The purpose of this study was to examine trends in duplicate publication in Korean medical articles indexed in the KoreaMed database from 2004 to 2009, before and after a campaign against scientific misconduct launched by the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors in 2006. The study covered period from 2007 to 2012; and 5% of the articles indexed in KoreaMed were retrieved by random sampling. Three authors reviewed full texts of the retrieved articles. The pattern of duplicate publication, such as copy, salami slicing (fragmentation), and aggregation (imalas), was also determined. Before the launching ethics campaign, the national duplication rate in medical journals was relatively high: 5.9% in 2004, 6.0% in 2005, and 7.2% in 2006. However, duplication rate steadily declined to 4.5% in 2007, 2.8% in 2008, and 1.2 % in 2009. Of all duplicated articles, 53.4% were classified as copies, 27.8% as salami slicing, and 18.8% as aggregation (imalas). The decline in duplicate publication rate took place as a result of nationwide campaigns and monitoring by KoreaMed and KoreaMed Synapse, starting from 2006.
Databases, Factual ; *Duplicate Publication as Topic ; Humans ; Journalism, Medical ; Publishing/ethics/*statistics & numerical data/trends ; Republic of Korea ; Research Personnel/ethics

Nowadays, we have much more convenient access to every medical journal through web sites, compared to the paper-based publications of the past. Beyond simply reading, we can compose, submit, inspect, review, and store data through these web sites. Furthermore, medical journals do not operate independently, but are rather integrated through online journal databases: therefore, an era of ubiquitous access to medical information for any purpose, has arrived. Thousands of new papers are pouring out in the flood of information everyday, so that it is very important for authors to make their research outcomes known to science scholar online especially in the options or selections of his or her own purpose of study. Therefore, a thorough understanding of database usage is necessary in order to meet authors' and readers' goals. The Journal of the Korean Medical Association (JKMA) began operating an online database (www.kjma.org) in July 2010, to keep pace with international digital journal standards. Digital publication is a very encouraging improvement in meeting contemporary reader's' needs over the previous paper-based system. The tools and content of the journal web site will both be continuously updated. Our society ought to not only catch up with other society's but further develop our online presence in innovative ways. The authors here introduce and summarize the latest trends and ethical issues in online publication needed to manage and use the online medical databases appropriately.
Publications

There are many factors in ethical considerations in publication of medical papers. Among the several publication misconducts, authorship abuse is one of the common problems. An author is considered to be a person who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study, and authorship continues to have important academic, social, and financial implications. Several committees have recommended criteria for authorship. We reviewed the consideration of authorship credits to understand the appropriate reporting of authors in medical papers.
Authorship ; Humans ; Publications

Duplicate publication is considered unethical. It has several negative impacts. To estimate the frequency and characteristics of duplicate publications in Korean medical journals, we reviewed some portion of Korean journal articles. Among 9,030 articles that are original articles indexed in KoreaMed from January to December 2004, 455 articles (5%) were chosen by random sampling. PubMed, Google scholar, KMbase, and KoreaMed were searched by two librarians. Three authors reviewed titles, abstracts, and full text of index articles and suspected articles independently. Point of disagreement were reconciled by discussion. Criteria for a duplicate publication defined by editors of cardiothoracic journals and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors were used. A total of 455 articles were evaluated, of which 27 (5.93%) index articles were identified with 29 duplicate articles. Among 27 index articles, 1 was quadruple publication and 26 were double publications. Of 29 duplicated articles, 19 were classified as copy, 4 as fragmentation, and 6 as disaggregation. The proportion of duplicate publications in Korean medical journals appears to be higher than expected. Education on publication ethics to researchers is needed.
*Duplicate Publication as Topic ; *Periodicals as Topic

Duplicate publication is publishing of an article that is identical to or overlaps considerable parts with one that has been already published elsewhere. If one or more authors retain common authorship in two separate papers with the same context, the papers are considered to be duplicated, but not plagiarized. The corresponding author was usually the case, but the first author is changed frequently. The characteristics of duplicate publication in Korea are republication of paper in journals indexed in SCI database after publishing in Korean journal one or two years before. In almost all cases they are not cross referenced. In Korean cases of duplicate publication, duplicate submissions are not rare. Generally the title is modified, and the list of authors and the sample size undergo a minor change with trivial methodological changes. Multiple publications in Korean journals usually consist of fragmentation (salami slicing) publications and overlapping (imalas) publications. Duplicate publication is an unethical behavior because of the waste of resources such as valuable time of busy reviewers, editorial work and pages, space of indexing database, and delaying the publication time of other researcher's paper. Duplicate publication is a violation of international copyright law as well. Sometimes it can distort or overemphasize the results in meta-analysis studies because of overlapping of samples. To prevent duplicate publication, the editor should provide instructions regarding the journal's policy toward duplicate publication and should make authors to read the instruction in detail. Educational programs for the reviewers will reduce the incidence by letting them know why and how to detect duplicate publication.
Abstracting and Indexing as Topic ; Authorship ; Copyright ; Ethics* ; Incidence ; Jurisprudence ; Korea ; Linear Energy Transfer ; Publications* ; Sample Size

Pineal germinoma is the commonest pineal region tumor of childhood and adolescence. Metastatic germinoma most commonly occurs via the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and it is usually limited to the cerebrospinal axis. Extacranial hematogenous metastasis is known to be very rare. We report here on a case of pineal germinoma with gradual extracranial metastases that occurred both through the CSF pathway and by hematogenous spread. The patient had multifocal CSF seeding after his surgery for pineal germinoma, and the left iliac metastasis and lung metastasis then occurred.
Adolescent ; Axis, Cervical Vertebra ; Cerebrospinal Fluid ; Germinoma* ; Humans ; Lung ; Lung Neoplasms ; Neoplasm Metastasis* ; Spinal Cord

