Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine

The Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine is the official publication of the Republic of Turkiye Ministry of Justice Council of Forensic Medicine. It’s the aim of the Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine to help the achievement of the goals for the Council of Forensic Medicine which are supporting the studies on forensic medicine and sciences, improving the practice, making contributions to information sharing, ensuring continuity of education and research. 

The Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine is the official publication of the Republic of Turkiye Ministry of Justice Council of Forensic Medicine. It’s the aim of the Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine to help the achievement of the goals for the Council of Forensic Medicine which are supporting the studies on forensic medicine and sciences, improving the practice, making contributions to information sharing, ensuring continuity of education and research. In the field of forensic medicine and sciences original studies like original research, review, brief report, technical note, case report and letter to the editor are published after the review of 2 independent referees and the editor. Materials published previously are not accepted. The Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine is published triannually in April, August and December. The Journal is intended primarily for forensic medicine residents and specialists, forensic sciences (toxicology, genetics, forensic document, ballistics etc.) assistants and specialists including police and gendarmerie personnel working on criminal field, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, other physicians, nurses and independent experts. The Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine is indexed by the “Turkey Citation Index” and “TUBITAK ULAKBİM Medical Database”, Crossref, Scilit, ScienceGate, Researchgate, Fatcat and Google Scholar. After the articles sent to the Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine are pre-reviewed by the editor, the articles fulfilling the criteria of the Journal are sent to at least 2 independent referees without stating any author or institution name. Although there is no definite time interval given for publishing the accepted articles, publication takes place in 3-9 months. The last versions of the articles accepted by the referees are sent to the corresponding author in a PDF format for the approval. Corresponding author is responsible to correct any factual errors in the article so long as not to make any scientific changes. Besides, corresponding author is responsible to send the corrections or the statement that no correction is needed in 48 hours to the editor@ adlitipdergisi.com address after receiving the PDF formatted article. Languages of The Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine are Turkish and English.

ARTICLE PREPARATION

The Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine accepts articles with regard to “Standarts for the Articles Sent to Biomedical Journals” (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Br Med J 1988;296:401-5). Authors should specify the type of the research /experiment and the statistical tests used in the study should be appropriate according to “Guidelines For Statistical Reporting in Articles for Medical Journals: Amplifications and Explainations”(Ann Intern Med 1988;108:266-73) written by Bailar JC III and Mosteller F. The information about any content of the article’s being sent to be reviewed or published –including electronic environment before or not; having permission from an ethical committee and being appropriate according to Helsinki Declaration updated in 2000 about human experiments should be stated in the cover letter sent with the article. The cover letter should include the name, address, telephone, fax and email of the corresponding author. Besides cover letter should be sent through the online article system.

FILES TO BE UPLOADED (* required)

1- *Copyright Transfer Agreement Form (Only the editor can access this file). Should be duly signed by all authors.

2- *Cover Page (Only the editor can access this file): • Article Title, Full-names (surnames in capital letter), academic degrees, affiliations, full-correspondence addresses including phone number and email addresses of all authors should be included. • Corresponding author should be stated clearly.

3- *Full-text manuscript file: • No author name, affiliation, city or country information should be stated in this file to provide the anonymous peerview. If the research is about a specific city (e.g. “Firearm deaths in Istanbul”) it may be stated as “Firearm deaths in xxxx city”. This situation is same for the Article Title too. • Full-text manuscript file should also include references. • Tables, Illustrations, Figures or Photographs should be uploaded separately (not in the full-text manuscript file). • Manuscript should be prepared in “Word for Windows” program, double-spaced and with 12 pt Times New Roman, right and left margins should be 3 cm. • Page numbers should start with “1” from the cover page and placed on the right-bottom of the page.

4- Tables file should be prepared with “Word for Windows” program, all tables and titles should be placed on the top of each tables. All tables should be placed on separate pages.

5- All photographs should be uploaded separately (not in a Word file) in tiff, png or jpeg form. Eacg photographs should be in minimum 300 dpi resolution.

6- Figures and illustrations should be genuine and each figures should be placed on a separate page.

7- Tables, Figures and Photographs Legend should be prepared with “Word for Windows” program and all stated tables, figures and photographs should be listed with their titles and/or explanations. If one file listed above is missing on the submission stage, manuscript would be returned to the author for completing the full submission.

