Abant Medical Journal is an open-access and peer-reviewed academic medical journal published electronically and once in 3 months. The journal publishes scientific researches, reviews, letters to the editor and interesting case reports in all clinical fields. It is published electronically in 3 issues per year (April, August, December). Abant Medical Journal is available online for free at https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/abantmedj.

Manuscripts should be submitted and followed online only by registering on http://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/abantmedj . Manuscripts sent through different channels will not be evaluated.
The first condition sought in the articles sent to the Abant Medical Journal with a request for publication is compliance with the preparing manuscript rules described in the journal “Author Guidelines”. The evaluation process cannot be started for the articles that do not comply with the rules.

1. Open Access Policy

Open Access Policy is based on rules of Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/. ) Abant Medical Journal applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license to articles we publish. If you submit your paper for publication, you agree to have the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license applied to your work. Under this Open Access license, you as the author agree that anyone can copy, distribute, or reuse the content of your article for non-commercial purposes for free if the author and original source are properly cited.

2. Scientific Responsibility and Authorship

All responsibility for the scientific content and statements in an article and compliance of the articles with scientific and ethical rules published in the Abant Medical Journal belongs to the authors. All authors should have direct academic and/or scientific contributions to the submitted manuscript. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. All authors should meet the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) 4 authorship criteria outlined at the “Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors” section. According to the ICMJE guidelines, all of the following 4 criteria must be met to be considered an author:
• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• 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.
We require all those designated as authors to meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Abant Medical Journal does not accept gift, guest, or ghost authorship, and will act according to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and flowcharts when faced with cases of suspected misconduct. Those who contributed to some parts (such as the acquisition of funding, collection of data, language editing, or general supervision of the research group alone) but do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged. The corresponding author should obtain written permission to be acknowledged from all individuals to whom acknowledgment is applicable.
Artificial Intelligent Policy
Abant Medical Journal adopts the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on ChatGPT, GPT4, and Chatbots or all other AI softwares related to scientific publications:
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) softwares cannot be authors
• Authors should be transparent when Artificial Intelligence (AI) softwares are used and provide information about how they were used
• Authors are responsible for the work performed by a Artificial Intelligence (AI) software in their paper (including the accuracy of what is presented, and the absence of plagiarism) and for appropriate attribution of all sources (including for material produced by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) software)

3. Editorial Process and Peer Review Policy

All manuscripts submitted for publication are strictly reviewed for their originality, methodology, scientific importance and quality, ethical nature and suitability for the journal. The Abant Medical Journal uses a well-constructed scheme for the evaluation process. The editor-in-chief has full authority over the editorial and scientific content of the Abant Medical Journal and the timing of publication of the content.

Evaluation processes:
1. 1st Review by the Editorial Secretary to check that the article complies with the rules described in the journal's “Author Guidelines” and that all required documents have been uploaded and to screen the originality of content with” iThenticate” software.
2. 1st review by the Editor-in-Chief and/or the Associate Editors to decide immediate reject, immediate revision, or further evaluation.
3. 1st review by the Field Editor to decide immediate reject, immediate revision or further evaluation.
4. 1st review by two or more external reviewers.
5. Review by the Field Editor to decide revisions (if needed).
6. 2st or more review by external reviewers and Field Editor (if needed).
7. Final evaluations with the Field Editor and the Editor-in-Chief and the Associate Editors to decide reject or accept.
8. Linguistic editing by Language Editor(s).
9. Assignment of DOI number.
10. Copy editing.
11. Galley proof preparation.
12. Final review by the Editorial Secretary, Associate and Biostatics Editors and the Editor-in-Chief.
13. Similarity check before publication.
14. Publication.

4. Clinical Trials and Reporting Guidelines

The Abant Medical Journal encourages the registration of all clinical trials via ClinicalTrials.gov (www.clinicaltrials.gov) or one of the registries of the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP: https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform). Especially the phase 3 clinical trials must be registered at or before the time of first patient enrollment. The name of the registry and the registration number together with the information of funding source should be provided at the end of the abstract.

