ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND PUBLICATION POLICY

The international standards for editors and authors determined by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Council of Science Editors (CSE), Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), European Association of Science Editors (EASE) and National Information Standards Organization (NISO) are taken into account in scientific articles submitted to Current Journal of Medical Research (CJMR). The journal adopts internationally recognized ethical standards and works accordingly to provide the necessary support for original scientific ideas and to publish high quality, reliable scientific articles. The publication policy and ethical principles of the journal include the standards of ethical behavior and the participants: author(s), journal editor(s), associate editors, field editors, reviewers.

GENERAL ETHICS PRINCIPLES

Objectivity and Independence

The editor-in-chief, editors, section editors and reviewers impartially conduct the evaluation process of the articles submitted to the journal within the framework of ethical principles. Editorial decisions are independent and cannot be influenced by internal or external factors. In accordance with the principle of impartiality, CJMR ensures that editors and editorial board members are not involved in the editorial and reviewing processes of their articles. Thus, double-blind reviewing standards are maintained.

Privacy

The content of the articles submitted to CJMR and the authors' personal information (such as name, e-mail address and telephone numbers) are only used for the scientific purposes of the journal and are not used for other purposes and cannot be shared with third parties. Article evaluation processes are also carried out confidentially.

Authorship and Authors Rights

Authors of articles submitted to the CJMR should make significant contributions to the design, conduct or interpretation of the study. For example, in terms of research and publication ethics and authors’ rights, it is unacceptable to include individuals who do not actively contribute to the research but only assist in the writing or data collection processes as authors. All authors of a publication should agree on the names and order of the authors in the article. The competence of the authors regarding the subject of the study is evaluated by the editor within the framework of deontological rules and the professional fields of each author. The corresponding author of the article should state the contributions of the authors to the study under the heading "Author contributions" (on the title page). The corresponding author is primarily responsible for any disputes that may arise in this regard.

Originality of Research Findings

Authors should declare in the "cover letter" section of the online system at the submission stage that their article contains original research results, that the study data has been analyzed correctly, and that it has been prepared for publication using sufficient and appropriate references.

Similarity

Articles submitted to the journal are subjected to similarity analysis using appropriate software (iThenticate by CrossCheck) at the beginning and at every necessary stage. Regardless of the similarity rate, if unethical similarities are detected, the authors are notified and corrections are requested, or the articles with excessive similarities are rejected at the first evaluation stage without being evaluated.

Plagiarism/Self-Plagiarism, Duplicate Publication

CJMR enforces publication ethics and verifies the originality of submitted content before publication and checks all submitted articles for plagiarism/self-plagiarism, similarity and duplication. All submitted articles are meticulously scanned by a similarity detection software (iThenticate by CrossCheck). Authors are not entitled to use entire paragraphs of their previous publications in a new submission. Such actions are also considered plagiarism. In any case, the article should be original in terms of scientific content and spelling. In case of alleged or suspected research misconduct, the Editorial Board will follow and act in accordance with the "COPE Guidelines".

Multi-part Publication (Piecemeal Publication)

Some authors may tend to divide the study data into two or more articles and publish the results in different journals with different author names and order. CJMR is against multi-part publication in principle. When necessary, ethics committee approval information, project information, congress presentations, etc. of the study are checked and such situations that may pose ethical problems are identified and notified to the authors. Authors may think that their study should be published in multiple sections that complement each other. For this purpose, each part of the article should be titled as "Part-I", "Part-II" and sent to the journal "simultaneously". This may be evaluated by the editor-in-chief/field editors/reviewers and it can be suggested that the article can be published in parts or as a whole. In addition, rejection of a submission submitted in parts means that all parts will be rejected.

Animal Rights and Ethics

Authors are responsible for conducting experimental and clinical studies on animal experiments within the framework of current international legislation on animal rights. Authors should also obtain permission from the Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee to conduct experiments with animals and provide relevant information in the Materials and Methods section. In addition to the ethics committee approval, an "informed consent form" should be obtained from the animal owners in clinical studies and the relevant information should be declared in the Materials and Methods section. The "informed consent form" is sufficient for articles in the "Case report" and "Letter to the Editor" categories. CJMR requests the corresponding author to send a copy of the ethics committee approval form to the journal (electronically). In cases where ethical rules are violated, the article is not evaluated, or if it is under evaluation, the procedure is terminated and the article is rejected.

