Preparation of the Article and Writing Rules

Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (December 2021) prepared by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (www.icmje.org) has been adopted in the preparation of the Akdeniz Journal of Nursing article writing rules.

General Principles

1. Articles sent for publication in the journal should be uploaded to the system as Word documents.
2. The text content should be prepared in 12-point Times New Roman font with double spacing and 1.5 cm margins from the edges.
3. The main and subheadings in the text should be written without numbering.
4. The abbreviations used in the article should be written clearly when first used, and the abbreviated form should be shown in parentheses.
5. Numerical data between 1 and 9 in the text should be indicated in writing, with numbers 10 and above, the sentence should not start with a number.
6. All pages should be numbered sequentially.
Manuscripts sent to the journal should be arranged in the following order.

Title Page

The title page should indicate the type, importance, original value, findings and importance of the article for the researchers/target audience. In addition, it should be stated on this page that the article has not been sent to another journal or published elsewhere, and if the abstract has been presented or published, the information should also be included. The contact information (affiliation, postal address, e-mail address, and telephone number) of the corresponding author should be specified.

Cover Letter
The Turkish and English title of the manuscript, the names, duties (academic titles), and contact information (e-mail, phone number) of all authors, the institution they work in, and their ORCID information should be written. The relationship status with the sponsor or a commercial company, the institution supporting the study, if any, whether there is a conflict of interest in the study, the institution from which the ethics committee approval was obtained, the date and number of approval should be stated. In articles that do not require ethics committee approval, the statement "Ethics committee approval is not required for this study" should be written.

Abstract

Each one should be prepared on a separate page in Turkish and English, and each of them should not exceed 250 words, including the titles. The abstract should be structured with the subtitles "Aim/Method(s)/Results;/Conclusion(s)" for original research, and should be prepared without any sections for reviews and case reports. The abstract should reflect the article, important conclusions should be given and its contribution to the practice should be stated. Abbreviations and references should not be used in the abstract.

Key words

Turkish and English keywords should be listed in alphabetical order, between 3-6, under the abstracts in accordance with “Index Medicus Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/authors.html) standards.

Contribution to field

Authors have to prepare and add the contribution section to the field, after the abstract, before the main text for all article submissions. This section consists of two sub-headings: "What is known about the field" and "Contribution of the article to the field".
Under both headings, information consisting of 2 or 3 sentences containing short bullet points should be included.

What is known about the field:
The article has to define a specific research question/subject rather than common knowledge.

Contribution of the article to the field:
It should summarize new information rather than provide process statements about what the article does.

Sections
1. Original research articles should include "Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and Suggestions, Conflict of Interest, Author contributions, Acknowledgments and References" sections. The identity of the authors and institution information should be blinded in the manuscript.
2. The introduction should include the general features of the article and its contribution to the literature. A sentence containing the purpose of the article should be added at the end of this section.
3. The method section should contain details of the method of the study. It should be structured with sub-headings as "Type of Research, Research Population and Sample, Data Collection Tools and Application, Data Analysis, Ethical Dimension of Research, Limitations of the Study".
4. In studies with a human element, compliance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, ethics committee approval and “İnformed Consent” from the participants should be included in the “Method” section.
5. In studies using animal elements, compliance with the "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" principles should be stated in the "Method" section.
6. In the Results section, the findings should be presented clearly, briefly and without comment.
7. The Discussion section should describe the findings and relate them to the findings of other authors, and describe the significance of the findings for clinical practice.
8. Review articles should be structured with subheadings of "relevant topics, conflict of interest and author contributions, references ".
9. Case reports should be structured with "introduction, case(s) presentation, discussion, conflict of interest and author contributions, references " sections.
10. Original research (including Turkish and English abstracts, excluding references and tables) and review articles (including Turkish and English abstracts, excluding references) should be 5000 words, and case reports should be limited to 2000 words.

References

1. References should be numbered at the end of the article, under the heading "References", according to the order of occurrence in the text.
2. Vancouver style should be used in the writing of references.
3. There should be no inconsistency between the list of references and the order in which they are included in the text, all references should be indicated in parentheses in the text.
4. If more than one reference is used, a comma should be placed between the references, and in case of using more than two references in a row, the first and last reference numbers should be specified ( e.g. 1-4).
5. All the names must be given for six or less than six authors resources, yet, “ve ark” in Turkish language resources and “et al” in English language resources must be added after first six authors’ names for the resources more than six authors.
6. English translations of Turkish references should be included in parentheses in the article reference whose language of writing is English.
7. References should be limited to publications within the last 5 years as much as possible.
8. The author(s) are responsible for the accuracy of the references.
References should be cited as in the examples below. The names of the journals should be given in abbreviated form in accordance with the Index Medicus, and the names of the journals that are not included in the Index should not be abbreviated. The spelling and punctuation of the references should be in accordance with the examples below.

