Clinical Nutrition Research (CNR) is an open access, peer-reviewed journal committed to adhering to the following policies to enhance and maintain its high standards.
Step 1: All submitted or invited manuscripts will undergo peer review. The editor-in-chief will perform a preliminary review and decide whether the manuscript can be published by CNR. This step includes screening for misalignment with the journal's scope and checking the ethics statement to ensure adherence to basic submission rules.
• Plagiarism check: Before review, all submitted or invited manuscripts are screened with Similarity Check powered by iThenticate (https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/), a plagiarism screening tool. If an excessively high similarity score is found, the editorial board will perform a more in-depth content screening. The criterion for similarity rate for further screening is usually 25%; however, an excess amount of similarity in specific sentences may also be checked in every manuscript. Notably, Similarity Check excludes quotes, bibliographies, small matches of 6 words or fewer, small sources of 1% or less, and the Methods section. If a certain amount of duplicate content is detected, it is returned to the authors. AI-generated text may be screened during the editorial process, and the results may be used to support the overall assessment.
Step 2: To maintain a high level of professionalism and fairness in the review process, the editor-in-chief or a designated associate editor shall select at least two independent reviewers who are experts in the relevant field. Reviewers are selected from among the Editorial Board members or external scholars with excellent research achievements, regardless of their affiliation or membership in the KSCN. The editor-in-chief or associate editors entrust the review work to these independent reviewers to ensure an unbiased and rigorous evaluation. Authors are encouraged to recommend potential reviewers during submission; however, the editorial office may select other external experts at its discretion. CNR adopts a double-blind peer review system, in which the identities of both authors and reviewers are concealed from each other but visible to the handling editor. Reviewers communicate only with the editor to ensure an independent and unbiased review.
• Duration for the first decision: The result of the first peer review is usually finished within 14 days. If there is no correspondence from the editorial office regarding the status of the submitted manuscript within 1 month, please contact kscn@korscn.or.kr. The editorial board’s post-review decision will be one of the following: Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, or Rejection.
Authors submitting a revised manuscript must provide a detailed, line-by-line response explaining how each reviewer comment has been addressed. Revised manuscripts must clearly indicate all changes without using the Track Changes function (e.g., by highlighting or marking the revised text). If references, tables, or figures are moved, added, or deleted during revision, they must be renumbered to maintain correct citation order. If the authors fail to resubmit the revised manuscript within 4 weeks of the editorial decision, the manuscript will be regarded as withdrawn. To extend the revision period beyond 4 weeks, the author should negotiate with the editorial board at kscn@korscn.or.kr.
Step 3: The editor-in-chief can appoint one additional reviewer if the two reviewers’ recommendations (acceptance/ rejection) are not in agreement.
Review by statistician: It can be implemented when data needs professional statistical review by a statistician.
Step 4: The editorial board finally decides the manuscript's fate, such as accept, reject, and re-submission, after hearing from peer reviewers. The finally accepted manuscript will be reviewed by manuscript editor for the consistency of the format and the completeness of references. The manuscript may be revised according to the style guides of the journal.
Step 5: Before publication, the galley proof will be sent via email to the corresponding author for approval. Galley changes must be returned within 48 hours. Changes should be limited to those that affect the accuracy of the information presented.
Conflict of Interest: OOO has been an editorial board member of Clinical Nutrition Research but has no role in the decision to publish this article. No other potential conflicts of interest.
Corresponding authors who wish to withdraw a manuscript after submission must provide a signed letter indicating that they represent the wishes of all authors. Manuscripts will remain under consideration until the journal office receives this written request. Manuscripts cannot be withdrawn after final acceptance, except in cases involving research ethics violations or proven errors that fundamentally invalidate the findings.
Appeals against editorial decisions must be made within 2 weeks of the decision letter. Authors should contact the editor-in-chief with detailed reasons for the appeal. Appeals are discussed with at least one associate editor and, if needed, at a full editorial meeting. The process follows Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/appeals). CNR does not consider second appeals.
To correct errors in published articles, the corresponding author should contact the journal’s editorial office with a detailed description of the proposed correction.
Copyright
Copyright for all published material is owned by the Korean Society of Clinical Nutrition (KSCN). Authors must declare that their work is original and that no copyright has been violated. The corresponding author must submit a signed Copyright Transfer Form (https://e-cnr.org/src/CNR-Copyright_Transfer_agreement.pdf) upon submission. Authors must obtain written permission for any previously published material and provide appropriate acknowledgments. Submitted manuscripts will not be returned unless requested by the authors. Authors may reuse portions of their published work for educational purposes with proper citation.