Research Involving the Use of Animals

Editors will want the potential benefits from any research that harms animals to be significant in relation to adverse situations animals will endure, and that the procedures followed do not offend the majority of readers. In particular, authors should ensure that their research complies with the generally accepted '3Rs' (https://www.animalethics.org.au/three-rs ):
• Replacement: Replacing animals with alternatives wherever possible
• Reduction: Reducing the number of animals used
• Refinement: Improving experimental conditions and procedures to minimize harm to animals

Authors should include details regarding housing, care and pain management in their article. For further guidance, the authors should include Code of Practice for Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures, American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, European Animal Research Association or national regulations (https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/ eskiler/2011/12/20111213-4.htm; https://www.tarimorman.gov.tr/Belgeler/Mevzuat/Talimatlar/gkgm/deneysel_hayvan_koruma_kilavuz.pdf;https://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/mevzuatmetin/1.5.5199-20100611.pdf).

Studies involving vertebrates or higher invertebrates should only be conducted after obtaining approval from the appropriate ethics committee. Animal welfare statements should confirm that the study complies with all relevant legislation. If the study involves animals owned by the animal owner, informed animal owner consent should be obtained and documented in the research article report. Animal owners should be fully informed of any risks associated with the procedures and that the research will be published. If available, a high standard of veterinary care should be provided. The authors are responsible for the accuracy of the statements made in the article.

If ethical approval is not required by national law, authors should submit a certificate of exemption from the ethics committee, if available. Where an exemption is granted to a study, the name of the ethics committee granting it should be stated, along with a full explanation of why ethical approval is not required.

The CJMR also supports the ARRIVE guideline (arriveguidelines.org/) for reporting experiments using live animals. Authors and reviewers should use the ARRIVE guidelines, available at https://arriveguidelines.org/sites/arrive/files/documents/ARRIVE%20Compliance%20Questionnaire.pdf, as a checklist. The editors reserve the right to request the checklist and reject submissions which do not comply with these guidelines, and which are based on ethical or animal welfare concerns, or if the procedure described is not justified by the value of the study submitted.

Research Involving Cell Lines

For submissions reporting research with cell lines, the methods sections should specify the source of any cell line. For established cell lines, the source should be cited, and a published article or a commercial source should also be cited. If previously unpublished de novo cell lines, including those gifted from another laboratory, have been used, details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval should be provided, and written informed consent should be provided if the line is of human origin. The editors reserve the right to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.

Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests

The editor-in-chief pays attention to whether there is any conflict of interest or unity of interest between the editors, reviewers and author(s) for an objective and impartial evaluation of the article. In addition, authors should disclose any financial interests or affiliations or any circumstances under the above heading that may raise the issue of bias in research and articles.

Authors should identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be considered to improperly influence the representation or interpretation of reported research results. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include, but are not limited to, financial interests (such as membership, employment, consulting, stock ownership, attendance fees, grants or other funds, paid expert testimonies, and patent-licensing arrangements) and non-financial interests (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, and personal beliefs).

Any role of the funding sponsors in designing the study, collecting, analyzing or interpreting data, writing the article or deciding to publish the results should be declared in this section. If there is no role, please state "The funding sponsors had no role in designing the study, collecting, analyzing or interpreting data, writing the article or deciding to publish the results".
See below for examples of declarations: If no potential perceived conflicts exist, the authors should state:

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

COPYRIGHT

Authors retain the copyright to their published study licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), granting the publisher a non-exclusive right to publish the study. The CC BY-NC 4.0 license permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original study is properly cited.

Authors should fill in the "Copyright Agreement Form" and sign it with a wet signature. Authors are required to scan the signed form and send it to the editor via the system. The articles of authors who do not submit the Copyright Agreement Form on time will not be published.

CJMR provides fast, rigorous peer review and rapid publication after acceptance. Accepted articles are immediately available online with a DOI and are published on a permanent basis. Publication of the article will not be delayed due to peer-review and editorial procedures, proofreading and editing and other processes, patent applications, or pending intellectual property issues. Authors are responsible for ensuring that all patent applications and intellectual property issues are resolved prior to publication. Any patent application or registration should be declared in accordance with the Conflicts of Interest Policy of the CMJR.

Reproduction of Published Materials from Other Publishers

Authors are strictly required to obtain permission to use any published material (figures, diagrams, tables or any abstract of a text) that is not the public property or for which they do not own the copyright. Permission must be requested by the authors from the copyright holder (usually the Publisher; please refer to the imprint of individual publications to identify the copyright holder).

Permission is required for:

• Your own study published by other publishers for which you do not retain copyright.
• Significant citations from anyone's study or a series of studies.
• The use of Tables, Graphs, Charts and Diagrams with or without slight modifications.
• Photographs for which you do not own the copyright.

Permission is not required for the following:

• Recreating your own table with data published elsewhere. Please note that in this case you must specify the source of the data as "Data from..." or "Adapted from...".
• Reasonably short citations are considered fair use and therefore do not require permission.
• Graphs, Charts, Diagrams and Artworks that have been completely redrawn and significantly altered beyond recognition by the authors do not require permission.

