Publication Charges & Advertising

No submission, processing, page, colored figures or publication charges are received from authors or elsewhere. All articles are freely available as early online and on the day of publication on the journal’s DergiPark website. KOU Sag Bil Derg articles are Open Access and fully compliant with funder OA mandates; they are free to read without a subscription.

KOU Sag Bil Derg has an evaluation period of 8-12 weeks with double-blind peer reviewers and quick early publication period with full-text proof with DOI. 

Sponsorship and Advertising

Kocaeli University Journal of Health Sciences belongs to Kocaeli University Rectorate. As part of its publication policies, Education and Science does not accept sponsorship or advertisements. However, the journal can make announcements on its web page about non-profit scientific and educational events.

A. Double-Blinded Peer-Review Method

Journal of Health Sciences of Kocaeli University is a double-blind peer review, independent, objective and open access science journal published triannually on January, May and September by Institute of Health Sciences of Kocaeli University.

Blind Review is the most common method used in scientific publications to achieve high quality of publication, in other words, to perform an objective evaluation process. The most important strategy followed to provide the blind-reviewer method is the strategy called double-blind peer review. According to the double-blind strategy, authors submitting papers to the journal do not access the information which reviewers evaluate their manuscripts. Likewise, the reviewers of an article cannot know who is author(s). In other words, the evaluation process of the article is completed by keeping the authors and reviewers' identities secret.

At least three peer review reports are sent via internet without names. Reviewers' names are withheld by the journal to protect the integrity of the double-blind peer review process. Upon request, a written document attesting the contribution to the journal as reviewer can be given to the reviewers. The authors cannot directly contact with the reviewers, the evaluation forms and the reviewers’ reports are sent to the corresponding author(s) by the editor.

B. Decision Process 

All submitting manuscripts for publication are sent to at least three reviewers. After the evaluation process resulted in positive response from at least two reviewers approval, the editor decides whether the manuscript will be accepted or not considering the accuracy and the importance of the work, reviewer’s reports and legal regulations such as copyright infringement and plagiarism. If one of the reviewer is negative, the manuscript is sent to a third reviewer and it is decided to publish the article according to the response of third reviewer. As the editor decides about the manuscript, he or she may require the suggestions of the other members of editorial board or reviewers.

C. Instancy

A reviewer invited to the journal for the evaluation of a manuscript should inform the editor about the acceptance in 5 days. The reviewer should complete the evaluation in 15 days and authors should complete revisions reported to the corresponding author(s) in 15 days. The requested reading time for the last version of the manuscript by the corresponding author is only 3 days.

Additional extra days are added to normal time period as suprema time limit ,

30 days after minor revision, 60 days after major revision, 90 days after needed to rewrite revision required changes must be done by authors.

D. Confidentiality (Privacy Statement)

Personal information such as names and electronic mail addresses entered to the system of Journal of Health Sciences of Kocaeli University are only used for the scientific purposes of the journal. Other than these purposes, this information will not be used and will not be shared with the third parties. 

The manuscripts sent to reviewers for assessment are kept as confidential documents. The manuscripts are not shown to other people and the contents of them should not be discussed. If it is necessary, reviewers may need suggestions from their colleagues after editorial permission. The editor may give that permission only in the presence of exceptional condition. The confidentiality rules are also valid for the reviewers not accepting the assessment of the manuscript.

E. Objectivity principles

In the evaluation process, no personal criticism of the authors should be done. The evaluations should contribute to the development of works and be objective.

F. Citation to reference

The reviewers should inform the authors if there are any citations that are not referred in the manuscript. The reviewers should pay particular attention to the citations that do not refer to the subject or to the citations that coincide with similar works. The reviewers should inform the editors if any publications that have similarity to any previously published work or information are recognized.

G. Information and Conflict of Interest

The reviewers should not agree to make any evaluation if they have any collaborative relation with any author, company or institution in which they are tasked to evaluate their work and inform the editor about this situation. 