For further information on the reporting guidelines for health research, authors are suggested to refer to the EQUATOR network website (http://www.equator-network.org/). The EQUATOR Network collects more than 370 reporting guidelines for many study types, including for:
• Randomised trials: CONSORT
• Observational studies: STROBE
• Systematic reviews: PRISMA
• Case reports: CARE
• Qualitative research: SRQR
• Diagnostic / prognostic studies: STARD
• Quality improvement studies: SQUIRE
• Economic evaluations: CHEERS
• Animal pre-clinical studies: ARRIVE • Study protocols: SPIRIT
• Clinical practice guidelines: AGREE

5. Ethical Rules and Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a serious problem and the most common ethical issue afflicting medical writing and the Abant Medical Journal does not allow any form of plagiarism including self-plagiarism. In accordance with our journal policy, submitted manuscripts are screened with "iThenticate" plagiarism software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text at least two times (before the evaluation process and before the publication). High similarity scores may lead rejection of a manuscript before and even after acceptance. Depending on the type of article and the percentage of similarity score taken from each article, the overall similarity score is expected to be less than 20 or 25%. It is essential that authors avoid all forms of plagiarism and ethical misconduct. If plagiarism is detected in the articles submitted to the Journal for publication, the responsibility belongs to the authors.
Plagiarism: To republish the whole or part of the content in another author's publication without attribution.
Fabrication: To publish data and findings/results that do not exist.
Duplication: Using data from another publication; this includes republishing an article in different languages.
Salamisation: Creating multiple publications by abnormally splitting the results of a study.
Data Manipulation/Falsification: Manipulating or deliberately distorting research data to give a false impression.
Submitted manuscripts are subjected to automatic software evaluation for plagiarism and duplicate publication. Authors are obliged to acknowledge if they published study results in whole or in part in the form of abstracts.
In case of any suspicion or claim regarding scientific shortcomings or ethical infringement, the Journal reserves the right to submit the manuscript to the supporting institutions or other authorities for investigation. The Journal accepts the responsibility of initiating action but does not undertake any responsibility for an actual investigation or any power of decision.
In accordance with COPE flowcharts, we disapprove of unethical practices and efforts to influence the review process, such as authorship gifts, inappropriate acknowledgments, and citing references.
All articles containing original information and data must not have been published or simultaneously submitted for publication in another scientific journal. This restriction does not apply to an abstract presented in scientific meetings and congresses and to thesis. All submitted articles must has been approved by all co-authors and responsible authorities at the institute or organization where the work has been carried out.

6. Ethics and Human and Animal Rights

The Editorial Board of the Abant Medical Journal adhere to the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), Council of Science Editors (CSE), European Association of Science Editors (EASE), the US National Library of Medicine (NLM), the World Medical Association (WMA), and National Information Standards Organization (NISO). The Journal conforms to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing.
As the Journal's policy, an approval of research protocols by an ethics committee following international agreements "WMA Declaration of Helsinki - Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (last updated: October 2013, Fortaleza, Brazil)", "Guide for the care and use of laboratory animals (8th edition, 2011)" is required for all research studies. Every manuscript including retrospective studies submitted to the Abant Medical Journal as a Research Article should have the ethical approval by the ethical review board of the institution. The Ethics Committee approval document should be submitted to the Abant Medical Journal together with the manuscript. If the submitted manuscript does not include ethics committee approval, it will not be processed for evaluation. If the submitted manuscript does not include ethics committee approval, it will be reviewed according to COPE's guideline (Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations).
When reporting a study that involved human participants, their data or biological material, authors should include statements in the “Materials and Methods” section that confirms that the study was approved by the appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committee (including the name of the ethics committee) and certify that the study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards and shows that informed consent of patients and volunteers was obtained following a detailed explanation of the procedures that they may undergo. Informed consent must also be obtained for case reports. For persons under 18 years of age, please provide a consent form that includes both parents' signatures or the person's legal guardian or supervisor. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects being recognized (or an eye bar should be used). Images and information from individual participants will only be published where the authors have obtained the individual's free prior informed consent. Authors do not need to provide a copy of the consent form to the Abant Medical Journal; however, in signing the “COPYRIGHT AGREEMENT AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP FORM” authors are required to confirm that consent has been obtained.
In experimental animal studies, the authors should should include statements in the “Materials and Methods” section that confirms that the study was approved the appropriate animal ethics committee approval and indicate that the procedures followed were by animal rights (Guide for the care and use of laboratory animals).

