Medical Records

Medical Records (Med Records) is an international, scientific, open access periodical published in accordance with independent, unbiased, and double-blinded peer-review principles.

Began its publication life in 2019, and all of its issues have been available electronically since 2019.

The official language of the journal are English and published three annually in January, May and September. Manuscripts must be written in English and must meet the requirements of the journal. All manuscripts which will be published in the journal must be in accordance with research and publication ethics. Medical Records (Med Records) aims to publish the quality material, both clinical and experimental on all aspects of Medicine. It includes articles related to research findings, technical evaluations, and reviews. In addition to publishing original papers on all aspects of medicine, the Journal also features Reviews, Clinical Perspectives, and Editorial articles about recent developments in medicine.

Medical Records does not demand any subscription fee, publication fee or similar payment for access to electronic resources.

The journal publishes articles in English language. All articles are evaluated through a double-blind review process by independent and unbiased national and international reviewers Information on preparing and submitting manuscripts for publication and information on article evaluation process are available in Instructions for Authors page both online at https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/medr and in printed issues of the journal.

Full content of all manuscripts published by the Medical Records is available and can be downloaded at https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/medr free of charge.

Indexing and Abstracting: TÜBİTAK/ULAKBİM Tıp Veri Tabanı TR Dizin, Türk Medline, Google Scholar, Akademik Dizin, Index Copernicus, International Scientific, Asos, Academic Resource, DRJI, J-Gate

Basic Publication Rules
The target audience of the journal includes researchers, physicians, and healthcare professionals who are interested in or working in all medical disciplines.

The editorial and publication processes of the journal are shaped in accordance with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), Council of Science Editors (CSE), Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), European Association of Science Editors (EASE), and National Information Standards Organization (NISO). The journal is in conformity with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (doaj.org/bestpractice).

Publication Fee
Medical Records, TUBITAK ULAKBIM, which is an open-access journal infrastructure software system, is using the Open Journal Systems software, DergiPark ULAKBIM Journal Systems, within the scope of the DergiPark Project with the status of Sponsor Institution. With this system, instant open access to the articles is provided to make the articles published in journals freely available online all over the world. There is no need to subscribe to access articles. All articles in the system can be accessed and read without being a journal user. There is no fee for article submission, evaluation and publishing. In addition, copyright fee is not paid to the authors for their articles.

Advertisement Policy
Medical Records, is can publish advertisement images in the journal’s website upon the approval of the Editor in Chief. Potential advertisers should contact the Editorial Office. Advertisers have no effect on the editorial decisions or advertising policies.

Disclaimer
Statements or opinions expressed in the manuscripts published in the journal reflect the views of the author(s) and not the opinions of the editors, editorial board, and/or publisher; the editors, editorial board, and publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such materials.

Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Author(s) and copyright owner(s) grant access to all users for the articles published in the Medical Records as free of charge. Articles may be used provided that they are cited.

Open Access Policy is based on rules of Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Copyright

After the publication decision is made and accepted, the "Copyright Transfer Form" should be attached to the submissions. The form can also be downloaded from the journal's article submission system. The Copyright Transfer Form must be signed by all contributing authors and a scanned version of this wet-signed document must be submitted.

By citing the author and the journal at the same time, without any profit-making motive, and only for educational purposes, the readers can copy the article without the permission of the copyright holder.

Creative Commons

A Creative Commons license is a public copyright license that provides free distribution of copyrighted works or studies. Authors use the CC license to transfer the right to use, share or modify their work to third parties. This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) which permits third parties to share and adapt the content for non-commerical purposes by giving the apropriate credit to the original work.
Open access is an approach that supports interdisciplinary development and encourages collaboration between different disciplines. Therefore, Medical Records contributes to the scientific publishing literature by providing more access to its articles and a more transparent review process.