The reviewers may not use the unpublished works or sections of the works submitted for evaluation in their own work without the written consent of the author(s). The information and ideas obtained during the assessment should be kept secret by the reviewers and should not be used for their own interests. These rules include those who refuse the manuscript assessment.

H. Journal Plagiarism Policy  

Plagiarism is the use of others' published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source. Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of an author using portions of their previous writings on the same topic in another of their publications, without specifically citing it formally in quote (https://wame.org/recommendations-on-publication-ethics-policies-for-medical-journals).

Kocaeli Üniversitesi Sağlık Bilimleri Dergisi (Journal of Health Sciences of Kocaeli University) (KOU Sag Bil Derg) does not start manuscript evaluation process if plagiarism/self-plagiarism detected during editorial assessment since 2018. During manuscript submission process, the authors must upload the similarity reports of the manuscript by using an appropriate (iThenticate, Turnitin etc.) plagiarism software. Universities in Turkey are subscribers of a 'plagiarism software', please contact your librarian. Non-Turkish and non-university submissions please contact for information. 

Articles that have a similarity rate of more than 25% are considered plagiarized and are rejected.

From the January 2019 issue, according to the results of similarity report, one of the following three decisions is given about the article:

• It is sent to the editor for evaluation.

• It is sent back to the author for a correction.

• The rejection process is carried out without being taken to the evaluation stage (Articles that have a similarity rate of more than 25% are considered plagiarized and are rejected).

I. Article Withdrawal

In accordance with the publication policies of Kocaeli University Health Sciences Journal, the duties and responsibilities of the author (s) and editorial board during the withdrawal of a study or article are stated below (Articles may be withdrawn without any justification by the responsible author).

Authors

In the event that the author (s) discovers a false or inaccurate error in the published article, early appearance article or evaluation phase study, there is an obligation to cooperate with the journal editor for withdrawal. The author (s) who wishes to request the withdrawal of the study in the evaluation phase shall fill out the Retraction Form containing the reasons for withdrawal and sign all the authors and must upload to the editorial page at https://dergipark.org.tr/journal/1601/submission/start to be forwarded to the editorial board. The Publication Board examines the request for withdrawal and responds to the author (s) within 15 days. Unless the withdrawal request has been approved by the publication board, the author(s) cannot submit their work, which was transferred to Kocaeli University Journal of Health Sciences at the time of application, for evaluation to another journal.

Editors

Kocaeli University Journal of Health Sciences publication board has the obligation to initiate an investigation of the work in case of a suspected copyright or plagiarism in a published article, early appearance article or evaluation phase study. As a result of the investigation, if the work in the evaluation phase is determined that the copyright infringement and / or plagiarism has been done, the publication board withdraws the study from the evaluation and explains the identified cases in detail and returns them to the authors. In case of a copyright infringement and / or plagiarism in a published or early appearance article, the publishing board shall perform the following withdrawal and notification procedures within 15 days.

Article in which ethical violation is determined:

I. “Retracted“ is added to the title of the article.

II. The reasons for the withdrawal of the study, the sources of detailed evidence and the notifications of the institutions and organizations to which the author (s) is affiliated, if any, are published instead of the Abstract and Full Text contents of the article.

III. The withdrawal notice is announced on the site of the journal.

IV. "Retracted: Study Title" is added to the table of contents of the first issue to be published as of the retraction date of the article and the reasons for withdrawal and original quotations providing reference are shared with the public and researchers on the first page of the issue.

V. The above withdrawal notifications are forwarded to the organization (s) to which the author (s) are affiliated.

VI. The withdrawal notices listed above are forwarded to the institutions and organizations in which the journal is indexed and to the National Library Presidency to be recorded in index systems and catalogs.

Furthermore, the editorial board can make suggestions to publishers or editorial boards through whom the author(s) had their studies published before that the published studies of the author(s) who has plagiarized should be reviewed for validity and reliability or be retracted.

Note: Upwards June 2019, in accordance with the recommendations of the Scopus index, it has been decided to assingn at least 3 double-blind peer-reviewers for the articles submitted to the journal.

J. Manuscript Evaluation Processes

G. Editorial Processes