PURPOSE: To determine, by means of a phantom study, the distortion-related factors and appropriate iodine concentration for three-dimensional reconstruction rotational angiography. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Four phantoms were created: crossed metal rods, one metal rod, one contrast rod, and a contrast rod under water. Iodine concentrations were 300, 250, 200, and 150 Img/ml, respectively. For each phantom, rotational angiography was performed in the rotational, right-angled (90 degree to rotational), intermedial (45 degree), close to rotational (20 degree), and close to right-angled (70 degree) planes. Two-dimensional projection images were transferred to a workstation at which 3D images were produced using the volume rendering technique. Image quality in each plane was evaluated in terms of opacity, homogeneity, and margin sharpness, which were graded as low, intermediate or high by two neuroradiologists who used images obtained in the right-angled plane as the standard reference. The same assessors evaluated in terms of the same parameters, cross-sectional images obtained at the central, intermedial, and peripheral portions of one metal rod positioned in the right-angled, close to right-angled, and intermedial planes, and in order to compare the values at different sites, one neuroradiologist measured the horizontal and vertical diameters of each cut image. RESULTS: Three-dimensional images of all four phantoms were high quality in the close to right-angled and intermedial plane, but in the rotational and close to rotational plane were degraded. In particular, metal rod images obtained in the rotational plane were poor for all three items. In these two planes, image quality was better for the contrast rod than the metal rod, and at 200 and 250 Img/ml concentrations than at 300 and 150 Img/ml concentrations. There was no significant difference in image quality, nor in measured values of the diameter between cut images. CONCLUSION: A three-dimensional image was more distorted when a linear object was placed at a lesser angle to the rotational plane and when inherent X-ray attenuation was greater, a finding which must be closely related to the beam-hardening artifact. Distortion was least at 200-250 Img/ml of iodine concentration, the concentration thought to be most appropriate for in-vitro 3D angiography.
Angiography ; Angiography, Digital Subtraction ; Artifacts ; Imaging, Three-Dimensional ; Iodine ; Water

PURPOSE: To evaluate the distribution of normal intracranial artery diameter according to sex and age, using three-dimensional reconstruction rotational angiography. MATERIALS AND METHODS: One hundred and twenty-five adults with normal intracranial arteries who underwent 3D rotational angiography (n=177) were included in this study. The arterial diameter was measured at four sites of the internal carotid artery (cavernous, paraophthalmic, supraclinoid, and distal), that of the middle cerebral artery at two (proximal and distal), and that of the anterior cerebral artery at one (middle). For each sex and age group (<30, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, > or = 60 years), the mean diameter of the artery at these seven sites was calculated, and differences analysed. In addition, the middle cerebral artery diameter was compared between a younger group (<50 years) and an older group (> or = 50 years). RESULTS: The mean diameter at each site for each sex was as follows: male (mean+/-SD): 4.61+/-0.69, 3.96+/- 0.60, 3.48+/-0.45, 3.61+/-0.50, 2.44+/-0.32, 2.44+/-0.37, 1.81+/-0.32; female: 4.29+/-0.57, 3.83+/-0.56, 3.37+/-0.56, 3.52+/-0.48, 2.32+/-0.37, 2.30+/-0.36, 1.76+/-0.34. For those in their 40s, the diameter at five sites (all four sites of the internal cerebral artery and a distal middle cerebral artery) was significantly greater in males than in females. For other age groups, however, the difference between the sexes was absent, or was significant at only one (cavernous internal cerebral artery for those in their 30s) or two (proximal and distal middle cerebral artery for those in their 50s) of the seven sites. In the older age group, the diameter of the proximal middle cerbral artery was 2.59+/-0.35 mm in males and 2.38+/-0.37 mm in females. For the distal middle cerebral artery, the corresponding figures were 2.63+/-0.43 and 2.39+/-0.35 mm, respectively. For both sexes, the differences between the two age groups were significant. CONCLUSION: For those in their 40s, the normal diameter of the intracranial artery at most arterial sites was significantly greater in males than in females. The normal diameter of the middle cerebral artery was significantly greater or tended to be greater among the older group than the younger group (for males and females, respectively, 2.59+/-0.35 mm and 2.38+/-0.37 mm at the proxinal site, and 2.63+/-0.43 mm and 2.39+/-0.35 mm at the distal site).
Adult ; Angiography ; Anterior Cerebral Artery ; Arteries* ; Carotid Artery, Internal ; Cerebral Angiography ; Cerebral Arteries ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Cerebral Artery

Pulmonary involvement is more common in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) than in any other connective tissue disease, and more than half of patients with SLE suffer from respiratory dysfunction during the course of their illness. Although sepsis and renal disease are the most common causes of death in SLE, lung disease is the predominant manifestation and is an indicator of overall prognosis. Respiratory disease may be due to direct involvement of the lung or as a secondary consequence of the effect of the disease on other organ systems.
Cause of Death ; Connective Tissue Diseases ; Humans ; Lung ; Lung Diseases ; Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic* ; Prognosis ; Sepsis

Unilateral or, particularly, bilateral congenital agenesis of the internal carotid artery is a rare anomaly. We report an occurrence of the condition, arising bilaterally, and report the findings of magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance angiography.
Carotid Artery, Internal* ; Magnetic Resonance Angiography ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging