Duzce Medical Journal

Duzce Medical Journal (Duzce Med J) is a peer-reviewed open-access journal based on independent and unbiased double-blinded peer-reviewed principles, published three times a year, in April, August and December by the Duzce University Faculty of Medicine.
Clinical and experimental studies in all fields of medicine, editorial comment/discussion, invited review, original research, and case reports in the basic and clinical sciences are evaluated for publishing.
The manuscripts submitted are required to be unpublished and are not under review for publication elsewhere. The authors are responsible for their article.
No submission, processing or publication charges are required from the authors.

Duzce Medical Journal (Duzce Med J) is a peer-reviewed open-access journal based on independent and unbiased double-blinded peer-reviewed principles, published three times a year, in April, August and December by the Duzce University Faculty of Medicine.
Clinical and experimental studies in all fields of medicine, editorial comment/discussion, invited review, original research, and case reports in the basic and clinical sciences are evaluated for publishing.
The manuscripts submitted are required to be unpublished and are not under review for publication elsewhere. The authors are responsible for their article.
No submission, processing or publication charges are required from the authors.

SCIENTIFIC RESPONSIBILITY

In terms of scientific publishing standards, manuscripts to be submitted should be prepared in accordance with the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME, https://www.wame.org/policies), and the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE, https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines).

• The manuscripts submitted must have complied with the research and publication ethics. The authors are responsible for their article.
• The manuscripts submitted are required to be unpublished and are not under review for publication elsewhere. 
• The manuscripts must be submitted with the Copyright Transfer Form signed by all authors to begin the evaluation process. For authors' order, the signature order in the Copyright Transfer Form is based on.
• The corresponding author is responsible for the final version of the article on behalf of all authors.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY

• Compliance with The Principles of Helsinki Declaration (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/) is required in all studies including the “human” factor. In this kind of studies, authors must state that they perform the study in compliance with these principles, they have taken approval from the ethics committee of their institution, and the “informed consent” from people participating in the study, in the MATERIAL AND METHODS section.
• If the “animal” factor was used in the study, authors must state that they have protected the animal rights in line with the principles of Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals.pdf) and they have taken approval from the ethics committee of their institution, in the MATERIAL AND METHODS section.
• In case reports, informed consent must be taken from patients.
• The information on the ethics committee approval should be indicated together with the name of the committee, approval date, and number, in the MATERIAL AND METHODS section.
• For all research involving human subjects, it must be stated that informed consent was obtained from all participants in compliance with The Principles of Helsinki Declaration (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/), for participation in the study or use of their tissue (or a parent/legal guardian in the case of children under 18 and patients otherwise considered minors under local legislation). Consent is also required for the procurement of biomaterials for stem cell research and translation, including gamete donors in IVF studies. Studies involving vulnerable groups (i.e. individuals who are at higher risk of mistreatment or harm), with potential for coercion or exploitation (for example, prisoners or unconscious patients) or where consent may not have been fully informed (for example, due to a language barrier), will be considered at the Editor’s discretion under exceptional circumstances. Scientific research involving vulnerable groups can only be carried out if its aims and scope benefit those groups and meet their specific needs, and authors must be able to demonstrate this for their manuscript to be considered for publication.
  
• If there is a direct-indirect commercial relation or an institution giving financial support in the study, authors must state that they have no commercial relationship with the commercial product, medicine, company, etc. used, or if any, what kind of a relationship they have (consultant, other agreements), in the cover letter to the editor.
• The authors are responsible for reporting all personal and financial relationships that may be related to the study. It is necessary to state clearly whether there is any conflict of interest related to the submission and/or evaluation of the manuscript.
• Compliance of the manuscripts with the scientific and ethical rules is the responsibility of the authors.

Please first refer to the Ethical Principles and Publication Policy in detail before manuscript preparation and submission. During the submission, you will be asked to confirm that you have read in detail and agreed to all the notices on Ethical Principles and Publication Policy. Compliance of the manuscripts with the scientific and ethical rules is responsibility of authors.

SUBMISSION FILES                    (TEMPLATES: COVER LETTER, TITLE PAGE, MAIN TEXT)

Manuscripts must be uploaded to the system as separate files as described below.

Copyright Transfer Form: The Copyright Transfer Form to be obtained from the system during the submission must be signed by all authors in accordance with the authorship order. Submissions without a Copyright Transfer Form signed by all authors are not included in the review process.

Similarity Report: Authors are required to upload the similarity report obtained from a plagiarism software, such as iThenticate, etc. to the system at the submission. In cases where plagiarism is detected, depending on the similarity rate, the editors' right to reject the manuscript and/or request corrections from the authors is reserved.

Cover Letter: Type of the article, the statement that has not been published previously in anywhere before, and/or not in the evaluation process for publication, if any, the people and institutions supporting the study financially, and the relationship of these institutions with authors (if not, there is no relationship) must be stated. The names, academic titles, institutions, contact information, and e-mail addresses of at least two reviewers suggested in relation to the subject of the manuscript and not related to the authors and their institutions should be written. Editors' right to choose the reviewers is reserved.

Title Page: It must include the title of the article (English and Turkish), a short title not exceeding 40 characters, names, academic titles, ORCID® numbers, institutions, e-mail addresses of all authors, and also name, correspondence address, phone number, e-mail address of the corresponding author. If the manuscript has been presented previously in a scientific meeting; the name, date, and place of the meeting (if not, not presented) should be stated.

Main Text: The title of the article (English and Turkish), short title not exceeding 40 characters, Abstract (English and Turkish), Keywords (English and Turkish), Main Text (sectioned according to the type of article submitted), References, Tables, and Figures should be included.

Ethics Committee Approval Document: Ethics Committee Approval Document should be uploaded as a separate file for all research articles.

Note: If there are figures, pictures, or photographs, each of them must be uploaded as separate files.

Required information and titles to be included in the cover letter, title page and main text can be viewed in the templates. The templates can be downloaded and used directly. Submission files prepared by authors who do not want to use templates must include this information and titles.

        TEMPLATES: COVER LETTER, TITLE PAGE, MAIN TEXT

SECTIONS THAT SHOULD BE USED ACCORDING TO THE TYPE OF ARTICLE

Research Article

TITLE (English and Turkish), SHORT TITLE (not exceeding 40 characters), ABSTRACT (English and Turkish), Keywords (English and Turkish), INTRODUCTION, MATERIAL AND METHODS, RESULTS, DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES

Abstracts in both languages (English and Turkish) must be fully compatible with each other, and each should be between 200 and 250 words.

ABSTRACT should be structured as "Aim, Material and Methods, Results, Conclusion".

Review (Invited Only)

TITLE (English and Turkish), SHORT TITLE (not exceeding 40 characters), ABSTRACT (English and Turkish), Keywords (English and Turkish), INTRODUCTION, Subtitles Related to the Subject, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES

ABSTRACTS in both languages (English and Turkish) must be fully compatible with each other, and each should be between 150 and 200 words.

ABSTRACT should be unstructured.

Case Report

TITLE (English and Turkish), SHORT TITLE (not exceeding 40 characters), ABSTRACT (English and Turkish), Keywords (English and Turkish), INTRODUCTION, CASE REPORT, DISCUSSION, REFERENCES

ABSTRACTS in both languages (English and Turkish) must be fully compatible with each other, and each should be between 100 and 150 words.

ABSTRACT should be unstructured.

Other

The general writing rules are applied for the preparation of the writings (letter to the editor, editorial comment/discussion, etc.) except for these three basic types of articles. There is no title or abstract section in these writings. The number of references is limited to 5. The dedicated article should be specified by giving the number and date. The name, institution, and address of the author should be included at the end of the writing. The answer to the letter is given by the editor, or authors of the dedicated article, by publishing again in the journal.

