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• The manuscripts submitted are required to be unpublished and are not under review for publication elsewhere.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

Duzce Medical Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 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.


Duzce Medical Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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.