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS

Context

Medical Records (Med Records) is a peer-reviewed open-access periodical journal based on independent and unbiased double-blinded peer-reviewed principles, published three times a year, in March, July and October. Began its publication life in 2019, and all of its issues have been available electronically since 2019 (The journal will be published in January, May and September from 2021). Publication languages of the journal is English. The articles submitted are required to be unpublished and are not under review for publication elsewhere.

The aim of the Medical Records is to publish original research papers of the highest scientific and clinical value in all medical fields.

In all fields of general medicine, editorial comment/discussion, invited review, original research, case report, letters to the editor, and surgical technique studies in the basic and clinical sciences are evaluated for publishing.

The target audience of the journal includes researchers, physicians, and healthcare professionals who are interested in or working in all medical disciplines.

Manuscripts can only be submitted through the journal’s online manuscript submission and evaluation system, available at https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/medr Manuscripts submitted via any other medium and submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be evaluated.

Medical Records does not demand any subscription fee, publication fee or similar payment for access to electronic resources.

Appeals and complaint

The Editorial Board of the journal handles all appeal and complaint cases within the scope of COPE guidelines. In such cases, authors should get in direct contact with the editorial office regarding their appeals and complaints. When needed, an ombudsperson may be assigned to resolve claims that cannot be resolved internally. The Editor in Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all appeals and complaints.

Disclaimer
Statements or opinions expressed in the manuscripts published in Medical Recordsreflect the views of the author(s) and not the opinions of the editors, the editorial board, or the publisher; the editors, the editorial board, and the publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such materials. The final responsibility regarding the published content rests with the authors.

Manuscript Preparation
The manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with ICMJE-Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (updated in December 2019 - http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). Authors are required to prepare manuscripts in accordance with the CONSORT guidelines for randomized research studies, STROBE guidelines for observational original research studies, STARD guidelines for studies on diagnostic accuracy, PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analysis, ARRIVE guidelines for experimental animal studies, and TREND guidelines for non-randomized public behavior. Please ensure your case report or case series is compliant with the SCARE Guidelines and submit a completed. Please ensure your case series is compliant with the PROCESS Guidelines.

Plagiarism and Ethical Misconduct
Policy of screening for plagiarism: Medical Records is extremely sensitive about plagiarism. All submissions are screened by a similarity detection software (iThenticate by CrossCheck) at any point during the peer-review and/or production process. Even if you are the author of the phrases or sentences, the text should not have an unacceptable similarity with the previously published data. Those with an overall similarity index of greater than 21%, or duplication rate at or higher than 5% with a single source are returned back to authors without further evaluation along with the similarity report.

When you are discussing others' (or your own) previous work, please make sure that you cite the material correctly in every instance.
Authors are strongly recommended to avoid any form plagiarism and ethical misconduct that are exemplified below.

Self- plagiarism (text-recycling): Overlapping sections or sentences with the author’s previous publications without citing them. Even if you are the author of the phrases or sentences, the text should not have unacceptable similarity with the previously published data.
Salami slicing: Using the same data of a research into several different articles. Reporting the same hypotheses, population, and methods of a study is into different papers is not acceptable.
Data Fabrication: It is the addition of data that never occurred during the gathering of data or the experiments. Results and their interpretation must be based on the complete data sets and reported accordingl.
Data Manipulation/Falsification: It means manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images (e.g. micrographs, gels, radiological images), removing outliers or ‘inconvenient’ results, changing data points, etc.

In the event of alleged or suspected research misconduct, e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, the Editorial Board will follow and act according to COPE flowcharts.

General Format
The manuscript should be typed in a Microsoft Word™ file, single-column format, double-spaced with 2.5 cm margins on each side, and 11-point type in Times New Roman font.

All abbreviations in the text must be defined the first time they are used (both in the abstract and the main text), and the abbreviations should be displayed in parentheses after the definition. Abbreviations should be limited to those defined in the AMA Manual of Style, current edition. Authors should avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract and limit their use in the main text.

Title page
A separate title page should be submitted with all submissions and this page should include:

• The full title of the manuscript as well as a short title (running head) of no more than 50 characters,

• Name(s), affiliations, highest academic degree(s), and ORCID IDs of the author(s),
• Grant information and detailed information on the other sources of support,

• Name, address, telephone (including the mobile phone number), and email address of the corresponding author,

• Acknowledgment of the individuals who contributed to the preparation of the manuscript but who do not fulfill the authorship criteria.

ORCID ID
The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) number of each author must be submitted when creating an account for correspondence. To obtain an ORCID number, please visit https://orcid.org/

Writing rules
The submission should be split into separate files in the following order:
a. Title
b. Main Document (English abstract and keywords-Turkish abstract and keywords, main text, references, tables, and figure explanations should be included.)
c. Figures, pictures and graphics files in .jpeg or .gif formats should be uploaded separately.
d. Copyright Transfer Form and Authorship Contribution Form
e. Ethics committee approval forms should be available for research articles.

Declaration of Interest
Medical Records requires and encourages the authors and the individuals involved in the evaluation process of submitted manuscripts to disclose any existing or potential conflicts of interest, including financial, consultant, and institutional, that might lead to potential bias or a conflict of interest. Any financial grants or other support received for a submitted study from individuals or institutions should be disclosed to the Editorial Board. To disclose a potential conflict of interest, the ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form should be filled in and submitted by all contributing authors. The journal’s Editorial Board resolves cases of a potential conflict of interest of the editors, authors, or reviewers within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.

The Editorial Board of the journal handles all appeal and complaint cases within the scope of COPE guidelines. In such cases, authors should get in direct contact with the editorial office regarding their appeals and complaints. When needed, an ombudsperson may be assigned to resolve claims that cannot be resolved internally. The Editor in Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all appeals and complaints.

Authorship
Each author should have participated sufficiently in work to assume public responsibility for the content. Any portion of a manuscript that is critical to its main conclusions must be the responsibility of at least one author. Please check the definition of the role of authors and contributors in the following link: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html.

Abstract
An abstract should be submitted with all submissions except for Letters to the Editor. The abstract of Original Articles should be structured with subheadings (Objective, Materials and Methods, Results, and Conclusion). Please check Table 1 below for word count specifications.

Keywords: Each submission must be accompanied by a minimum of three to a maximum of six keywords for subject indexing at the end of the abstract. The keywords should be listed in full without abbreviations. The keywords should be selected from the National Library of Medicine, Medical Subject Headings database (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html). Please check Table 1 below for word count specifications.

Article Type
Identification of article type is the first step of manuscript submission because article type dictates the guidelines that should be used (see below, Using Guidelines), including formatting and word limits of the manuscript. The main categories of article type are outlined below:

Original Article
This is the most important type of article since it provides new information based on original research. Acceptance of original papers will be based upon the originality and importance of the investigation. The main text of original articles should be structured with Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, and Discussion subheadings. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Original Articles.

Original contributions are manuscripts containing substantial novel research. These articles can include randomized controlled trials, observational (cohort, case-control or cross-sectional) studies, descriptive studies, diagnostic accuracy studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, nonrandomized behavioral and public health intervention trials, experimental animal trials, or any other clinical or experimental studies. All papers but cell studies require ethical approval.

Statistical analysis to support conclusions is usually necessary. Statistical analyses must be conducted in accordance with international statistical reporting standards (Altman DG, Gore SM, Gardner MJ, Pocock SJ. Statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals. Br Med J 1983: 7; 1489-93). Information on statistical analyses should be provided with a separate subheading under the Materials and Methods section and the statistical software that was used during the process must be specified.

Units should be prepared in accordance with the International System of Units (SI).

Clinical Trials
Medical Records adopts the ICMJE’s clinical trial registration policy, which requires that clinical trials must be registered in a publicly accessible registry that is a primary register of the WHO International Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) or in ClinicalTrials.gov.

