Ethical Principles and Publication Policy
Publication Principles
Bozok Medical Journal implements the publication principles foreseen and accepted by the organizations Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), World Association of Medical Editors, and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Additionally, Bozok Medical Journal implements the publication principles determined by DergiPark under the TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM structure of which it is a part.
Human and Animal Right
For experimental, clinical, and drug human studies, ethics committee approval and a statement regarding the compliance of the study protocol with international agreements (World Medical Association Helsinki Declaration "Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects," amendment October 2013) are required. For experimental animal studies, authors must state that the applied procedures comply with animal rights (Guide for the care and use of laboratory animals) and obtain animal ethics committee approval. The Ethics Committee approval document must be uploaded to the DergiPark system, the online manuscript system of Bozok Medical Journal, together with the manuscript.
Ethics committee approval; a statement that the above-mentioned international guidelines have been followed; and evidence that informed consent has been obtained from the patient must be stated in the Materials and Methods section. These items are required for case reports where there is a possibility that the data/media may reveal the identity of the patient. For individuals under the age of 18, please provide a consent form that includes the signatures of both parents or the individual's legal guardian or supervisor.
Plagiarism and Other Violations
The quality of the submitted data and analyses are important issues for Bozok Medical Journal. Authors are obliged to provide the datasets upon review requests from the editors. Journal editors check the text content for plagiarism and duplication using relevant software. By submitting their articles to this journal, authors are deemed to have accepted that the article may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works. If plagiarism is detected before publication, the article will be rejected and the authors will be subject to institutional recognition. This information may be sent to the authors' institutions and other relevant bodies. Bozok Medical Journal does not accept articles that have been previously submitted for evaluation to another journal and/or have been previously published. Therefore, authors must be certain and declare in the cover letter that the article has not been submitted to any other journal simultaneously. The exception to this rule is oral presentations or posters that have been presented as abstracts at scientific congresses. It must be stated that your article has been previously presented as an oral presentation or poster at a scientific congress. This information should be added to the cover page or the relevant field in the online manuscript submission system, and details such as the name, date, and location of the congress where the abstract was published must be specified. All ethical, scientific, and legal responsibility for published studies belongs to the authors. In the screening performed with the plagiarism detection program, articles with a total similarity rate exceeding 20% will be returned to the author for correction without being taken into evaluation. An article in the process cannot be submitted to or published in another journal.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interes
All financial support sources must be disclosed. All authors must declare whether there is any conflict of interest in the process of creating their work. Any financial grants or other support received from individuals or institutions for a study must be disclosed to the Editorial Board of Bozok Medical Journal. To declare a potential conflict of interest, the ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form must be completed and submitted by all authors contributing to the article. The Editorial Board of the Journal determines potential conflict of interest situations of editors, authors, or reviewers within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.
Circumstances that provide financial or personal gain lead to a conflict of interest. The reliability of the scientific process and 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 relationships are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and it is inevitable that they affect the reputation of the journal, authors, and science. These conflicts may arise from personal relationships, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. Authors should avoid, as much as possible, making agreements with sponsors with the view of obtaining profit or any other advantage that restricts their access to all data of the study or their ability to analyze, interpret, prepare, and publish their articles. Editors who make the final decision on articles should not have any personal, professional, or financial ties with any of the issues on which they will decide. Authors should inform the editorial board about potential conflicts of interest to ensure that their articles are evaluated within the framework of ethical principles through an independent evaluation process.
If any of the editors is an author on any article, that editor is removed from the article evaluation process. To prevent any conflict of interest, the article evaluation process is conducted as double-blind. Due to the double-blind evaluation process, none of the members of the editorial board, except the Editor-in-Chief, members of the international advisory board, or reviewers, are informed about the authors of the article or the authors' institutions.
Our editorial team works diligently to ensure that the evaluation process is conducted impartially, taking all these situations into consideration.
Authorship and Statement
We adopt the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (JAMA. 1997; 277:927-934). For articles with two or more authors, each author must actively and adequately participate in the conducted and reported study and meet the necessary conditions for authorship. The inclusion of each author in the author list of a manuscript is based solely on the following:
(1) contributing to the conception and design of the study or data analysis and interpretation,
(2) making significant contributions to the drafting of the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content,
(3) approving the final version of the manuscript to be submitted.
All three of the above conditions must be met. Other individuals who contributed to the study should be acknowledged separately in the Acknowledgements section. In the cover letter accompanying the submitted manuscript, it must be confirmed that all authors fulfill both conditions.
The responsibility for compliance with international ethical principles such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism (salamization), gift authorship, ghost authorship, duplication (multiple publications of one work) in manuscripts submitted to our journal belongs to the authors. If such a situation is detected before or after publication in any research, the manuscript will be withdrawn from the journal.
Editors' Authorship
The peer review process of Bozok Medical Journal is kept confidential for all parties. Editors cannot submit their own articles to the journal except for editorial writings, as confidentiality cannot be ensured during the evaluation process. Field editors can submit their own articles to Bozok Medical Journal. The articles of field editors are subject to confidential peer review, just like the articles of other authors. Editors-in-chief and field editors are obliged to notify the Journal management in case of any conflict of interest among themselves. Managers cannot make suggestions and/or exert pressure on editors regarding manuscripts submitted to Bozok Medical Journal. Manuscripts should only be submitted for evaluation after obtaining the written consent of all contributing authors. The author list should include all individuals who can be considered authors in accordance with the authorship policies of ICMJE and COPE.
Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Authors
In line with the principles and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Bozok Medical Journal acknowledges that the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in academic writing and research is increasing. However, to ensure transparency, accountability, and integrity, the use of AI must comply with ethical publishing standards.
Therefore, authors must adhere to the following rules:
1. Artificial Intelligence Tools Cannot Be Listed as Authors
It follows COPE's view that artificial intelligence tools cannot fulfill the role of an author and therefore cannot be listed as an author in any submission. Only individuals who meet the authorship criteria (e.g., substantial contribution, accountability, approval of the final version) should be named as authors.
2. Disclosure of AI Use is Mandatory
"Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, the creation of images or graphic elements of the article, or the collection and analysis of data must transparently disclose how and which AI tool was used in the Methods section and the cover letter of the article." The following format can be used in the cover letter:
"During the preparation of this manuscript, the authors used [Tool Name, e.g., ChatGPT, OpenAI] for [specific purpose, e.g., language editing, drafting parts of the introduction, summarizing background literature]. After using this tool, the authors reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the content of the publication."
Covert or unethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) may lead to the rejection of the manuscript or the retraction of the published article.
This policy will be periodically reviewed and updated in line with COPE guidance and evolving best practices.
If you have any questions regarding the use of artificial intelligence tools, please contact the editorial office before submitting.
Advertising Policy
Bozok Medical Journal is the periodic, peer-reviewed, open access, official scientific publication of Bozok University. To maintain its academic independence, the journal conducts its publishing activities independently of any commercial advertising or sponsorship agreements.
All editorial decisions are made solely based on academic standards, scientific merit, and a rigorous peer review process, without any commercial or financial influence. The journal operates in accordance with the financial and publication policies of Bozok University, with a commitment to serving the public good and advancing scientific knowledge.
In line with these principles, the journal does not publish commercial advertisements or sponsored content; it is dedicated solely to the dissemination of academic and scientific material. Ethical publishing practices and editorial independence are observed at all stages of the publication process.
Appeals and Complaints
Appeals and complaints are handled by the journal's Editorial Board within the scope of COPE guidelines. Appeals must be based on the scientific content of the article. The final decision on appeals and complaints is made by the Editor-in-Chief. Depending on the situation, a mediator or an external ethics editor may be appointed to resolve issues that cannot be resolved internally. Authors should contact the Editor-in-Chief regarding their appeals and complaints via the email address tip.editor@bozok.edu.tr.
Handling of Unethical Publishing Behaviour
In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fabrication, or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to rectify the article in question. This includes, in the most severe cases, the immediate publication of a correction, clarification, or retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of articles where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances will it encourage or knowingly allow such misconduct.
Errors Detected in Published Studies
If authors identify significant errors or inaccuracies in a published work, they are obliged to promptly notify the journal's editors or publisher and cooperate with them to correct or retract the article. If the editors or publisher learn from a third party that a published work contains a material error or inaccuracy, the authors must promptly correct the article or present the grounds for retraction to the editorial board, or provide proof of the accuracy of the article to the journal editors.
Digital Archiving and Preservation Policy
Digital preservation is a set of processes and activities that guarantee access and distribution to ensure long-term and continuous access to information in digital format. The preservation policy includes the following measures:
Website Archiving
All electronic content (website, manuscript, etc.) is stored in different sources. The content on one server is online and accessible to readers. A copy of the same content is kept as a backup. In the event of a server failure, an archive is provided from within the other sources.
Abstracting/Indexing Services
Our journal's abstracting/indexing services store basic information about articles. Additionally, some abstracting/indexing services archive metadata about articles and electronic versions of articles. In this way, copies of articles are presented to the scientific community through these systems as an alternative to journals.
Discontinuation of Publication
If the publication of this journal ceases, the articles will remain online and will be accessible to readers through third parties and archiving processes such as those described above. In certain circumstances, such as the cessation of the publication process, content can be accessed via the link https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/bozoktip/archive.
Authors' Archiving Policy
Abstract and Citation Information
Authors may reuse the abstract and citation information of their articles (e.g., title, author name, publication dates), including on social media platforms; however, a backlink to the article on the Bozok Medical Journal website must be provided as a citation.
Accepted Manuscript
An "accepted manuscript" is the final draft of the author's manuscript that has been accepted for publication by a journal, including changes made based on the reviewers' recommendations, before it has undergone copyediting and typesetting.
Authors of open access articles have the freedom to publish their articles and share their links anywhere immediately after publication. However, a backlink to the article on the Bozok Medical Journal website must be provided as a citation.