Obtaining Permission

• You should start obtaining permissions as early as possible to avoid unnecessary delays in the publication process. If you have any doubts about copyright, apply for permission. CJMR may not publish materials from other publications without permission.
• The copyright holder may instruct you on the form of acknowledgment to follow; otherwise, follow this style at the end of the Table, Figure or diagram title: "Reproduced with permission from [author], [book/journal title]; published by [publisher], [year]."

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Citation Policies

When the material is taken from other sources (including their own published papers), authors should ensure that the source is clearly cited and, where appropriate, permission is obtained. Authors should not excessively refer to their own study. Authors should not copy references from other publications unless they have read the cited work. Authors should not preferentially cite their own, peers, colleagues or institutions' publications. Authors should not refer to advertisements or materials for advertising purposes. In line with COPE guidelines, we expect "original statements taken directly from other researchers' publications to be enclosed in quotation marks with appropriate citations". This requirement also applies to an author's own study. COPE has produced a discussion document with best practice recommendations on citation manipulation.

Withdrawal of a Submission

If the authors detect a significant error or deficiency in their article under review, or if they are notified of this error by the editor/field editor/reviewer, they may immediately contact the editor-in-chief and request that the article be withdrawn by stating the reason. The decision on this issue belongs to the editorial board.

Erratum

After an article is published, the corresponding author may request to publish an "erratum" for any errors or inaccuracies noticed by reviewers, editors or readers. The editor, in collaboration with the authors, prepares the erratum article and publishes it in the next issue. These articles, like other publications, should include the publication tag and DOI number.

Retraction

After the article is published, if any irreparable ethical problem is detected in the article that cannot be solved with an erratum, the editor-in-chief and associate editors prepare a justification for the article and apply the retraction procedure to the article. The text file on the web page of a retracted article is blocked and the retraction justification is added to the system as a file and kept in the permanent archive.

Advertising

CJMR does not accept advertisements and sponsorships that are considered to create a potential conflict of interest. If the article submitted to CJMR is intended to promote a commercial product and/or the study is directly supported by a company, it will be rejected without evaluation.

Research Data Policies

CJMR is committed to promoting open scientific exchange and ensuring that our authors follow best practices in sharing and archiving research data. We encourage all authors of articles published in the CJMR to share their research data. Individual journal guidelines can be found on the 'Instructions for Authors' page of the journal. The data sharing policies are related to the minimum data set that supports the key findings of a published study. The produced data should be publicly available and cited in accordance with journal guidelines.
Data should not be shared where ethical, legal or privacy concerns exist. Authors should clearly state any limitations in the Data Availability Statement at the time of submission. Authors should ensure that shared data complies with the consent provided by participants for the use of confidential data.
Data Availability Statements provide details of where the data supporting the reported results can be found, including links to publicly available archived datasets analyzed or created during the study.

SPECIAL ISSUE PUBLISHING POLICY

A special issue may be published once a year upon the request of the Editorial Board. Articles submitted for inclusion in a special issue are first subjected to editorial preliminary examination. Then it is examined for compliance with the spelling rules of the journal and similarity is scanned to prevent plagiarism. After these stages, the peer review process is taken into which the double-sided blinding model is used.

OPEN ACCESS STATEMENT

CJMR has adopted a publishing policy based on the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) statement.

PUBLICATION FEE POLICY

CJMR is an open access journal and its content can be accessed online without any charge. Therefore, it does not demand any article processing charge (APC) or article submission charge (ASC).

RESPONBILITIES OF THE PUBLISHER, EDITORS, REVIEWERS AND AUTHORS

Responsibilities of Publisher

The publisher (Izmir Katip Çelebi University, Faculty of Medicine) contributes to the execution of the routine processes of the journal such as printing, archiving and mailing in line with the requests from the editor.
The publisher undertakes to implement an independent and fair decision mechanism for the editor-in-chief and his assistants in the article evaluation process and decisions.
The publisher undertakes to implement an independent and fair decision-making mechanism in the article evaluation process and decisions of the editors.

Responsibilities of Editors

The editor-in-chief/editors/assistant editors of the CJMR evaluate the articles submitted to the journal regardless of race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship or political views. In addition, the authors undertake not to provide any information about the article except the subject editors and reviewers. CJMR follows internationally accepted principles and criteria and takes the necessary decisions for its implementation in the journal.