Instructions for the clinical trials are listed below.
• Clinical trial registry is only required for the prospective research projects that study the relationship between a health-related intervention and an outcome by assigning people.
• To have their manuscript evaluated in the journal, author should register their research to a public registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment.
• Based on most up to date ICMJE recommendations Medical Records accepts public registries that include minimum acceptable 24-item trial registration dataset.
• Authors are required to state a data sharing plan for the clinical trial registration. Please see details under “Data Sharing” section.
• For further details, please check ICMJE Clinical Trial Policy at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html

Data Sharing
Authors are required to provide a data sharing statement for the articles that reports the results of a clinical trial. The data sharing statement should indicate the items below according to the ICMJE data sharing policy:
• Whether individual deidentified participant data will be shared
• What data in particular will be shared
• Whether additional, related documents will be available
• When the data will be available and for how long
• By what access criteria will be shared
Authors are recommended to check the ICMJE data sharing examples at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html
While submitting a clinical trial to Medical Records,

Authors are required to make registration to a publicly accessible registry according to ICMJE recommendations and the instructions above.

The name of the registry and the registration number should be provided in the Title Page during the initial submission.

Data sharing statement should also be stated in the Title Page even the authors do not plan to share it.

Review Articles

Reviews prepared by authors who have extensive knowledge on a particular field and whose scientific background has been translated into a high volume of publications with a high citation potential are welcomed. These authors may even be invited by the journal. Reviews should describe, discuss, and evaluate the current level of knowledge of a topic in clinical practice and should guide future studies. The main text should contain Introduction, Clinical and Research Consequences, and Conclusion sections. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Review Articles.

Case Reports

Brief descriptions of a previously undocumented disease process, a unique unreported manifestation or treatment of a known disease process, or unique unreported complications of treatment regimens. Case reports should include an adequate number of images and figures. Case reports should be accompanied by “Informed Consent” whether the identity of the patients is disclosed or not. The “Informed Consent Form” is available at https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/medr/page/12584 Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Case Report.

Letters to the Editor

This type of manuscript discusses important parts, overlooked aspects, or lacking parts of a previously published article. Articles on subjects within the scope of the journal that might attract the readers’ attention, particularly educative cases, may also be submitted in the form of a “Letter to the Editor.” Readers can also present their comments on the published manuscripts in the form of a “Letter to the Editor.” Abstract, Keywords, and other media should not be included. The text should be unstructured. The manuscript that is being commented on must be properly cited within this manuscript. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Letter to Editor.

References: While citing publications, preference should be given to the latest, most up-to-date publications. If an ahead-of-print publication is cited, the DOI number should be provided. References should be written in compliance with Vancouver style (see. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/). Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references. Journal titles should be abbreviated in accordance with the journal abbreviations in Index Medicus/ MEDLINE/PubMed. When there are four or fewer authors, all authors should be listed. If there are five or more authors, the first three authors should be listed followed by “et al.” In the main text of the manuscript, references should be cited using Arabic numbers in parentheses. The reference styles for different types of publications are presented in the following examples. References should be limited to 10 for letters to the editor, 15 for case reports, 40 for clinical/experimental reports and review articles. Journal abbreviations should conform to the style used in the Cumulated Index Medicus (please see www.icmje.org). Journal articles, books, web pages, conference presentations, newspapers, audio-visual sources like CDs and DVDs, articles pending for publication, theses, and dissertations can be used as references. Please check Table 1 below for word count specifications.
Reference Format for Journal Articles: Authors’ initials, surnames and names, article titles, journal titles, date, volume, number and pagination must be indicated. E.g.:

Reference Format for Journal Articles: Authors’ initials, surnames and names, article titles, journal titles, date, volume, number and pagination must be indicated. E.g.:

For journal articles
Celbis O, Karakoc Y, Ozdemir B, et al. Investigation of lead mobilization from the buckshot residues to the critical organs. Biol Trace Elem Res. 2011;143:688-94.

