpa/Romeo, authors cannot archive pre-print (i.e. pre-refereeing), but they can archive post-print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing). Authors can archive publisher's version/PDF.

Clinical Pain uses the Open Access publishing model in which all published articles are freely available to readers directly from the Journal's website. The submissions of a manuscript and peer-review process are free of charge. The processing fee also is free for manuscripts accepted for publication.

The editorial board of Clinical Pain have carefully examined all submitted manuscripts whether these are abided by the ethical guidelines of the ICMJE and COPE. The published articles have involved the statements of conflict of interest, institutional review board, informed consent, and human/animal rights.

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 COPE (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts). The editorial board of Clinical Pain will discuss the suspected cases and reach a decision. Clinical Pain will not hesitate to publish errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

i. Journal policies on authorship and contributorship
Authorship credit should be based on
1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, and/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.
- Every author should meet all of these four conditions. 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. Copyright assignment must also be completed by every author.
- Corresponding author and first author: Clinical Pain allows multiple corresponding authors and multiple first authors for one article. Authors should provide notice for equal contribution for the first author when the study was clearly performed by co-first authors.
- Correction of authorship after publication: Clinical Pain does not correct authorship after publication unless a mistake has been made by the editorial staff. Authorship may be changed before publication but after submission when an authorship correction is requested by all of the authors involved with the manuscript.

ii. How the journal will handle complaints and appeals:
The policy of the journal 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.
- 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 to the editor for the complaints or appeals, concrete data with answers to all factual questions (who, when, where, what, how, 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.
- 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).

iii. Journal policies on conflicts of interest / competing interests
The corresponding author must inform the editor of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the authors’ interpretation of the data. Examples of potential conflicts of interest are financial support from or connections to companies, political pressure from interest groups, and academically related issues. In particular, all sources of funding applicable to the study should be explicitly stated.

iv. Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility
- Open data policy
For clarification on result accuracy and reproducibility of the results, it is recommended that the raw or analytical data be deposited in a public repository such as Harvard Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/) after manuscript approval. If the data is already a public one, its URL site or sources should be disclosed. If data cannot be publicized, it can be negotiated with the editor. If there are any inquiries on depositing data, authors should contact the editorial office.
- Clinical data sharing policy
This journal follows the data sharing policy described in “Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials: A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors”. As of July 1, 2018, manuscripts submitted to ICMJE journals that report the results of interventional clinical trials must contain a data sharing statement as described below. Clinical trials that begin enrolling participants on or after January 1, 2019 must include a data sharing plan in the trial's registration. If the data sharing plan changes after registration this should be reflected in the statement submitted and published with the manuscript, and updated in the registry record. All of the authors of research articles that deal with interventional clinical trials must submit data sharing plan of example 1 to 4 in Table 1. Based on the degree of sharing plan, authors should deposit their data after deidentification and report the DOI of the data and the registered site.

Table 1. Examples of data sharing statements that fulfill ICMJE requirements*

Element	Example 1	Example 2	Example 3	Example 4
Will individual participant data be available (including data dictionaries)?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
What data in particular will be shared?	All individual participant data collected during the trial, after deidentification.	Individual participant data that underlie the results reported in this article, after deidentification (text, tables, figures, and appendices).	Individual participant data that underlie the results reported in this article, after deidentification (text, tables, figures, and appendices).	Not available
What other documents will be available?	Study protocol, statistical analysis plan, informed consent form, clinical study report, analytic code	Study protocol, statistical analysis plan, analytic code	Study protocol	Not available
When will data be available (start and end dates)?	Immediately following publication. No end date.	Beginning at 3 months and ending at 5 years following the article publication.	Beginning at 9 months and ending at 36 months following the article publication.	Not available
With whom?	Anyone who wishes to access the data.	Researchers who provide a methodologically sound proposal.	Investigators whose proposed use of the data has been approved by an independent review committee (“learned intermediary”) identified for this purpose.	Not available
For what types of analyses?	Any purpose	To achieve aims in the approved proposal.	For individual participant data meta-analysis.	Not available
By what mechanism will data be made available?	Data are available indefinitely at (link to be included).	Proposals should be directed to xxx@yyy. To gain access, data requestors will need to sign a data access agreement.	Proposals may be submitted up to 36 months following article publication. After 36 months the data will be available in our University's data warehouse but without investigator support other than deposited metadata.	Not available
		Data are available for 5 years at a third-party	Information regarding submitting
		Website (link to be included).	Proposals and accessing data may be found at (link to be provided).

ICMJE = International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
*These examples are meant to illustrate a range of, but not all, data sharing options.

v. Research ethics
All of the manuscripts should be prepared in strict observation of research and publication ethics guidelines recommended by the Council of Science Editors (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org/), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME, http://www.wame.org/), and the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE, http://www.kamje.or.kr/intro.php?body=eng_index). Any study including human subjects or human data must be reviewed and approved by a responsible institutional review board (IRB). Please 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 also should be reviewed by an appropriate committee (IACUC) for the care and use of animals. Also studies with pathogens requiring a high degree of biosafety should pass review of a relevant committee (IBC). The editor of Clinical Pain may request submission of copies of informed consents from human subjects in clinical studies or IRB approval documents. The Clinical Pain will follow the guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, http://publicationethics.org/) for settlement of any misconduct.

vi. Conflict of interest
The corresponding author of an article is asked to inform the Editor of the authors' potential conflicts of interest possibly influencing their interpretation of data. A potential conflict of interest should be disclosed in the cover letter even when the authors are confident that their judgments have not been influenced in preparing the manuscript. Such conflicts may be financial support or private connections to pharmaceutical companies, political pressure from interest groups, or academic problems. Disclosure form shall be same with ICMJE Uniform Disclosure Form for Potential Conflicts of Interest (http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf). The Editor will decide whether the information on the conflict should be included in the published paper. 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. The Clinical Pain asks referees to let its Editor know of any conflict of interest before reviewing a particular manuscript.

vii. Journal's policy on ethical oversight
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. 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.

viii. Journal's policy on intellectual property
All published papers become the permanent property of the Korean Association of Pain Medicine (KAPM) and the Korean Association of Neuromusculoskeletal Ultrasound Society (KANMS). Copyrights of all published materials are owned by the KAPM and the KANMS.

ix. Journal's options for post-publication discussions and corrections
The post-publication discussion is available through letter to editor. If any readers have a concern on any articles published, they can submit letter to editor on the articles. If there founds any errors or mistakes in the article, it can be corrected through errata, corrigenda, or retraction.

Clinical Pain is published twice (the last day of June and December) a year.

Clinical Pain is an open access journal. A free full-text service both in the XML and PDF formats is available immediately upon publication without embargo period.

It is accessible without barrier from KoreaMed, or National Library of Korea in the event a journal is no longer published.

Revenue sources of journal are from the support of publishers; the Korean Association of Pain Medicine (KAPM) and the Korean Association of Neuromusculoskeletal Ultrasound Society (KANMS).

Clinical Pain does not contain any advertising resources.

Journal propagation has been done through the journal web site 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.