The editor-in-chief and editors coordinate the evaluation and decision-making process in the journal within the principles of confidentiality and have the authority and responsibility to make independent decisions without being affected by any internal or external factors. The editor-in-chief and editors make and implement all kinds of plans for the development and international recognition of the journal. They also follow national and international meetings or events on the development of journals and article evaluation and ensure that the journal is represented in these platforms. The editor-in-chief and editors make every effort to ensure that the journal's field editors and reviewer pool have international qualifications. Likewise, they take the necessary initiatives to strengthen the author profile. The editor-in-chief and editors make plans and carry out the necessary process to improve the quality of the articles published in the journal. The editor-in-chief and editors regularly conduct and control the initial evaluation, preliminary evaluation, peer review and acceptance-rejection decisions of the articles submitted to the journal. While performing these procedures, features such as the suitability of the study to the purpose and scope of the journal, its originality, the up-to-dateness and reliability of the scientific methods, its potential to contribute to the development of the journal as well as its benefit to science/practice are taken into consideration. The editor-in-chief and editors systematically review, supervise and decide on articles submitted to the journal in terms of author rights, conflict of interest, recognition and protection of animal rights, and compliance with research and publication ethics. The editor-in-chief conducts the evaluation/revision process between the authors and the field editors and reviewers and ensures that it is completed within the stipulated period.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

In the CJMR, double-blind reviewing procedure is applied to evaluate the articles submitted to the journal in accordance with the principle of impartiality and objective criteria; that is, the reviewers and the authors are not aware of each other.
The reviewers present their opinions and reports to the editor-in-chief to ensure the control, suitability, scientific content, scientific consistency and compliance with the principles of the journal. When the reviewer gives a "rejection" decision about an article, s/he prepares the reasons for his/her decision in accordance with scientific norms and presents it to the editor.
The reviewer(s) also give the authors the opportunity to improve the content of the article. Accordingly, the corrections requested from the authors should be of a nature that explains/questions specific issues rather than general statements.
The reviewers assigned for the evaluation of the articles accept that the articles are confidential documents and that they will not share any information about these documents with third parties other than the editors participating in the evaluation.
Reviewers should place their criticisms on a scientific basis and write their explanations based on scientific evidence. All comments made by reviewers to improve articles should be clear and direct, and written in a way that does not offend the author's feelings. Insults and derogatory expressions should be avoided.
If a reviewer has a conflict of interest with the author(s) on one or more issues, he/she should notify the editor and request his/her resignation from the reviewing position. The same applies if the authors illegally learn about the reviewers of the article and try to influence them.
The editor-in-chief may share the comments and reports from the reviewers with the editors/assistant editors and the relevant subject editor when necessary to ensure that the decision on the article is made in the most appropriate way. When necessary, the Editor-in-Chief may share a reviewer's critical decision and rationale with the other reviewer(s) and bring it to their attention.
The reviewer(s) may request revision of the article multiple times.
The content of the reviewer reports is checked and evaluated by the editor-in-chief and editors. The final decision belongs to the editor-in-chief.

The general recommendations of the reviewers after reviewing the article are as follows:

Accept in Present Form: The article is accepted without any changes.

Minor Revisions: After the article is revised according to the comments of the reviewers, it is re-evaluated.

Major Revisions: Acceptance of the article will depend on extensive revisions. If some of the reviewer's comments cannot be revised, the author should respond item by item or provide a rebuttal. Normally, a maximum of two rounds of major revisions are made per article. The authors will be asked to resubmit the revised article within ten days and the revised version will be returned to the reviewer for further comments. If the required revision period is estimated to be longer than 2 months, authors are advised to withdraw their article before resubmission to avoid unnecessary time pressure and to ensure that all articles are adequately revised.

Reject: The article has serious flaws, makes no original contribution and it is rejected without an offer to resubmit to the journal.

Decisions on revision, acceptance or rejection should always be well justified, as the reviewers' recommendations are visible not only to the authors but also to the journal editors.

Responsibilities of Author(s)

It is unacceptable for the author(s) to submit an article previously submitted to another journal to the CJMR within the scope of "which accepts" or "which publishes first" approach. If this is detected, the article will be rejected at any stage of the evaluation. As a possible result of these actions, in the process following the previous acceptance of the article submitted to another journal, this excused withdrawal request submitted by the authors for this article, which is under evaluation in our journal, is evaluated by the editors of the journal, and disciplinary action is initiated against those responsible for ethical violation. This unethical act is also reported (if known) to the journal editor who accepted the article.
It is essential that the articles to be submitted to the CJMR include current, original studies with important clinical/practical results prepared in accordance with the journal's editorial guidelines.
Authors should select the references used during the writing of the article in accordance with ethical principles and cite them in accordance with the rules.
Authors are obliged to revise the article in line with the issues communicated to them during the initial evaluation, preliminary evaluation and peer review stages of the article and to explain the changes they have made/haven’t made in the "response to the editor" and "response to reviewer’s comments" sections, respectively.
If information, documents or data related to the study are requested during the evaluation process, the corresponding author is obliged to submit them to the editor.
Authors should be aware of and take into account the issues listed in the "General Ethical Principles" section regarding scientific research and authors.
Authors are not allowed to submit more than one article to CJMR at the same time. According to the policy of the journal, it is more appropriate to submit at acceptable time intervals.