7. Roles of Authors, Reviwers and Editors

When submitting your paper, you will be asked to assign a Corresponding Author. The Corresponding Author is the person who handles the manuscript and correspondence during the publication process, including approving the article proofs. We ask that the authors confirm that they give the authority to corresponding author to act on behalf of all co-authors in all matters. The Corresponding Author is responsible for obtaining such agreements and for informing the co-authors of the manuscript’s status throughout the submission, review, and publication process. In addition, the Corresponding Author also acts as the point of contact for any enquiries (including those relating to the integrity of the work) after the paper is published.

Abant Medical Journal authors are required to confirm the following items:
• Submitted articles must be the original study of the author(s).
• Only unpublished articles should be submitted.
• Submitting an article to more than one journal at the same time is unethical.
• Any funding/conflict of interest/ competing interests should be clearly stated.
• Data sources used in the article should be explained.
• Any errors detected after the article is submitted should be reported to Abant Medical Journal editors immediately.
Abant Medical Journal corresponding authors are required to confirm the following items:
• Manuscript correction and proofreading. Handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts up to the acceptance of the manuscripts;
• Agreeing to signing the any required forms on behalf of relevant coauthors and/or to arranging for any third-party copyright owners’ signature;
• Acting on behalf of all co-authors in responding to queries from all sources post-publication, including questions relating to publishing ethics, reuse of content, or the availability of data, materials, resources etc.
Abant Medical Journal reviewers are required to confirm the following items:
• All articles should be reviewed legally based on the intellectual content of the article
• Reviews should be objective and constructive, avoiding being hostile or provocative and making libelous or offensive comments.
• To make a comprehensive review, the authors should have the required field expertise and should only review articles that can be evaluated on time.
• Any conflict of interest detected during the review process must be reported to Abant Medical Journal editors.
• All information about the article should be kept confidential.
• Information obtained during the review process should not be used for the benefit of the reviewers themselves or any other person, the organization, or to put others at a disadvantage position or to discredit them.
• Any information that may be the reason for the rejection of the publication of an article should be reported to Abant Medical Journal editors.

Abant Medical Journal editors are required to confirm the following items:
• All articles should be evaluated reasonably based on the intellectual content of the article, regardless of the gender, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or political values of the author(s).
• All information about the article should be kept confidential.
• Any observed conflict of interest with the articles should be disclosed.
• The editorial board takes on the responsibility to make the publication decisions of the submitted articles based on the peer reviews, the policies of the journal's editorial board, and legal restrictions against plagiarism, defamation, and copyright.

8. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

The Abant Medical Journal’s editorial review process is in accordance with the Good Editorial Practice set by international editorial organizations (ICMJE, EASE, WAME, COPE, CSE,…). WAME indicates that “conflict of interest exists when an author, reviewer, or editor in the publication process (submission of manuscripts, peer review, editorial decisions, and communication between authors, reviewers and editors) has a competing interest that could unduly influence his or her responsibilities (academic honesty, unbiased conduct and reporting of research, and integrity of decisions or judgments) in the publication process”.
The Abant Medical Journal requires that each author, reviewer, and editor must disclose to the editor-in-chief any conflict of interest related to family, personal, financial, political or religious issues as well as any competing interest outlined above at the WAME’s definition. Whether or not a conflict of interest and financial support exist, they must be declared at the ICMJE Conflict of Interest form as well as at the end of the manuscripts. Conditions that provide financial or personal benefit bring about a conflict of interest. The reliability of the scientific process and the published articles is directly related to the objective consideration of conflicts of interest during the planning, implementation, writing, evaluation, editing, and publication of scientific studies. Financial relations are the most easily identified conflicts of interest, and they will inevitably undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and the science. These conflicts can be caused by individual relations, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. The authors should refrain as much as possible from making agreements with sponsors in the opinion of gaining profit or any other advantage that restrict their ability to access all data of the study or analyze, interpret, prepare, and publish their articles.
Editors should refrain from bringing together those who may have any relationship between them during the evaluation of the studies. To prevent any conflict of interest, the article evaluation process is carried out double-blinded. Because of the double-blinded evaluation process, except for the Editor-in-Chief, assigned Deputy Editor In Chief and section editor, none of the editorial board members or reviewers is informed about the authors of the manuscript or institutions of the authors. If a reviewer, an Deputy Editor In Chief, or a section editor has a conflict of interest and/or believes that it is not appropriate to be a reviewer, or an editor for a given manuscript, the reviewer or the editor should resign from the assignment.
The Journal's Editorial Board determines cases of a potential conflict of interest between the editors, authors, or reviewers within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.
The Editorial Board members of the Abant Medical Journal may also submit their own manuscripts to the journal as all of them are active researchers and scientists. However, they cannot take place at any stage on the editorial decision of their manuscripts to minimize any possible bias. They will be treated like any other author, and if any, final acceptance of such manuscripts can only be made by the positive recommendation of at least two external reviewers, who are not the members of decision-making editors of journal.
Authors should not contact any of the field editors during the review process. All necessary information regarding the process of a manuscript can be obtained from the editorial office. However, the names of the reviewers are not given to the author(s). Due to the Abant Medical Journal’s double-blinded review principles, the names of authors and reviewers are not known to the other.
Our publication team works devotedly to ensure that the evaluation process is conducted impartially, considering all these situations.

