ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
Journal of Ankara Health Sciences adopts the principles and standards set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We advise all our stakeholders to follow ICMJE and COPE guidelines within the framework of academic and ethical rules.

Actions Contrary to Scientific Research and Publication Ethics
a) Plagiarism: Presenting the original ideas, methods, data or works of others as one's own work in whole or in part without citation in accordance with scientific rules,
b) Forgery: Using non-existent or falsified data in scientific research,
c) Distortion: Falsifying research records or data obtained, falsifying devices or materials not used in the research, falsifying or shaping the results of the research in line with the interests of the persons and organizations receiving support,
ç) Republishing: Presenting duplicate publications as separate publications for academic appointments and promotions,
d) Slicing: Dividing the results of a research into parts in a way that disrupts the integrity of the research and inappropriately and publishing them in more than one number and presenting these publications as separate publications in academic appointments and promotions,
e) Unfair authorship: Including or excluding people who have not actively contributed, changing the author ranking in an unjustified and inappropriate manner, removing the names of active contributors from the work in subsequent editions, using one's influence to have one's name included among the authors even though one has not actively contributed,

Click here to get information about other types of ethical violations in the Directive on Scientific Research and Publication Ethics of Higher Education Institutions.

ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL
Our journal requires that the relevant ethics committee decision must be obtained for all studies in all disciplines that require ethics committee approval. In this context, authors should write the date and number of Ethics Committee approval in the “Sampling and Methods/ Materials and Methods” section. In case presentations, the information that the informed consent form has been obtained must be included in the article.
In line with the regulations implemented by Ulakbim TR Index since 2020, studies that do not have ethics committee permission are not evaluated in our journal.

Studies Requiring Ethics Committee Approval
In our journal, researches that require ethics committee permission include the following studies:
• All research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that involve collecting data from participants through methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, experiments and interview techniques,
• Studies in which humans and animals (including materials or data) are used for experimental or other scientific purposes,
• Clinical trials conducted on humans,
• Scientific research on animals,
• Retrospective studies within the framework of the Personal Data Protection Law.
In order for such studies to be included in the evaluation, the relevant ethics committee permissions must be obtained and these permissions must be clearly stated in the text of the article.

NOTE: Scientific research on humans and animals must be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and ARRIVE guidelines and approval must be obtained from the relevant ethics committee. Studies without ethics committee approval are not evaluated in our journal.

Plagiarism Check
Our journal screens all submitted articles to prevent plagiarism. The similarity rate is expected to be less than 20%. Studies exceeding this rate will be rejected at the preliminary review stage.
If plagiarism is detected in an article submitted or published in our journal, our journal acts in accordance with the COPE principles (Plagiarism in a submitted manuscript - Plagiarism in a published article).

Relations with the Journal Owner and Publisher
The relationship between the editor and the publisher is based on the principle of editorial independence. In accordance with the written contract between the editor and the publisher, all editorial decisions are independent of the publisher and the journal owner.

Correction, Retraction, Expression of Concern
Editors may consider publishing a correction if minor errors are identified in the published article that do not affect the findings, interpretations and conclusions. In the case of major errors/violations that invalidate findings and conclusions, editors should consider retracting the article. COPE guidelines regarding correction, withdrawal or expression of concern are taken into account.

Protection of Intellectual Property Rights
Our journal is obliged to protect the intellectual property rights of all published articles and to defend the rights of the journal and the author(s) in possible violations.

Protection of Personal Data of Participants
All personal data sent to our journal are protected in accordance with legal regulations and ethical rules.

Complaints
The editor/editorial board carefully examines the complaints received from authors, reviewers or readers and tries to respond in an explanatory manner. Complaints should be sent directly to eozmete@yahoo.com. The editor follows the procedure outlined in the COPE flowcharts regarding complaints.

Conflicts of interest
Our journal guarantees the independent and impartial completion of the publication process, taking into account the conflicts of interest between the author(s), reviewers and other editors.

Change of Author
Only the article is processed before acceptance. Authors are required to carefully review the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the exact list of authors at the time of original submission.

Use of Artificial Intelligence
The use of artificial intelligence in processes that do not affect the originality of the article, such as literature review or language control, is acceptable in studies submitted to our journal. However, the use of artificial intelligence should be carried out within the framework of ethical rules and should never be used for unethical purposes such as fabricated data and manipulation.
For studies involving the use of artificial intelligence, it is mandatory to inform our journal about this situation at the article submission stage. All responsibility for the use of artificial intelligence belongs to the authors themselves.

Responsibilities of Stakeholders

For authors;
• Ethics committee approval should be obtained for researchs that requires ethics committee approval, and this approval should be stated in the appropriate sections according to the article writing rules.
• The ethics committee permission obtained should be documented and uploaded to the system as a separate file. The information in the ethics committee file uploaded to the journal must be compatible with the title of the article and the names of the authors.
• In studies requiring ethics committee permission, information about the permission (name of the committee, date and number) should be stated in the method section, and also on the last page of the article (under the heading "Ethics Committee Statement"). Case reports should include information about signing the informed consent form (under the heading "Informed Consent Statement").
• Authors are required to comply with the copyright regulations (citation of the source for the images, permission for the scales, etc.).
• If there is a funding institution in the research, its information must be stated in the method section.
• If the ethics committee approval is within the scope of the thesis, abstract poster or oral presentation of the article uploaded to the system, this information should be included on the title page ("This article was prepared using the data obtained from the author's master's/doctoral thesis." / " This article was presented as oral/poster at the congress of ..... (name) on .... (date)"). Full-text papers with the same method are not accepted into the journal publication process as an article.

For reviewers;
• In the Journal of Ankara Health Sciences, the selection of revieweres is carried out double-blindly during the refereeing process.
• The reviewers must accept/reject the review invitation within the specified time. After the reviewing is accepted, they must upload their suggestions to the system within the specified time. If there is no return within the specified time, the relevant task may be canceled and a new referee may be appointed by the editors.
• In the reviewing process, all reviewers should evaluate the articles impartially, they should know that this process is confidential and should not be shared with third parties.
• In addition to scientific evaluations, if the revieweres detect a situation where the ethical rules regarding the article are violated, they should notify the editor.

For the editorial board;
• The editorial board should review all the articles uploaded to the system by the authors according to the journal rules created according to the TR Index Journal Evaluation Criteria.
• The editorial board should pay attention to the confidentiality of the article evaluation process and should know that it should not be shared with third parties.
• All articles uploaded to the system should be evaluated by the editorial board in a completely impartial manner without any discrimination.

PUBLICATION POLICY

General Principles
• Ankara Journal of Health Sciences is the scientific publication of Ankara University Faculty of Health Sciences. The aim of the journal is to convey the current developments in the field of health sciences at national and international level, to share original scientific studies and to support the development of health professionals.
• The journal is published twice a year, in June and December, both electronically and in original print, in Turkish and English.
• Original research, review articles and case reports in the field of health sciences are published in our journal.
• Manuscripts must not have been previously published or submitted for publication elsewhere.
• Studies submitted to our journal are evaluated by at least two independent reviewers within the scope of double blind review.
• Authors agree to transfer their copyrights to our Journal under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license when the article is accepted for publication.
• All articles published as open access in our journal are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Non-Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
• Articles published in our journal are digitally archived in LOCKSS and DSpace. Articles published in our journal can be accessed free of charge at https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/ausbid/archive.

Special Issue Policy
With the decision of the Editorial Board, a special issue may be published once a year. For articles to be published in the special issue, the publication and evaluation principles are applied as applied in the planned issues.

Price Policy
Article submission, evaluation and publication processes in our journal are completely free of charge. No fee is charged for articles submitted or accepted for publication. In accordance with our publication policy, sponsorship and advertising are not accepted and all expenses of our journal are covered by Ankara University.