For book references
DiMaio WJ, DiMaio D. Time of death. In: Forensic Pathology. 2nd edition. CRC Press, London, 2001;21-42.
Madea B, Henssge C. Timing of death. In: Payne-James J, Busuttil A, Smock W, eds, Forensic Medicine: Clinical Pathological Aspects. London: Greenwich Medical Media Ltd. 2003;91-114.

For internet references
Beware: Toy Noise may be too loud for kids. http://hearingaiddocs. wordpress.com/tag/loud-toys access date 22.04.2013

For congress presentations
Brandes U, Wagner D. A Bayesian paradigm for dynamic graph layout. 11th International Symposium on Graph Drawing, 12-15 November 2003. New York, USA, 236-47.

For newspaper references
Susan S. How to prevent breast cancer. Australian 23 October 2003.

For CD-ROM references
The Oxford English Dictionary [CD-ROM]. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 1992.

For accepted articles
Kaya A, Aktas EO. Perception differences between in violence against child. Med-Science. Published Online: Nov 19, 2013.

For thesis
Karakoc Y. Biological effect of direct electrical current in essential (idiopathic) hyperhidrosis. Ph.D. thesis, Istanbul University, Istanbul, 1996.

In case of use of a previously published table, figure or illustration, reference of the material must be cited in reference list.

Table 1. Limitations for each manuscript type

Tables
Tables should be included in the main document, presented after the reference list, and they should be numbered consecutively in the order they are referred to within the main text. A descriptive title must be placed above the tables. Abbreviations used in the tables should be defined below the tables by footnotes (even if they are defined within the main text). Tables should be created using the “insert table” command of the word processing software and they should be arranged clearly to provide easy reading. Data presented in the tables should not be a repetition of the data presented within the main text but should be supporting the main text.

Figures and Figure Legends
Figures, graphics, and photographs should be submitted as separate files (in TIFF or JPEG format) through the submission system. The files should not be embedded in a Word document or the main document. When there are figure subunits, the subunits should not be merged to form a single image. Each subunit should be submitted separately through the submission system. Images should not be labeled (a, b, c, etc.) to indicate figure subunits. Thick and thin arrows, arrowheads, stars, asterisks, and similar marks can be used on the images to support figure legends. Like the rest of the submission, the figures too should be blind. Any information within the images that may indicate an individual or institution should be blinded. The minimum resolution of each submitted figure should be 300 DPI. To prevent delays in the evaluation process, all submitted figures should be clear in resolution and large in size (minimum dimensions: 100 × 100 mm). Figure legends should be listed at the end of the main document.

All acronyms and abbreviations used in the manuscript should be defined at first use, both in the abstract and in the main text. The abbreviation should be provided in parentheses following the definition.

When a drug, product, hardware, or software program is mentioned within the main text, product information, including the name of the product, the producer of the product, and city and the country of the company (including the state if in USA), should be provided in parentheses in the following format: “Discovery St PET/CT scanner (General Electric, Milwaukee, WI, USA)”

All references, tables, and figures should be referred to within the main text, and they should be numbered consecutively in the order they are referred to within the main text.

Limitations, drawbacks, and the shortcomings of original articles should be mentioned in the Discussion section before the conclusion paragraph.

REVISIONS
When submitting a revised version of a paper, the author must submit a detailed “Response to the reviewers” that states point by point how each issue raised by the reviewers has been covered and where it can be found (each reviewer’s comment, followed by the author’s reply and line numbers where the changes have been made) as well as an annotated copy of the main document. Revised manuscripts must be submitted within 30 days from the date of the decision letter. If the revised version of the manuscript is not submitted within the allocated time, the revision option may be canceled. If the submitting author(s) believe that additional time is required, they should request this extension before the initial 30-day period is over.