Funding
Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/ •

9. Ethic Responsibility

The scientific and ethical liability of the manuscripts belongs to the authors and the copyright of the manuscripts belongs to the Abant Medical Journal. The authors are responsible for the contents of the manuscript and the accuracy of the references. All manuscripts submitted for publication must be accompanied by the “Copyright Agreement And Acknowledgement Of Authorship Form”. Once this form, signed by all the authors, has been submitted, it is understood that neither the manuscript nor the data it contains have been submitted elsewhere or previously published and the authors declare the statement of scientific contributions, order of authors and responsibilities of all authors.
If the article includes any direct or indirect commercial links or if any institution provided material support to the study, authors must state in the cover letter that they have no relationship with the commercial product, drug, pharmaceutical company, etc. concerned; or specify the type of relationship (consultant, other agreements), if any. The authors must provide a statement on the absence of conflicts of interest among the authors and provide authorship contributions. In case of any suspicion or claim regarding scientific shortcomings or ethical infringement, the Journal reserves the right to submit the manuscript to the supporting institutions or other authorities for investigation. The Journal accepts the responsibility of initiating action but does not undertake any responsibility for an actual investigation or any power of decision.

10. Data-sharing policy

The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artefacts supporting the results in the paper by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Abant Medical Journal follows ICMJE recommendations. The ICMJE require authors to submit a data-sharing statement for randomized clinical trials. Authors must provide a data-sharing notification to indicate whether data will be shared. According to ICMJE “Data sharing statements must indicate the following: whether individual deidentified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared; what data in particular will be shared; whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.); when the data will become available and for how long; by what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism)” (for details: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html.

Abant Medical Journal require authors to submit a data-sharing statement form and register a data-sharing plan when registering a clinical trial on or after May 1, 2023.

11. Preprint

Abant Medical Journal does not consider preprint publications as prior publications. In other words, authors are allowed to present and discuss their findings on a non-commercial preprint server (e.g., arXiv, bioRxiv, chemRxiv, medRxiv ) before submission to a journal.

Authors must provide the journal with the preprint server deposition of their article accompanying its DOI during initial submission. Preprints cannot be used as a reference in any publication in the Abant Medical Journal unless cited in a personal communication format, i.e., as an in-text reference (using preprint link, DOI, or both).

If the article is published in the Abant Medical Journal, it is the responsibility of the authors to update the archived preprint and link it to the published version of the article. The preprint must be removed in the case of acceptance to leave only the final version online.

12. Sex and Gender Policy

The Abant Medical Journal has recently established a policy that requires all authors to ensure proper representation of gender and/or sex as a variable for all study types.
Authors are strongly recommended to use the terms sex (for reporting biological factors) and gender (for reporting identity, psychosocial, or cultural factors) correctly. Wherever possible, the sex and/or gender of the study participants should be reported, and the methods used to determine sex and/or gender should be explained. Regardless of whether the result is favorable or not, routine sex- and gender -separated data should be presented at the appropriate instances. In addition to data limitations, the potential implications of sex and gender on study results/analyses should be discussed. Please refer to the SAGER guideline for further information.

