• Publication Principles

Manuscripts submitted to Mersin University Journal of Health Sciences must not have been previously published anywhere or submitted to another journal for publication. If the manuscript includes quotations, tables, pictures, drawings, etc. that have previously been published elsewhere in print or electronic format, the author must obtain written permission from the persons or institutions holding the publication rights and must state this situation in the manuscript.

• Scientific Responsibility

Each individual listed as an author must meet the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE - http://www.icmje.org/). ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following four criteria:

1.  Design of the study, acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Preparation of the manuscript to be submitted to the journal or making a contribution that scientifically affects and improves the content of this manuscript;
3. Final approval of the version to be published;
4. Being informed about all parts of the study and taking responsibility for all parts of the study.

•   Ethical Responsibility

In all studies involving humans or animals, the ethics committee decision must be stated in the methods section of the manuscript. At the submission stage, the “Ethics Committee Approval” must be uploaded to the system. The name of the ethics committee/institution from which permission was obtained must be anonymized in the text in order not to compromise the blind peer review process. A study without ethics committee approval is rejected without being taken into the evaluation process. In all studies conducted on humans, researchers must state in the “Materials and Methods” section that they conducted their studies in accordance with the Principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html), and that they obtained “informed voluntary consent” from the participants. If “animals” were used in the study, it must be stated in the “Materials and Methods” section of the article that animal rights were protected in accordance with the principles of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/5140.html). In case reports, “informed voluntary consent” must be obtained from patients and stated in the manuscript. At the submission stage, the “informed voluntary consent” form must be uploaded to the system. If there is a direct or indirect commercial connection in the article or an institution providing financial support for the study, the authors must state on the presentation page to the editor whether they have no commercial relationship with the commercial product, drug, company, etc. used, or, if they do, what kind of relationship they have, such as consultancy or other agreements.

• Submission of Manuscripts to the Journal by Members of the Editorial Board

In accordance with the publication policy of Mersin University Journal of Health Sciences, the journal guarantees blind peer review for authors and reviewers. During the peer-review process of manuscripts, the Editor-in-Chief can view all manuscripts, while field editors can view only the evaluation process of the manuscripts assigned to them. If the Editor-in-Chief receives a manuscript from a person who is a member of the journal’s editorial board, the guarantee of blind peer review is fulfilled when another field editor is assigned for the evaluation process of that manuscript. Therefore, members of the editorial board other than the Editor-in-Chief may submit manuscripts to the journal.

•  Accepted Manuscript Types

1. Research Article: The word count, including the abstract and excluding references, must not exceed 4000 words. In addition, the total number of tables, figures, photographs, and images in the manuscript must not exceed 5. It is recommended that the number of references cited in the manuscript should not exceed 30.
2. Review: The word count, including the abstract, must not exceed 5000 words. It is recommended that the number of references cited in the manuscript should not exceed 50. A review should include new and current information. The number of authors should not exceed three. At least one of the authors must have at least one research article on the subject published in journals indexed in SCI/SCI-Expanded. In order for review studies to be evaluated, the article published in the above-mentioned SCI/SCI-Expanded indexed journals must be uploaded to the system as an “additional file.”
3. Case Report: he word count must not exceed 1000 words. It is also recommended that the number of references should no.
4. Letter to the Editor: These are manuscripts that include readers’ different opinions, experiences, and questions about articles published in the journal within the last year. They should not include an abstract. The word count must not exceed 500 words. It is also recommended that the number of references should not exceed 5.

• Writing Rules

The writing rules of Mersin University Journal of Health Sciences can be reviewed from the relevant tab. Studies that are not prepared in accordance with the writing rules are not taken into evaluation and are returned to the author(s).

• Submission Evaluation Process

Manuscripts submitted to Mersin University Journal of Health Sciences for evaluation are reviewed within two (2) weeks at the preliminary control stage. At this stage, the editor evaluates the manuscript in terms of compliance with the writing rules, scientific originality, currency, and contribution to the literature. Manuscripts found unsuitable during preliminary control are rejected. As a result of the preliminary control, a field editor is assigned for manuscripts planned to be sent for peer review. Field editors conduct a double-blind peer review process with at least two reviewers. After the peer-review process, a decision is made to accept or reject the manuscript.    

• Material Disclaimer

All opinions and reports in the manuscripts published in Mersin University Journal of Health Sciences belong to the author(s) and do not reflect the views of the Editor or the Editorial Board. The Editor and the Editorial Board do not accept any responsibility for these manuscripts. The responsibility for the software packages specified in the methods section of the manuscripts and for obtaining permission for the scales used belongs to the authors; the Editor and the Editorial Board do not accept responsibility in this regard.

• Plagiarism Check

The plagiarism report of manuscripts submitted to the journal for evaluation must be provided by the author at the submission stage. The plagiarism report to be uploaded must be generated by Turnitin or iThenticate Plagiarism Detection Software. The manuscript title and the report title must be the same. The full PDF file of the report, with the marked text, must be uploaded. In order for the article to be taken into evaluation, the similarity rate in the report must not exceed 20%. When obtaining the similarity report, the filtering options should be set to exclude references, quotations, and bibliographies, and text sections containing fewer than 10 words of overlap should be excluded.

• Copyright

Authors must upload the copyright transfer form to the system during submission. Click here for the copyright transfer form. Mersin University Journal of Health Sciences is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)