WRITING RULES

• Manuscripts should be prepared as Microsoft Word® documents.
• The required margins are 2.5 cm on all sides.
• Page numbers should be placed in the bottom right corner of pages.
• All texts must be typed with double-space as left-aligned using 12-point Times New Roman font.

KEYWORDS

• Number of keywords must be at least 2, words should be separated from each other by a semicolon (;).
• Keywords in English must be given in accordance with Medical Subject Headings (MESH, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html), and keywords in Turkish must be given in accordance with Türkiye Bilim Terimleri (TBT, http://www.bilimterimleri.com).

STATISTICAL METHODS

• All research articles should be assessed in terms of biostatistics and indicated with the appropriate plan, analysis, and report. In these manuscripts, the last subtitle of the MATERIAL AND METHODS section should be “Statistical Analysis”.
• In this section, the statistical methods used in the study should be written by indicating the purpose of use, and package programs and versions used for statistical analysis should be specified.
• All p values should be reported in three decimal digits (p=0.038; p=0.810 etc.).
• Further information to control the convenience of articles in terms of biostatistics, can be obtained from www.icmje.org.

ABBREVIATIONS

• The term should be written in full words with the abbreviation in parenthesis where first mentioned, and the same abbreviation should be used throughout the entire text.
• Abbreviations used internationally should be used in accordance with the Scientific Writing Rules.

TABLES AND FIGURES

• Should be indicated at the end of the relevant sentence in the text as (Table 1) and/or (Figure 1).
• Tables (with headings) and figures (with captions) must be added after references at the end of the text as each is to be on a separate page.
• The table headings should be written at top of the table (Table 1. Table heading), and the figure captions should be written below the figure (Figure 1. Figure caption) as their first letters being upper case.
• If any abbreviation or symbol is used in tables and figures, it should be explained as a footnote below.
• The figures and photographs should be uploaded as separate files in .png, .jpg, etc. format, and at least 300 dpi resolution.
• Captions of figure and photograph should be given on a separate page respectively, after the page including the last table.
• If a figure, picture, table, graphic, etc. which has been published before is used, written permission must be taken and it should be stated in the explanation of the figure, picture, table, or graphic. The legal responsibility in this regard belongs to the authors.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

• If any conflict of interest, financial support, donation, and another editorial (English/Turkish evaluation) and/or technical support, it must be stated in this section before the REFERENCES section.

REFERENCES

• References should be numbered according to the order of use and stated with numbers in parentheses as (1) or (1,2) or (3-5) at the end of the relevant sentence in the text.
• Reference list should be formed according to the reference order used in the text.
• If the number of authors is 6 or less, all authors should be specified, if there are 7 or more, "et al.” should be added after the first 6 authors are specified.
• The conference papers, personal experiences, unpublished papers, theses, and internet addresses should not be used as references.
• DOI is the only acceptable online reference.

Article:

Al-Habian A, Harikumar PE, Stocker CJ, Langlands K, Selway JL. Histochemical and immunohistochemical evaluation of mouse skin histology: comparison of fixation with neutral buffered formalin and alcoholic formalin. J Histotechnol. 2014;37(4):115-24.

Aho M, Irshad B, Ackerman SJ, Lewis M, Leddy R, Pope T, et al. Correlation of sonographic features of invasive ductal mammary carcinoma with age, tumor grade, and hormone-receptor status. J Clin Ultrasound. 2013;41(1):10-7.

Book:

Buckingham L. Molecular diagnostics: fundamentals, methods and clinical applications. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis; 2012.

Book Chapter:

Altobelli N. Airway management. In: Kacmarek R, Stoller JK, Heuer AJ, editors. Egan’s fundamentals of respiratory care. 10th ed. St. Louis: Saunders Mosby; 2013. p.732-86.