Accepted manuscripts are copy-edited for grammar, punctuation, and format. Once the publication process of a manuscript is completed, it is published online on the journal’s webpage as an ahead-of-print publication before it is included in its scheduled issue. A PDF proof of the accepted manuscript is sent to the corresponding author and their publication approval is requested within 2 days of their receipt of the proof.

Corrections, Retractions & Expressions of Concern
To provide a better service to the researchers in the academic community, the International Medical Records believes that clarity in the publishing record is a must for information distribution. Recognizing a published article as a finalized “Version of Record” indicates that it is accurate, complete, and citable. The Medical Records defines this Version of Record as the initial article publication for open access journals.
It is assumed that manuscripts report on the work based on honest observations. However, occasionally information becomes available which may contradict this. In such cases, the Medical Records applies Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern.

Corrections

Errors in published papers may be identified that requires publication of a correction in the form of a corrigendum or erratum. Since articles can be read and cited as soon as they are published, any changes thereafter could potentially impact those who read and cited the earlier version. The Medical Records provides authors an opportunity to review the article proofs prior to publication with the purpose of ensuring the accuracy of the content. Publishing an erratum or corrigendum increases the likelihood readers will find out about the change and also explains the specifics of the change.

Corrigenda and Errata will appear on a numbered page and contain the citation of the original article. If these corrections are insufficient to address an error, the Editor-in-Chief will handle them on a case-by-case basis. Inadequacies arising from the normal course of new scientific research are not within the scope of this and do not require any correction or withdrawal.

Expressions of Concern & Retractions: Where substantial doubt arises as to the honesty or integrity of a submitted or published article, it is the Editor-in-Chief's responsibility to ensure that the matter is adequately addressed, usually by the authors' sponsoring institution. In general, the Editor-in-Chief is not responsible for conducting the investigation or making a definite decision. The Editor-in-Chief should be promptly informed of the decision of the sponsoring institution and a retraction printed should it be determined that a fraudulent paper was published. Alternatively, the Editor-in-Chief may choose to publish an expression of concern over the aspects of the conduct or integrity of the work.

Retractions will appear on a numbered page and contain the citation of the original article.

Changes to authorship
Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.
Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. While the Editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the Editor will result in a corrigendum.

Editor in Chief

Assoc. Prof. Zülal Öner
Address: İzmir Bakırçay University, Department of Anatomy, İzmir, Turkey
E-mail: medrecsjournal@gmail.com

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Author(s) and copyright owner(s) grant access to all users for the articles published in the Medical Records as free of charge. Articles may be used provided that they are cited.

Open Access Policy is based on rules of Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Fee - Charges
Medical Records, TUBITAK ULAKBIM, which is an open-access journal infrastructure software system, is using the Open Journal Systems software, DergiPark ULAKBIM Journal Systems, within the scope of the DergiPark Project with the status of Sponsor Institution. With this system, instant open access to the articles is provided to make the articles published in journals freely available online all over the world. There is no need to subscribe to access articles. All articles in the system can be accessed and read without being a journal user. There is no fee for article submission, evaluation and publishing. In addition, copyright fee is not paid to the authors for their articles.

Copyright

After the publication decision is made and accepted, the "Copyright Transfer Form" should be attached to the submissions. The form can also be downloaded from the journal's article submission system. The Copyright Transfer Form must be signed by all contributing authors and a scanned version of this wet-signed document must be submitted.

By citing the author and the journal at the same time, without any profit-making motive, and only for educational purposes, the readers can copy the article without the permission of the copyright holder.

Creative Commons License

A Creative Commons license is a public copyright license that provides free distribution of copyrighted works or studies. Authors use the CC license to transfer the right to use, share or modify their work to third parties. This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) which permits third parties to share and adapt the content for non-commerical purposes by giving the apropriate credit to the original work.
Open access is an approach that supports interdisciplinary development and encourages collaboration between different disciplines. Therefore, Medical Records contributes to the scientific publishing literature by providing more access to its articles and a more transparent review process.