9. The number of resources used should be a maximum of 50.

Examples for Writing References

For Journals

Albus C, Waller C, Fritzsche K, Gunold H, Haass M, Hamann B, et al. Significance of psychosocial factors in cardiology: update 2018. Clinical Research in Cardiology. 2019;108(11):1175-96

For Books
Potter P, Perry A, Stockert P, Hall AM, Astle B, Duggleby W (eds). Canadian fundamentals of nursing. 6th ed. Toronto: Elsevier Canada; 2019.

For chapters taken from boks
Partridge H, Hallam G. Evidence-based practice and information literacy. In: Lipu S, Williamson K, Lloyd A. (eds.) Exploring methods in information literacy research. Wagga Wagga, Australia: Centre for Information Studies; 2017. p.149–170.

Web address
World Health Organization. Statistical reports from WHO programmes. Available from:
https://www.who.int/data/gho/publications/world-health-statistics [Accessed 15th June 2015].

Tables

1. Tables should not be placed in the text, each table should be on a separate page after the references.
2. Single line spacing should be used in table title writing. Table titles should be short and concise, and this title should be above the table.
3. Table explanations and abbreviations should be placed below the table.
4. If abbreviations are used in the table, the explanation of these abbreviations should be given below the table and in alphabetical order.
5. Each table in the main text should be mentioned and the places where the tables should be placed in the text should be specified.
6. The data presented in the tables should support the main text data and should not be a repetition of the data in the main text.
7. When using previously published tables, copyright permission should be obtained and should be stated in the table description. Writers have full legal, financial and penal responsibilities on these issues.

Figures, Images and Graphics

1. Figures should follow the tables, be placed on a separate page, and numbered according to the order they appear in the text.
2. The places of the figures in the main text should be specified and every figure should be mentioned in the text.
3. Images/photos must be colorful, with enough contrast and clarity to see details (pixel size 500x400 and 300 dpi resolution), and be uploaded to the system as a separate .jpg or .gif file.
4. If abbreviations are included in figures, graphics, and images, the explanation of these abbreviations should be placed below the figure and in alphabetical order.
5. In case of using previously printed figures, images, tables, graphics, or photographs of participants, the written permission of the copyright owner must be obtained and it must be stated as an explanation.
6. Writers have full legal, financial, and penal responsibilities on these issues.

Copyright Form

The authors transfer all their copyrights to Akdeniz Nursing Journal, starting from the evaluation of the articles. For this, the Copyright Form signed by all authors must be uploaded to the system during the entry of the articles into the system. In multi-author articles, ideas generation, study design, experimental applications, statistics, article writing, etc. contributions of the authors to the research should be presented within the scope of the Copyright Form. Authorship contribution information must be reported in the article before the references section.

Conflict of Interest Statement

People and organizations from which all kinds of aid and other support for research are received should be declared to the editorial board and the Conflict of Interest Statement should be filled in and uploaded to the system in order to explain the situations related to conflicts of interest (http://icmje.org/disclosure-of-interest/). If there is no conflict of interest, the phrase “conflict of interest: none” should be written in the conflict of interest section of the text.
You can access the Author Forms at this link: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/journal/3798/file/5568/download

Article Reporting Guidelines

Accurate and complete reporting enables readers to fully evaluate and benefit from the research. For all manuscript submissions, authors must comply with the relevant EQUATOR (www.equator-network.org/home/) research reporting checklist, and the checklist used in the manuscript summary and method section must be specified. For each item on the checklist, the page number of the article that deals with that aspect of the guideline should be indicated. While drafting the manuscript, the checklist should be attached as an "additional file".

• CONSORT checklist for randomized controlled trials (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials)
• TREND checklist for non-randomized controlled studies (Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Non-randomised Designs)
• PRISMA checklist for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analysis)
• STROBE checklist for observational studies
• COREQ checklist for qualitative studies
• SQUIRE checklist for quality improvement studies
• TRIPOD checklist for model development and/or validation
• COSMIN guide to Methodological Studies (Scale Development) (Consensus-based Standards for the Selection of Health Measurement Instruments-Study Design for Patient-reported outcome measurement instruments)
• SPIRIT checklist for study protocols
• AGREE checklist for clinical practice guidelines
• mERA checklist for mobile health evidence reporting and assessments