SCIENTIFIC POLICY

In terms of scientific publishing standards, manuscripts to be submitted should be prepared in accordance with the criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME, https://www.wame.org/policies), and the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE, https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines).

• The manuscripts submitted must have complied with the research and publication ethics. The authors are responsible for their article.
• The manuscripts submitted are required to be unpublished and are not under review for publication elsewhere.
• The manuscripts must be submitted with the Copyright Transfer Form signed by all authors to begin the evaluation process. For authors' order, the signature order in the Copyright Transfer Form is based on.
• The corresponding author is responsible for the final version of the article on behalf of all authors.

ETHICAL POLICY

• Compliance with The Principles of Helsinki Declaration (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/) is required in all studies including the “human” factor. In this kind of studies, authors must state that they perform the study in compliance with these principles, they have taken approval from the ethics committee of their institution, and the “informed consent” from people participating in the study, in the MATERIAL AND METHODS section.
• If the “animal” factor was used in the study, authors must state that they have protected the animal rights in line with the principles of Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals.pdf) and they have taken approval from the ethics committee of their institution, in the MATERIAL AND METHODS section.
• In case reports, informed consent must be taken from patients.
• The information on the ethics committee approval should be indicated together with the name of the committee, approval date, and number, in the MATERIAL AND METHODS section.
• For all research involving human subjects, it must be stated that informed consent was obtained from all participants in compliance with The Principles of Helsinki Declaration (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/), for participation in the study or use of their tissue (or a parent/legal guardian in the case of children under 18 and patients otherwise considered minors under local legislation). Consent is also required for the procurement of biomaterials for stem cell research and translation, including gamete donors in IVF studies. Studies involving vulnerable groups (i.e. individuals who are at higher risk of mistreatment or harm), with potential for coercion or exploitation (for example, prisoners or unconscious patients) or where consent may not have been fully informed (for example, due to a language barrier), will be considered at the Editor’s discretion under exceptional circumstances. Scientific research involving vulnerable groups can only be carried out if its aims and scope benefit those groups and meet their specific needs, and authors must be able to demonstrate this for their manuscript to be considered for publication.
  
• If there is a direct-indirect commercial relation or an institution giving financial support in the study, authors must state that they have no commercial relationship with the commercial product, medicine, company, etc. used, or if any, what kind of a relationship they have (consultant, other agreements), in the cover letter to the editor.
• The authors are responsible for reporting all personal and financial relationships that may be related to the study. It is necessary to state clearly whether there is any conflict of interest related to the submission and/or evaluation of the manuscript.
• Compliance of the manuscripts with the scientific and ethical rules is the responsibility of the authors.

CLINICAL TRIALS

Duzce Medical Journal requires the prospective registration of clinical trials to a publicly accessible registry. The name of the registry, date, and registration number should be provided at the end of the abstract. Appropriate public registries are listed on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) website (https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html) and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP, https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform).

DATA SHARING POLICY

Authors are required to provide a data sharing statement for manuscripts that report the results of a clinical trial. The data sharing statement should indicate the items according to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) data sharing policy: "data sharing statements must indicate the following: whether individual deidentified participant data (including data dictionaries) will be shared (“undecided” is not an acceptable answer); what data in particular will be shared; whether additional, related documents will be available (e.g., study protocol, statistical analysis plan, etc.); when the data will become available and for how long; by what access criteria data will be shared (including with whom, for what types of analyses, and by what mechanism)". Authors are recommended to check the illustrative examples of data sharing at https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html.