13. Change of Authorship and Withdrawal Request

Change of Authorship
Any request to change the author list after submission, such as a change in the order of the authors or the deletion or addition of author names, is subject to the Editorial Board’s approval. To obtain this approval, please request the change of authorship form on the Journal’s Editorial Secretary and send it to the Journal’s Editorial Secretary. This form should include the following information:
• The reason for the change of authorship
• Signatures of all authors (including the new and/or removed author)
• Please note, if you are adding or removing author/authors, a new copyright transfer form signed by all authors should also be sent to the Journal’s Editorial Secretary after the Editorial Board approves the change of authorship.
Withdrawal Policy
Abant Medical Journal is committed to providing high quality articles and uphold the publication ethics to advance the intellectual agenda of science. We expect our authors to comply with, best practice in publication ethics as well as in quality of their articles.

Withdrawal of a manuscript will be permitted only for the most compelling and unavoidable reasons. For withdrawal of a manuscript authors need to submit an "Article Withdrawal Form", signed by all authors mentioning the reason for withdrawal to the Journal’s Editorial Secretary. Please request the change of authorship form on the Journal’s Editorial Secretary. Authors must not assume that their manuscript has been withdrawn until they have received appropriate notification to this effect from the editorial office.

In a case where a manuscript has taken more than six months’ time for review process, that allows the author to withdraw manuscript.

Manuscript withdrawal penalty: After receiving the Article Withdrawal Form, Abant Medical Journal Editorial Board will investigate the reason of withdrawal. If the reason finds to be acceptable, the author is allowed to withdraw the manuscript without paying any withdrawal penalty. If not Abant Medical Journal will not accept any manuscripts from the same author for one year.

Manuscripts may be withdrawn at any stage of review and publication process by submitting a request to the Journal’s Editorial Secretary. Manuscript withdrawal will be permitted after submission only for the most compelling and unavoidable reasons.

14. Correction, Retraction, Clarification Policy, and Editorial Responses

Abant Medical Journal recognizes its obligation to correct errors in the work that it has published and to consider readers’ criticisms of that work.
Corrections and Retraction
Errors of this type will be corrected online as soon as possible and will be printed in an erratum sheet that will appear in the next issue and be included in the digital version of the article. The corrected article will include a footnote stating the date of correction and the volume and issue in which the erratum will appear. In a situation where the corrections are significant in scope or quantity, they would not be corrected online, but the digital version would include a footnote signaling the publication of the erratum.
Erratum or publisher correction: Correction of a significant error made by the journal that affects the scholarly record, the scientific integrity of the article, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.
Corrigendum or author correction: Correction of a significant error made by the author that affects the scholarly record, the scientific integrity of the article, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.
Editorial Responses
Responses of this type will be peer-reviewed and, where possible, sent to the referees who reviewed the original submission; to the extent possible, all parties will remain anonymous. Responses are subject to oversight by the editors of the journal and will be published after full consultation with all interested parties.
Editorial expression of concern: Notifies of the addition of information to an article, for example in response to a reader’s request for clarification or correction of a significant omission. Such addenda are published when the editors decide they are crucial to the reader’s understanding of a significant part of the published contribution.
Retraction: Notifies the readership of unsound results or misconduct, following an investigation of the issue by the editorial board. The original article will remain available but will be marked as retracted through a published note from the editor.
Article removal: In rare instances, this Journal may be obliged to remove an article as a consequence of legal action. Such removal will be marked on the issue table of contents, and a notice indicating removal will replace the article contents.
For further information on professional standards in publishing, see the website of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

15. Appeals and complaints

Appeal and complaint cases are handled within the scope of COPE guidelines by the Editorial Board of the journal. Appeals should be based on the scientific content of the manuscript. The final decision on the appeal and complaint is made by Editor in Chief. An Ombudsperson or the Ethical Editor is assigned to resolve cases that cannot be resolved internally. Authors should get in contact with the Editor in Chief regarding their appeals and complaints via e-mail at abantmedj@ibu.edu.tr.