ARTICLE STRUCTURE

• Original articles and Experimental Studies: [Structured Abstract], [Introduction], [Materials and Methods], [Results], [Discussion and Conclusion], and [References] • Experimental Studies [Introduction], [Materials and Methods], [Results], [Discussion and Conclusion], and [References]

• Case reports [Introduction], [Case 1, Case 2…], [Discussion and Conclusion], and [References] The word count should not exceed 2500 and the number of references should not exceed 15.

• Reviews [Abstract], [Introduction], [Free subtitles], [Discussion and Conclusion], and [References] The word count should not exceed 8000 and the number of references should not exceed 100.

• Editorial Note and Technical Note [Introduction], [Free subtitles], [Discussion and Conclusion], and [References] The word count should not exceed 1500 and the number of references should not exceed 10.

Abstract: All the articles written in Turkish should have also an English abstract. For the articles written in English, only an English abstract is enough. Abstracts of the original articles should be structured with Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion parts. Abstracts of original articles should not exceed 250 words. In other types of studies, summary should be configured so as to include the article’s content integrity.

Key Words: At most 6 words or determinative groups of words should be written below the abstract. Abbreviations should not be used as keywords. Keywords in English should be chosen from MESH (Medical Subject Headings http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh) index and Turkish keywords should be chosen from TBT (Türkiye Bilim Terimleri http://www.bilimterimleri.com) index.

Abbreviations: Abbreviations should not be used in title page or in abstract. Except the generally accepted abbreviations, all the words expressed with the abbreviation should be written where the abbreviation is first used in the text.

Acknowledgement: People and institutions having contributions to the article should be stated at the end of the article before the references part. Terminology and Units Medication and equipment names should be appropriate according to general medical and technical terminology rules. All measurements should be given according to international system of unit.

Introduction: The reason for which you want for this study and aim of the study should be determined briefly with referring only the most important articles about the topic.

Material and Method: Plans, patients, experimental animals, methods for control group and statistical data should be explained. Permissions for ethical topics should be determined as described before in preparation part. Drugs should be featured with the generic name, manufacturer name and the country of production.

Results: The findings supported with statistical data should be explained in a detailed way. Tables and figures should support the findings given in the text instead of repeating the same data. Presentation of the data either in the text or on the table/figure is enough. In this part only the most important findings should be emphasized and the findings should not be compared with other studies. Such comparisons should be kept for the discussion part.

Discussion And Conclusion: The importance and difference of the findings should be emphasized but the details given in the results part should not be repeated. Opinions should be limited with the facts found in the study, hypotheses that are not looked into or indicated should not be added to the discussion part. Findings should be compared with other studies. In this part, new data –not placed in the results part- should not be used. Conclusion should express the information which is the product of comparison between results and literature.

References: Reference Guidelines should be checked carefully, and all citation rules should be met. Articles would not be sent to the referees without fully corrected reference style.

• References should be in order as in the text with a consecutive manner starting from (1). On the references page only the “dot” should be used after the reference number (paranthesis, comma or any other punctuations are not allowed). Avoid using automatic numbering.

• Consecutive citations should be stated as (5-8) instead of (5,6,7,8).

• Law articles, legislations should not be cited in references. May be stated in the text with parenthesis with the article number (e.g. Turkish Penal Code, Article 86, Law no: 5237, Acceptance: 26.09.2004).

• Journal names should be abbreviated according to Web of Knowledge (https://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/ help/WOS/A_abrvjt.html), and also for Turkish Journals (http://uvt.ulakbim.gov.tr/tip/sempozyum5/page148-170.pdf).

• All author names should be stated without using “et al.” abbreviation.

• Page numbers in references should be abbreviated as follows: 123-8. should be used instead of 123-128.

Examples:

Journal Article 1. Batchvarov V, Kaski JC, Parchure N, Dilaveris P, Brown S, Ghuran A, Färbom P, Hnatkova K, Camm AJ, Malik M. Comparison between ventricular gradient and a new descriptor of the wavefront direction of ventricular activation and recovery. Clin Cardiol 2002;25(5):230-6. (Article title should be written in order to sentence case (only the first letter capital).)