REPORTING GUIDELINES

Incomplete reporting of experimental details, study rationale, methodological design, and research outcomes can greatly compromise the validity, accuracy, and reproducibility of scientific results. Thus, authors need to ensure that their manuscript adheres to certain standards of reporting. Duzce Medical Journal encourages authors to refer to the guidelines when preparing their manuscripts. For further information on the reporting guidelines, and reporting guidelines for main study types, authors are suggested to refer to the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Network website (http://www.equator-network.org/). Where the authors use a checklist, this should be duly acknowledged in the Material and Methods section of the manuscript.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

Duzce Medical Journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public and supporting a greater global exchange of knowledge. Duzce Medical Journal applies the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) license to articles published. When the authors submit their manuscript for publication, they agree to have the CC-BY-NC-ND license applied to their study. Under this Open Access license, the authors agree that anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, browse, and link to the content of their article for non-commercial purposes for free as long as the author and original source are properly cited.

LICENSING POLICY

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

Authors who submit manuscripts to Duzce Medical Journal are required to read and approve the following copyright form while uploading their study to the online system.
- The submitted manuscript is an original study in line with scientific and ethical rules.
- The submitted manuscript has not been published elsewhere and/or submitted to another journal to be published at the same time.
- Duzce Medical Journal has no responsibility for the content, results, and interpretation of the study.
- All authors actively participated in the preparation of the study, reviewed the final version, and took all kinds of responsibilities related to this study.
- All publishing rights have been transferred to the Duzce Medical Journal from the date of submission, and Duzce Medical Journal is authorized for publishing.

The authors are deemed to have accepted the following terms by submitting their manuscript to the journal under the CC-BY-NC-ND license.
- The copyright of the published article belongs to the author.
- The authors authorize Duzce Medical Journal to publish the article and identify it as the original publisher.
- The authors grant the right to freely use the article to any third party as long as the original authors and citation details are identified.
- Nothing in this license impairs or restricts an author's right to preserve the integrity and ownership of their study.
- All commercial rights related to the article belong to the authors.

LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS

For editors and reviewers; to accurately assess the manuscript you need to ensure the English language is clear and of sufficient quality to be understood. Authors whose first language is not English are encouraged to have their manuscript checked by getting help from a native English speaker, and/or using professional language editing (proofreading) services. There are some specialist language editing and proofreading companies that offer language editing services. Duzce Medical Journal neither endorses nor takes responsibility for these services. This is not mandatory but may help to ensure that the content of your manuscript is fully understood by editors and reviewers. Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for submission and does not imply or guarantee that the manuscript will be selected for peer review or accepted for publication. The editors reserve the right to reject without review those that cannot adequately be assessed because of a poor standard of English.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The Duzce Medical Journal requires that each author, reviewer, and editor in any of the processes (submission, peer review, editorial decision, and communication between authors, reviewers, and editors) must disclose to the editor-in-chief any conflict of interest related to family, personal, financial, political or religious issues as well as any competing interest that could unduly influence his or her responsibilities (academic honesty, unbiased conduct and reporting of research, and integrity of decisions or judgments) in the publication process. Whether or not a conflict of interest and financial support exist, they must be declared on the cover letter and title page as well as at the end of the manuscripts. If a reviewer or a section editor has a conflict of interest and/or believes that it is not appropriate to be a reviewer or an editor for a given manuscript, the reviewer or the editor should resign from the assignment. The Editorial Board members of the Duzce Medical Journal, who handle submissions and recommend decisions to the Editor-in-Chief (EIC, Deputy Editor, and Section Editors) may also submit their own manuscripts to the journal as all of them are active researchers and scientists. However, they cannot take place at any stage in the editorial decision of their manuscripts in order to minimize any possible bias. They will be treated like any other author, and if any, final acceptance of such manuscripts can only be made by the positive recommendation of at least two external reviewers, who are not members of the decision-making Editorial Board. Authors should not contact any of the section editors during the review process. All necessary information regarding the process of a manuscript can be obtained from the editorial office. However, the names of the section editor and the reviewers are not given to the author(s). Due to the double-blinded review principles of the Duzce Medical Journal, the names of authors and reviewers are not known to each other.

PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is a serious problem and the most common ethical issue afflicting medical writing. The Duzce Medical Journal does not allow any form of plagiarism. Authors are required to upload the similarity report obtained from plagiarism software such as iThenticate etc. to the system at the submission stage. Depending on the similarity rate, editors' right to reject the manuscript and/or request a correction from authors is reserved. In accordance with journal policy, submitted manuscripts are also screened with plagiarism software (iThenticate, etc.) by the editorial office to detect instances of overlapping and similar text. High similarity scores may lead to the rejection of a manuscript before and even after acceptance. Depending on the type of manuscript and the percentage of similarity score taken from each article, the overall similarity score is generally expected to be less than 20-25%.

PREPRINT

The studies presented in a non-commercial preprint server are allowed to submit. In such a case, authors must provide the preprint server deposition of their manuscript with its DOI during the submission. If the manuscript is accepted and published in the Duzce Medical Journal, it is the responsibility of the authors to update the archived preprint and link it to the published version of the article. The preprint must be removed in the case of acceptance to leave only the final version online.

CHANGE OF AUTHORSHIP

Any request to change the author list after submission, such as a change in the order of the authors or the deletion or addition of authors, is subject to the Editorial Board’s approval. To obtain this approval, the detailed reason for the change of authorship with a new copyright transfer form signed by all authors (including the new and/or removed author) should be presented to the Editorial Board. Please note that this does not guarantee that the change will be approved. The Editorial Board's right to approve or decline the request is reserved.

CORRECTIONS

All the correction requests made to a published article will be with the authorization of the Editorial Board of the Duzce Medical Journal. Editorial Board will decide the magnitude of the corrections. Depending on the magnitude and the content of the correction, the following cases are applicable.
Erratum: An error that affects the integrity of the version of the record, the reputation of the authors, or the reputation of the journal, is termed Erratum. An Erratum is a statement by the authors of the original article that briefly describes any correction(s) resulting from errors or omissions. Any effects on the conclusions of the manuscript should be noted. The corrected article is not removed from the journal, but notice of erratum is given. The Erratum is made available to all readers and is linked to the corrected article.
Addendum: An addendum is a notification of an addition of information to an article. An addendum is published only rarely and when the editorial board decides that the addendum is crucial to the reader’s understanding of a significant part of the published article. The addendum does not contradict the original article, but if the author inadvertently omitted significant information available at the time, this material can be published as an addendum. An addendum may be peer-reviewed, according to journal policy, and are normally subject to oversight by the Editorial Board of the Duzce Medical Journal. The addendum is made available to all readers and is linked to the original article to which they relate.

RETRACTIONS

Retraction of a manuscript will be permitted only for the most compelling and unavoidable reasons. For retraction of a manuscript, authors need to submit a detailed explanation, signed by all authors mentioning the reason for retraction to the Editorial Office. After receiving the retraction request, the Editorial Board of the Duzce Medical Journal will investigate the reason for the retraction. The Editorial Board's right to approve or decline the request is reserved. Authors must not assume that their manuscript has been retracted until they have received appropriate notification to this effect from the editorial office. If the reason finds to be acceptable, the author is allowed to retract the manuscript without paying any retraction penalty. To protect the integrity of the record, the retracted article is not removed from the journal, but notice of retraction is given, also it is made available to all readers, and is linked to the retracted article. In rare and extreme cases involving legal infringement, the Editorial Board of the Duzce Medical Journal may redact or remove an article. Bibliographic information about the article will be retained to ensure the integrity of the scientific record.

APPEALS and COMPLAINTS

Appeal and complaint cases are handled by the Editorial Board of the journal. Appeals should be based on the scientific content of the manuscript. The final decision on the appeal and complaint is made by Editor-in-Chief. An Ombudsperson or the Ethical Editor may be assigned to resolve cases that cannot be resolved internally. Authors should get in contact with the Editor-in-Chief regarding their appeals and complaints via e-mail at duzcetipdergisi@duzce.edu.tr.

No submission, processing or publication charges are required from the authors.