PUBLICATION POLICY

Farabi Medical Journal (Farabi Med J) is the official journal of the Karadeniz Technical University Faculty of Medicine. It is a non-profit (no fees are charged for submission or publication processes, and no royalties are paid to authors for published articles), open-access scientific journal.

The guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are followed in the journal's publication and editorial processes. Manuscripts submitted to the journal first undergo a preliminary evaluation process to determine whether they are prepared in accordance with the journal's writing guidelines. The Editorial Board has the authority to decline to publish manuscripts that do not comply with publication guidelines or to return them to the author for correction.

Submitted manuscripts are published upon the decision of the Editorial Board after being evaluated by at least two reviewers in a double-blind manner. Manuscripts submitted for publication in the journal must not have been previously published elsewhere and must not be simultaneously submitted to any other journal for publication.

Submission by Editors and Board Members and Institutional Quotas

Farabi Medical Journal implements the following policies and quotas in accordance with COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines to ensure impartiality, transparency, and institutional diversity in scientific publishing:

1. Submission by Editors and Editorial Board Members

In cases where researchers serving on the editorial staff of the journal (Editor, Section Editors, Editorial Board Members) submit manuscripts to their own journals, the following procedures are executed to prevent conflicts of interest:

• Quantity Limitation: To maintain editorial balance, a maximum of 1 (one) article by a board member (as an author or co-author) may be published in the journal within a calendar year.

• Evaluation Process (Blind Peer Review): When a member of the editorial board submits a manuscript, the evaluation process of the relevant manuscript is systematically closed to the author's access. The board member who is the author can strictly not be involved in the reviewer assignment and decision stages of their own manuscript.

• Independent Editor Assignment: The processing of these manuscripts is carried out by another editor who has no conflict of interest with the author or by an invited independent "Guest Editor".

• Transparency: When the article is published, it is declared in the article details that the evaluation process was conducted independently of the author's editorial duty.

2. Institutional Diversity and Publication Quota (Anti-Inbreeding Policy)

Farabi Medical Journal observes institutional diversity in the author distribution of published articles, in line with the requirements of national and international indexes (TR Dizin, etc.). The following quota is applied to balance the concentration of publications originating from the publisher institution and to provide a rich author distribution:

• Publisher Institution Quota: It is aimed that researchers working within Karadeniz Technical University, the publisher institution of the journal, do not create a publication concentration within the same volume or year. A maximum of 2 (two) articles including the name of a researcher affiliated with Karadeniz Technical University (regardless of being corresponding author or co-author) may be published within a calendar year. Articles exceeding this number are transferred to the next year or volume, even if they have passed the peer review process.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AUTHORS

Scientific and legal responsibility of the published articles belong to the authors. The author(s) accept that all publication rights of the article belong to Farabi Medical Journal. The 'Copyright Transfer Form' and the 'Conflict of Interest Declaration Form' in which possible conflicts of interest are declared, signed and scanned by all authors (wet signed version of the form can be requested later by mail, Copyright Transfer and Conflict of Interest Declaration Form).

Article similarity report: In accordance with its publication ethics, Farabi Medical Journal checks every article submitted for publication for plagiarism/similarity. Intihal.net similarity report is requested in Farabi Medical Journal. Articles above this rate are returned to the responsible author. When the full text file is uploaded in the 3rd step of the article submission phase, it will be forwarded to intihal.net. Preparation of the report may take time. Therefore, an e-mail will be sent to you when the process is completed. In the last step, you can complete the article submission according to the final report or go back to step 3 and repeat the process. When you upload more than one file and receive a similarity report, all reports will be forwarded to the editor. If necessary, editors can also use a different similarity checking program (iThenticate, Turnitin, etc.) for similarity checking.

Applications with missing documents and/or information at any stage of the evaluation process may be excluded from evaluation.

The information of all authors (including ORCID ID) must be uploaded to the system completely at the time of application.
Ethics committee approval should be obtained for articles that require ethics committee approval, and the information regarding this approval should be specified and documented in the article. The author(s) adhere to accepted international guidelines in this field (1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later updates) and T.C. It should indicate that the relevant provisions of the regulations issued by the Ministry of Health are complied with.
The following criteria for ethics committee approval will be sought/applied for articles sent to the Farabi Medical Journal.
1. All kinds of research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require data collection from participants using questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, focus group work, observation and experimental techniques, research using humans and animals (including material/data) for experimental or other scientific purposes, retrospective studies Ethics Committee approval is required.

2. It should be stated that “Informed Consent Form” was taken in case reports.

3. For the use of scales, questionnaires and photographs belonging to someone else, permission must be obtained from the owners and stated.

4. The works sent through the journal system to be published in the journal are evaluated by the Editorial Board in terms of scientific, ethical and spelling rules. The pre-evaluation period is two (2) weeks. The works whose applications are accepted after the preliminary evaluation are submitted to the opinion of at least two referees who are experts in their fields.

When submitting an article to the Farabi Medical Journal, the authors are deemed to have accepted to give the copyright of their articles to the journal. If the author's work is rejected, the copyright is returned to the authors.

For figures, tables, or other materials from other sources, both print and electronic, authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder. Legal, financial and penal responsibility in this matter belongs to the authors.
The final responsibility for the content of the articles published in the Farabi Medical Journal belongs to the authors. Editors, editorial board and publisher do not accept any responsibility for these articles.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVİEWERS

1. To accept the evaluation of articles that are related to the field and have no conflict of interest.
2. To be unbiased, impartial, objective at all stages of the evaluation and to consider only the content of the study.
3. Completing the article evaluation process on time.
4. Using constructive language when making suggestions that will help improve the quality of the article.
5. To protect the confidentiality of the evaluated article and the information related to the article.

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

1. The editors agree to provide the information needed by the authors, reviewers and readers about the relevant article in a short time.

2. While making a positive or negative decision about the articles submitted to the journal, the editors take into account criteria such as the original value of the articles, their contribution to the field, the validity and reliability of the research method used, the clarity of the expression, as well as the purpose and scope of the journal.

3. Editors apply blind peer-review and article evaluation processes, and support unbiased, impartial and objective behavior at all stages of evaluation.

4. Editors ensure the protection of all kinds of personal data in the evaluated articles.

5. Editors pay attention to the observance of human and animal rights in the articles sent to the journal. Articles that do not have ethics committee approval and, if necessary, permission are not taken into consideration for the study.

6. Editors check or request originality-similarity over the contents of the articles.

The Editorial Board of the journal handles all objections within the framework of the Editorial Ethics Committee (COPE). In such cases, authors should contact the editorial board directly regarding their appeals and complaints. When necessary, an expert can be appointed to resolve issues that cannot be resolved internally. The Editor-in-Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all appeals and complaints.