Advertisement Policy

Potential advertisers should contact the Editorial Office. Advertisement images are published only upon the Editor-in-Chief’s approval.

Material Disclaimer
Statements or opinions stated in articles published in the journal do not reflect the views of the editors, editorial board and/or publisher; The editors, editorial board and publisher do not accept any responsibility or liability for such materials. All opinions published in the journal belong to the authors.

Ethical Procedures

An approval of research protocols by the Ethics Committee in accordance with international agreements (World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects,” amended in October 2013, www.wma.net) is required for experimental, clinical, and drug studies and for some case reports. If required, ethics committee reports or an equivalent official document will be requested from the authors. For manuscripts concerning experimental research on humans, a statement should be included that shows that written informed consent of patients and volunteers was obtained following a detailed explanation of the procedures that they may undergo. For studies carried out on animals, the measures taken to prevent the pain and suffering of the animals should be stated clearly. Information on patient consent, the name of the ethics committee, and the ethics committee approval number should also be stated in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript. It is the authors’ responsibility to protect the patients’ anonymity carefully.

For photographs that may reveal the identity of the patients, signed releases of the patient or their legal representative should be enclosed, and the publication approval must be provided in the Materials and Methods section.

Peer Review Process
The peer review process is double-blind, i.e., both authors and referees are kept anonymous. Pre-evaluation process of each submission is carried out by the Editorial Board. Manuscripts may be rejected without peer review by the editorin-chief if they do not comply with the instructions to authors or if they are beyond the scope of the journal. Any manuscript that does not conform to the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, as reported at http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf, will also be rejected. Manuscripts are scanned for plagiarism or duplication. In case of an ethical issue on plagiarism or duplication, the Editorial Board will act in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The manuscripts which pass this stage are assigned to at least two double-blind peer-reviewers with a statistics reviewer. Reviewers are selected among independent experts who has published publications in the international literature on the submission subject and received considerable amount of citations. Research articles, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses are also reviewed by a biostatistician. By submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors accept that editor may implement changes on their manuscripts including misleading statements and mistypings, as long as the main idea of the manuscript is not interfered.

Peer Review Policy
As a peer-reviewed journal that is independent, impartial and in compliance with the principles of double-blinded peer review, after checking the compliance of the submitted manuscript with the writing rules and plagiarism control, all articles are reviewed by the editor-in-chief, section editor, at least two reviewers, and statistic editor. All evaluation process except Editor-in-Chief is done double-blinded. After all these processes are completed, the Editor-in-Chief decides whether to publish or reject the article. In the final stage, the plagiarism review is repeated once more.
• Initial Evaluation Process
The Editor–in-Chief evaluates the article in accordance with the purpose and scope of the journal, its suitability to the writing rules, and the adequacy of English language. First plagiarism control is done in this stage. While the articles that are deemed suitable according to the results of the plagiarism report are included in the preliminary evaluation process, the articles that are not approved are returned to the corresponding author.
• Pre-Assessment Process
During the pre-assessment process, the manuscripts that received the favorable opinions of the editor-in-chief, and passed the plagiarism check are referred to the section editor. The manuscript is reviewed by section editor in terms of scientific suitability to the journal, and sections of the manuscript (abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, conclusion), As a result of this, the section editor is started reviewer evaluation process and send at least 2 reviewers or send back to the Editor-in-Chief with comments.
• Reviewer evaluation process
According to the contents of the manuscripts, at least two reviewers whose studies have been published relevant to the field of medicine in question in international indices within the last five years is determined by the Section Editor or Editor-in-Chief.
• Reports of the Reviewers
The reviewers evaluate the manuscript in terms of its scientific suitability, purpose, method, results, and discussion. Proposals for corrections requested by the reviewers are communicated to the corresponding author, and the authors are asked to revise their work. The authors should submit their revised manuscript within 15 days. The revised manuscript is submitted by the corresponding authors via the online submission system. Then, the re-submitted manuscript is sent to the reviewers for re-evaluation and the Editor-in-Chief is notified. If one of the two reviewers expresses a negative opinion, then the manuscript is sent to the third reviewer for evaluation.
• Statistical Review
The manuscript approved by the reviewers is evaluated by the section editor and then sent to the Editor-in-Chief with comments. If the Editor-in-Chief has a positive opinion for the manuscript after these evaluations, the manuscript is sent to the statistic editor for statistical evaluation. After the statistic editor evaluation, if need, the manuscript is sent back to the corresponding author with the comments and asked for the revision. After the re-submission of the revised manuscript, the statistic editor re-evaluates it and sends it back to the Editor-in-Chief with the comments. Finally, the Editor-in-Chief decides to accept or reject the manuscript.
• Publication Process
Accepted Clinical studies or experimental researches are generally published in the first issue following their acceptance for publication. Case presentations may be published three to nine months later dependent on the publication density of incoming manuscripts. Accepted manuscripts are copy-edited for grammar, punctuation, and format. A PDF proof of the accepted manuscript is sent to the corresponding author and their publication approval is requested within 3 days of their receipt of the proof.

