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 true conflict of interest. On the other hand, 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 of 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. The conflicts of interest may occur during the research process as well; however, it is important to provide disclosure. If there is a disclosure, editors, reviewers, and reader can approach the manuscript after understanding the situation and the background of the completed research.

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

The welfare of animals used for research must be respected. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals have been followed, and that the studies have been approved by a research ethics committee at the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted (where such a committee exists). When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

Copies of written informed consents should be kept for studies on human subjects. For the clinical studies with human subjects, there should be a certificate, an agreement, or the approval by the IRB of the author’s affiliated institution. If necessary, the editor or reviewers may request copies of these documents to resolve questions about IRB approval and study conduct.

Reviewers should judge a paper objectively and avoid bias toward the author or a result of the research. Reviewers should evaluate whether the contents of a paper are appropriate to the publication in WJMH.

Reviewers should have no conflict of interest, which includes financial and competitive relationships with the authors or their research.

When a relevant published work has not been cited, reviewers should point out it to the authors.

Once a review is processed, reviewers should keep secret the contents of a submitted paper. Except when the reviewer needs advice for evaluation of a paper, reviewers should not show the paper to others.

Through a review process of a paper, editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject and accept an article. When the authorship in an article seems to have problems, the editorial board can ask for clarification of the role of each author.

Editors who have financial or competitive relationships with the authors or their research should not participate in the review process of the paper.

An article should be accepted only when its findings and significance are reasonably certain. In addition, editors must decide whether to accept an article based on its value to the field, not on personal points of view.

When errors are found in a published article, editors should immediately publish a correction or a retraction. The editorial board should retract any article that shows evidence of malpractices. Malpractices include fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and duplicate publication.

Reviewers’ information related to an article should not be available to the authors or others except the editor in charge of the article.

The editorial board should monitor and guard publication ethics for all papers submitted to WJMH. All manuscripts submitted to the WJMH. All manuscripts submitted to the WJMH are subject to screening using the iThenticate tool (Similarity Check), for textual similarity to other previously published works. When a paper has a similarity index over 30% with another published paper, it can be rejected with no review process.

When malpractices are found in an article submitted to WJMH, WJMH will follow the flowchart by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts) for settlement of any misconduct.

The ethics committee will discuss the suspected cases and reach a decision.

The WJMH is always willing to publish corrections, errata, corrigenda, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

Ethics Committee consists of the Editor in Chief, ethics editors, assistant editors, president of Korean Society for Sexual Medicine and Andrology (KSSMA) (https://www.andrology.or.kr), and director of research committee of KSSMA. The Editor-in-Chief will chair the ethics committee. The chair will convene and preside over the ethics committee.

The ethics committee shall have the power to receive, initiate and investigate complaints of unethical conduct of members to report on types of cases investigated with specific description of difficult or recalcitrant cases; to dismiss or recommend action on ethical cases investigated; to resolve cases by agreement where appropriate; to formulate rules or principles of ethics for adoption by the association; to formulate rules and procedures governing the conduct of the ethics or disciplinary process for approval by the board of directors acting on behalf of committee; and to interpret, apply and otherwise administer those rules and procedures.

The ethics committee meets in person three times a year. Between meetings, editors can consult members by email. Collectively, the members have broad expertise including clinical medicine, research, journalism, bioethics, law, and medical editing. Responses are coordinated by the chairman and a decision is made by majority.

The ethics committee of WJMH reviews research ethics cases that relate to the publication of the journal and related papers. We take seriously all possible cases of misconduct.

If an editor has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered misconduct in any aspect of research, publication, or professional behavior, we may discuss the case in confidence with the committee.

When research ethics violations occur, the chair of the ethics committee should call a meeting immediately to review the situation. The ethics committee should keep any investigation of ethics violations confidential, and should not oppose the interests of the Journal.

Upon completion of the investigation, the committee will determine the level of punishment appropriate for the violator (author or corresponding author), based on the level of violation—the committee can prohibit publication in the Journal for a specified period of time, or exclude the violator permanently.

The committee keeps a record of the investigation and the results of the ethical misconduct. If the committee confirms ethical misconduct in a paper, the committee will announce the case and withdraw the paper. If the paper has already been published in the Journal, it will be deleted from the Journal’s list of published papers; this will be announced to the members of the WJMH and KSSMA.