PUBLICATION POLICY
Hitit Medical Journal seeks the highest ethical and scientific standards as well as the absence of commercial concerns in scientific articles submitted to the journal. Submitted articles must not have been previously published elsewhere or sent for publication. If the article was previously published; quotations, tables, pictures, etc. If available, the article author must obtain written permission from the copyright holder and authors and state this in the article. Studies previously presented at scientific meetings are accepted, provided that they are stated in the article. After the scientific article is processed, the names and order of the authors specified in the copyright notice text are taken as basis. After this stage, the name of the author cannot be added to the article at any stage, except for the authors who have signed the Copyright notice text, and the order of the authors cannot be changed.

The thoughts and suggestions in the article are entirely the responsibility of the authors. Article authors are not paid any fees for their articles. The authors fill in the "Copyright notice text" which can be accessed from the internet address https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/hititmedj/page/15080 and available at https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/hititmedj They should send it together with the article from the section on the "Submit Article" link.

SCIENTIFIC RESPONSIBILITY
All authors in the article must have direct academic and scientific contributions. Authors should accept the final version of the article. Compliance of the articles with scientific rules is the responsibility of the authors.

BIOSTATISTICAL RESPONSIBILITY
All required research articles should be biostatistically analyzed and evaluated by a biostatistician before submission to the journal. In articles, p values should be given clearly (such as p= 0.025; p= 0.524). Additional information can be obtained from www.icmje.org for checking the biostatistical conformity of the articles. Compliance of the articles with biostatistical rules is the responsibility of the authors. Each article using statistics will be checked by the 'Statistics Editor' of the journal and inappropriate statistics will be requested to be changed accordingly.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The publication languages of the journal are Turkish and English. Turkish articles should be based on the Turkish dictionary of the Turkish Language Association or www.tdk.gov.tr. English articles and English abstracts should be evaluated by a language expert before being submitted to the journal. The compliance of the articles with the spelling and grammar rules is the responsibility of the authors. Each article will be checked by the journal's 'Foreign Language Editor' and it will be requested that unsuitable articles be corrected.

EVALUATION PERIOD AND PUBLICATION PROCESS
All files sent to the journal are first pre-checked for clarity, grammar and compliance with spelling rules. Files that do not comply with the journal's writing rules are sent back to the authors for correction together with other pre-control results before being included in the referee evaluation process. However, the referee evaluation process is started for the files that comply with the journal writing rules.
Afterwards, the editors or field editors in the relevant branch review the article and send it to at least 2 referees working in separate institutions. If the article is not evaluated by the referee within a suitable time, another referee is appointed. If there is a difference of opinion about the article by these 2 referees or if the article is a comprehensive and more opinionated research, a third referee is appointed. If the article is accepted after the referee returns, it is checked again by the editor or the field editor, and if there are no missing articles, the article is accepted and this is reported to the author. The articles for which revision is requested are sent back to the author by the editor or the field editor together with the referee's criticisms. After the author completes the revision, the article is sent back to the referees who made the first evaluation. If there are only formal and minor changes in the first evaluation and these are corrected, the article can be accepted by the relevant editor or field editor without being sent to the referee for the second time.
Accepted articles are reviewed by 'end reader technical editors' and corrections are made. If significant deficiencies are detected, they are sent back to the author for correction and finally converted to pre-typesetting format. It is then sent to the string. The typesetting of the generally accepted articles is completed and the first issue is published. Depending on the density of articles coming to the journal and other technical reasons, this period may extend until the publication of the next issues.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
A- Ethical rules for authors
The compliance of the articles with the ethical rules is the responsibility of the authors. If the required documents are not submitted in full, the article has the right to be rejected by the journal without being evaluated.
In the evaluation of the articles, the recommendations of the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) and the international standards of the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) for authors are taken into account.
During the evaluation process of new articles in which any of the editorial board members are the author, the relevant board member is removed from the board membership by the chief editor and reassigned to board membership only after the process is over. In this way, it is ensured that the relevant board member does not have any influence on the process.

Research Ethics and Legal/Special Permit Documents
The journal adopts and accepts the principles of the 'Helsinki Declaration Principles' (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/ index.html) and COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) in all studies involving the "Human" element. it does. In all scientific research articles, the authors must state in the materials and methods section of the article that they have done the study in accordance with these principles, that they have received the 'Study is Ethically Appropriate' certificate from the ethics committee of their institution and "informed consent" from the people who participated in the study. It should be clearly presented on what date and with which decision or issue number it was taken. The compliance of the articles with the ethical rules is the responsibility of the authors. If the documents requested by the journal are not submitted in full, the article will be rejected without being evaluated.
In case reports, it is necessary to include information that the informed consent/consent form was signed in the article.
If the item "Animal" is used in the study, the authors state that they protect animal rights in their studies in line with the principles of "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" (www.nap. edu/catalog/5140.html) in the material and methods section of the article, and are approved by the ethics committees of their institutions. must indicate that they have been approved.

Conflict of interest
If there is a commercial link in the article or an institution that provides financial support for the study, the authors; must notify the editor on the submission page that he has no commercial relationship with the commercial product, drug, device or company used and what kind of relationship he has, if any (consultant, other agreements). Authors should clearly state whether there is a conflict of interest in their submitted articles.

Matters about plagiarism
All submitted articles are screened for plagiarism. In cases where plagiarism is detected, the editors reserve the right to reject the article and/or request corrections from the authors, depending on the similarity ratio.

B- Ethical rules for reviewers
Reviewers should be aware that the evaluation process is confidential and should not be shared with third parties. It should submit an objective, impartial, scientific, comprehensible and constructive evaluation report about the study within the specified time. Referee reports will also include an assessment of the scientific nature of the article (the topic it covers, the method used, or the appropriate use of the relevant literature). This evaluation must be made about the content, whether positive or negative. While making these evaluations, the 'Online referee evaluation form' must be used. When it is understood that the work is plagiarized or has been previously published elsewhere, the referees should notify the editor.

C- Ethical rules for field editors
Journal field editors send the article for evaluation to at least 2 referees who are impartial, independent, unbiased and working in different institutions. Authors may object to the referee's report within a reasonable framework and with convincing data. Objections are reviewed by the journal management and, if deemed appropriate, a different referee (or referees) can be consulted on the subject. Field editors meticulously follow the corrections given by the referees. Accordingly, the editors may decide to publish or not publish an article. Editors and assistant editors, articles that do not comply with the publication principles; has the authority to send it back to the author for correction, to edit the format of the article or to reject the article without sending it to the referees. Article format Articles submitted to Biomedical Journals must comply with the writing and editing rules of “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication” (http://www.icmje.org/). The field editor should evaluate the following situations for each article.

Plagiarism: Republishing the content of another author's publication, in whole or in part, as one's own publication, without giving a reference.
Fabrication: Publish data and findings/results that are not available.
Duplication/Duplication: Duplicating data from any other publication, changing the publication language and publishing articles that are not cited.
Salamization/Deception: Creating multiple publications by dividing the results of an unnatural study.