Plagiarism and Ethical Misconduct
Policy of screening for plagiarism: Medical Records is extremely sensitive about plagiarism. All submissions are screened by a similarity detection software (iThenticate by CrossCheck) at any point during the peer-review and/or production process. Even if you are the author of the phrases or sentences, the text should not have an unacceptable similarity with the previously published data. Those with an overall similarity index of greater than 21%, or duplication rate at or higher than 5% with a single source are returned back to authors without further evaluation along with the similarity report.
When you are discussing others' (or your own) previous work, please make sure that you cite the material correctly in every instance.
Authors are strongly recommended to avoid any form plagiarism and ethical misconduct that are exemplified below.
Self- plagiarism (text-recycling): Overlapping sections or sentences with the author’s previous publications without citing them. Even if you are the author of the phrases or sentences, the text should not have unacceptable similarity with the previously published data.
Salami slicing: Using the same data of a research into several different articles. Reporting the same hypotheses, population, and methods of a study is into different papers is not acceptable.
Data Fabrication: It is the addition of data that never occurred during the gathering of data or the experiments. Results and their interpretation must be based on the complete data sets and reported accordingl.
Data Manipulation/Falsification: It means manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images (e.g. micrographs, gels, radiological images), removing outliers or ‘inconvenient’ results, changing data points, etc.

In the event of alleged or suspected research misconduct, e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, the Editorial Board will follow and act according to COPE flowcharts.

Preprint
Medical Records does not consider preprint publications as prior publication. In other words, authors are allowed to present and discuss their findings on a non-commercial preprint server before submission to a journal.
Authors must provide the journal with the pre-print server deposition of their article accompanying its DOI during initial submission.
If the article is published in the Medical Records, it is the responsibility of the authors to update the archived preprint and link it to the published version of the article.

Chief Editors
Assoc. Prof. Zülal Öner
Address: İzmir Bakırçay University, Department of Anatomy, İzmir, Turkey

Assoc. Prof. Deniz Şenol
Address: Düzce University, Department of Anatomy, Düzce, Turkey

E-mail: medrecsjournal@gmail.com

Medical Records, TUBITAK ULAKBIM, which is an open-access journal infrastructure software system, is using the Open Journal Systems software, DergiPark ULAKBIM Journal Systems, within the scope of the DergiPark Project with the status of Sponsor Institution. With this system, instant open access to the articles is provided to make the articles published in journals freely available online all over the world. There is no need to subscribe to access articles. All articles in the system can be accessed and read without being a journal user. There is no fee for article submission, evaluation and publishing. In addition, copyright fee is not paid to the authors for their articles.