Book [English] 1. Dimaio VJ, Dimaio D. Forensic Pathology 2nd Edition. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, 2001: p.92-9. (First letters of all words should be capital letter in the book title)

Book [In Turkish Or Other Foreign Languages] 1. Soysal Z. Eke SM, Çağdır AS. Forensic Autopsy Vol I [in Turkish]. Istanbul: Istanbul University Cerrahpasa Medical School Publications, 1999. p.100-5. 

Book Chapter 1. Schwartz PJ, Priori SG, Napolitano C. The Long QT Syndrome. In: Zipes DP, Jalife J eds. Cardiac Electrophysiology. From Cell to Bedside. Philadelphia: WB Saunders Co, 2000: 597–615.

Web Pages While citing web pages if applicable author of the web page, title of the article, URL of the web page, access date should be stated. 1. Gostin LO. Drug use and HIV/AIDS. Available at: http:// www.ama-assn.org/special/hiv/ethics. (cited: 26 June 1997).

• If the author of the webpage is not apparent, citation may be started with the page title.

• Web encyclopedias (like Wikipedia etc), dictionaries and similar unreferenced, or academically unverified sites should not be cited in the references (may be cited in the text with parenthesis).

Unpublished Thesis 1. Einstein A. The special and general relativity theory (Unpublished Thesis). The Anonymous Institute, Istanbul, 1916. Should be written in English and stated as (Unpublished Thesis).

Congress Presentations Congress presentations can be cited only if it was published in proceedings book. 1. Brown MR, Brown MRS. Personalization of reference styles in The Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine (Oral Presentation). 4th World Academy of Forensic Sciences Congress, 22-24 October 2020, Istanbul, Turkey. Revisions All revision demands and critisims are sent to the corresponding author.

Revisions should be sent as soon as possible in order not to cause delays in publication. Answers to all the refrees’ opions should be written. Authors are responsible for the honesty of all the references and data. The editor has the right to withdraw the article from the scientific literature and announce this decision if any wrong, deceptive or misleading data is realized in the article

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Authors are in obligation to make explanation regarding any possible conflicts of interest (financial, institutional, counseling or other). If there is not any conflicts of interest in a study, it is obliged to be declared. If any kind of support is received for performing the study (financial or counseling), all these should be declared explicitly. If there is such information, it should be declared in Copyright Transfer Agreement Form.

PROTECTION OF HUMAN SUBJECTS AND ANIMALS IN RESEARCH

The authors are obliged to state that procedures performed with human subjects were consistent with the ethical standards (institutional and national) of the committee responsible with experiments on human and with the Helsinki Declaration announced in 1975 and revised in 2000 while the authors were explaining the experiments with human subjects. If the consistency of the study with the Helsinki Declaration is controversial, the authors are obliged to explain the justification in their attitude and to prove that institutional ethics committee has approved explicitly the questionable aspects of the study. Besides, authors should be able to answer if they complied with the institutional and national instruction regarding the care and use of experimental animals.

COPYRIGHT TRANSFER AGREEMENT FORM

Copyright Transfer Agreement Form must be signed by each author contributing to the article. This form should be submitted to the system during the online article submission process after being signed. No royalty is paid for the articles sent to the The Turkish Journal Forensic Medicine. All rights of the publications are reserved; the articles published in this Journal are forbidden to be re-published or to be archived in a system without the permission of the editor. The Turkish Journal of Forensic Medicine is public to all and the content can be accessed from the address of www.adlitipdergisi.com.tr free of charge.

ONLINE ARTICLE SUBMISSION

Articles should be sent through the Online Article Submission System so that articles can be reviewed by referees quickly and in order to prevent delays in publication. Articles should be prepared either in Microsoft Word format (*doc) or in rich text format (*rtf) and sent through ‘Submit Track Article Online’ system on www.adlitipdergisi.com web site. A user name and a password are going to be supplied to corresponding authors following their registry of contact information to the online article system. After having a user name and a password, the authors’ reading the guidelines carefully and submitting all needed data accurately is going to prevent unnecessary delays. Tables, figures and other documents considered to be necessary should also be sent to the same address. Besides, the authors using the online article submission system should send the copyright transfer agreement form, financial form and control form (checklist) appropriate to the type of the article.

ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND PUBLICATION POLICY

The scientific responsibility of the writings lies with the authors. Responsibility for all information provided belongs to the authors of the study. It is necessary that all authors have actively participated in the work. Each of the authors mentioned in the article must have made a meaningful contribution to the article. It is entirely the responsibility of the authors to obtain ethics committee approval for any study requiring ethics committee approval. All authors must actively participate in the study. The submitted articles must not have been previously published in any other scientific publishing body in order to be published in the journal. If the message has been submitted before at any meeting, the name, date and city of the meeting must be indicated.

In the process of reviewing the article, the following persons can access the article: editors, reviewers, members of the board of publishers. The only situation in which details of an article can be passed on to a third party without the author's permission is when the editor suspects serious abuse of research.

Everyone listed as an author is requested to meet the authorship criteria proposed by ICMJE (www.icmje.org). The ICMJE recommends that the authors meet the following four criteria:

1. to have made a significant contribution to the content/design of the study; or to the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data for the study.

2. to have prepared the draft paper or to have undertaken critical reviews of the important ideological content.

3. to have reviewed and approved the latest state of the paper prior to its publication.

4. to accept responsibility for all aspects of the work in order to guarantee that questions relating to the validity and accuracy of any part of the article are properly investigated and resolved.


The editors are obliged to take action when there is a suspicion of an ethical violation or if there is an allegation of a violation. This task covers both published and unpublished articles. COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), (https://publicationethics.org/) is committed to implementing the flow schemes when the Journal of Forensic Medicine encounters allegations of abuse on the following or similar subjects.

1.When rebroadcast is suspected
2.When plagiarism is suspected
3. When fabricated data is suspected
4. Requests for change of authorship
5.When an undisclosed conflict of interest is suspected
6.When unfair or gift authorship is suspected
7. When an ethical problem is suspected in an article
8. Suspicion of ethical violations via e-mail, etc. When notified directly by
9. When suspected ethical violations are announced via social media

Studies presented to the Journal of Forensic Medicine are checked using intihal.net and/or ithenticate software. The similarity rate is expected to be less than 25%. The true measure of similarity is the author's compliance with the rules of citation and citation. If the similarity rate appears to be %1 and the reference and quotation process is not done correctly, it may also be related. In this regard, the reference and quotation rules must be known and carefully applied by the author.

The Journal of Forensic Medicine is committed to national and international standards of research and publishing ethics. The Law on the Press, the Law on Ideas and Works of Art and the Guidelines for Scientific Research and Publication Ethics of Higher Education Institutions have adopted the International Principles of Ethics in Publication (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). Turkey also undertakes to comply with the Decisions of the Editor's Workshop.

The protocol of clinical trials must be approved by the ethics committee of the institution concerned. All studies on humans should include a statement in the "Methods and Tools" section that the work has been approved by the relevant committee or that the study has been carried out in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration of Principles (https://www.wma.net/policy/). It should be indicated in the text in which all people involved in the study signed the informed approval form.

If the study uses the "animal" element, the authors have to indicate in the article's Tool and Methods section that they have protected animal rights in their work and have received approval from their ethics boards in accordance with the principles of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (www.nap.edu/catalog/5140.html).

Evaluation Process: Articles submitted to the journal are first reviewed in terms of the magazine standards. Articles that do not conform to the format requested by the magazine are returned to the author without further examination. All papers are first taken for pre-evaluation by the editor; then sent to the members of the advisory board for review. All articles are subject to editorial evaluation and correction; if necessary, the authors may be asked to answer some questions and fill in shortcomings. The evaluation may result in acceptance, minor revision, major revision or rejection. The paper decided to be published in the journal is taken into the printing process; at this stage, all information is thoroughly checked and checked for accuracy; it is pre-published and submitted to the author's verification and approval.

Articles are subject to a double-blind consultancy system. Neither the authors nor the reviewers have knowledge of the identity of the other. All articles are evaluated by two reviewers. The final decision regarding the articles belongs to the editorial board and the editor.

Publication Rights: According to the 1976 Copyright Act, all publishing rights of articles accepted for publication belong to the institution that publishes the journal. Authors must fill out the "Publication Rights Transfer Form" available on the website and send it online with the article.

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