Open access license
CNR is an open access journal. Articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://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. Authors do not need permission to use tables or figures published in CNR in other periodicals, books, or media for noncommercial purposes. For any commercial use of material from this open access journal, permission must be obtained from KSCN at https://e-cnr.org/index.php?body=contact.
CNR is an open access journal under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) where articles can be shared without embargo. Articles can be shared only as an accepted or published version, as described below.
Accepted version
The accepted version incorporates all amendments made during peer review but precedes the final published version.
The accepted version may be placed on:
It is recommended that the authors include a note and digital object identifier (DOI) link on the first page.
Published version
The final published version can be shared immediately upon publication under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, permitting unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
CNR ensures the electronic backup and long-term preservation of its journal content through several permanent archives. The full text of CNR is archived in PubMed Central (PMC; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/101592483/; available from Vol. 1(1), 2012). In accordance with the Korean Library Act, the journal is also archived in the National Library of Korea (NLK; https://www.nl.go.kr/NL/contents/search.do?kwd=DTS20172613671#!). These archiving services ensure the permanent preservation of CNR papers and provide continuous access to the content even in the event the journal ceases publication.
CNR encourages data sharing wherever possible to promote openness, transparency, and reproducibility of research. Subject to ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
CNR accepts the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for clinical data sharing statement policy (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/). Authors may refer to the editorial, “Data sharing statements for clinical trials: a requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors,” in J Korean Med Sci 2017;32:1051-3 (https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2017.32.7.1051).
CNR accepts submissions of papers posted on preprint servers. Authors should disclose the preprint's DOI in the cover letter or title page during submission. Authors should not post an updated version of the paper to a preprint server during the peer review process. If accepted, update the preprint with a link to the published article in CNR, including the DOI. Authors are strongly encouraged to cite the published article in CNR rather than the preprint in future journal submissions.
CNR follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the ICMJE (https://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and the guidelines of the COPE (https://publicationethics.org/) for this process, if not described as below:
CNR aims to ensure the integrity of the academic record of all published or potential publications. Whenever it is recognized that a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement, or distorted report has been published, it must be corrected promptly and with due prominence. If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, it should be retracted. The retraction should be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems.
Correction
Errors in published papers may be identified in the form of a author correction or publisher correction when the editor-in-chief considers it appropriate to inform the journal readership about a previous error and makes a correction to the error in the published article. The author correction or publisher correction will appear as a new article in the journal and will cite the original published article.
Retractions
An article may be retracted when the integrity of the published work is undermined due to the errors in the conduct, analysis and/or reporting of the study. Violation of publication or research ethics may also result in a study’s retraction. The original article is marked as retracted, but a PDF version remains available to readers, and the retraction statement is bi-directionally linked to the original published paper. Retraction statements will typically include a statement of assent or dissent from the authors.
Editorial expression of concern
Where a certain amount of doubt arises as to the honesty or integrity of a submitted or published article, journal editors may issue an expression of concern. However, it should only be issued if an investigation into the problems relating to the article has proven inconclusive, and if there are strong indicators that the concerns are valid.
Crossmark is an initiative to provide a standard way for readers to locate the current version of a piece of content. By applying the Crossmark button, CNR is committing to maintaining the content it publishes, and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur. Clicking on the Crossmark button will tell readers the current status of a document, and may also give readers additional publication record information about the document (https://www.crossref.org/documentation/crossmark/crossmark-policy-page/).
CNR does not accept any commercial product advertisements until policy changes otherwise.
Authorship and responsibility
Generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors. All content in submitted manuscripts—including AI-assisted text, statistical output, and images—remains the full responsibility of the human authors. Authors must ensure the accuracy, integrity, and originality of all submitted work.
Disclosure and use of AI tools
Disclosure of AI tool use is optional when employed solely for basic language editing, grammar correction, or polishing prose. Authors may use generative AI for writing assistance, language editing, or statistical analysis, and should disclose the use of AI tools when appropriate (e.g., when used in place of conventional statistical programs). However, AI-generated text or images cannot be treated as citable sources because such outputs are not reproducible; if necessary, AI-generated content should be provided only as supplementary material.
AI in peer review
Reviewers and editors are not required to disclose their use of AI tools. However, reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts to AI platforms unless the platform guarantees that uploaded content will not be stored or used for model training.
Editorial screening and detection tools
The editorial office may use AI-detection tools during screening. AI-generated text is subject to the same plagiarism and originality checks as all other content.
AI in research reporting
When AI tools are used as part of the research itself (e.g., for modeling, analysis, or study design), their use should be clearly described in the Methods section.
Acknowledgments
AI platforms should not be listed in the Acknowledgments section.
