Ethical principles
 Lokman Hekim Journal has published scientific articles such as "research, compilation, letter to the editor with reference, editorial comment and discussion, folkloric method" related to the history of medicine, folklore, medical sociology and folkloric medicine practices. and product promotion".It is a journal that publishes content. Articles submitted to  Lokman Hekim Journal are evaluated by double-blind peer-review process and published electronically with free access. In addition,  Lokman Hekim Journal  provides information on situations considered as plagiarism and unethical behavior.
Writers
Articles submitted to  Lokman Hekim Journal must be original studies on medical history, folklore, medical sociology and folkloric medicine practices.
All sources used in articles (authors, online pages, personal interviews, etc.) should be cited accurately and appropriately.
It should be stated that the articles sent to the journal were not sent to another journal and the Copyright Transfer Form should be filled.
Persons who do not contribute intellectually to the article should not be listed as authors.
Conflicts of interest regarding the submitted article should be stated and the reason should be explained.
Authors may be required to submit raw data regarding their work to the editorial board while in the peer review process, in which case the authors are expected to share their raw data with the editorial board. Authors are obliged to keep the data/sources used for a published article for submission when requested by the editor.
When authors detect an error in their work, they should inform the editor and the editorial board and cooperate for the correction or withdrawal process.
Referees
All articles submitted to Lokman Hekim Journal  are evaluated by double-blind peer-review process. Double-blind refereeing means keeping the authors secret from the referees and the referees from the authors in order to ensure an impartial, objective and independent evaluation process. Articles are sent to the referees from the journal management system for evaluation. The referees are required to fill out a form that includes the contribution of the article they evaluated to the fields of medical history, folklore, medical sociology and folkloric medicine, their decisions about whether the article is publishable and the reasons for these decisions. The ethical responsibilities and roles of the referees of the Lokman Hekim Journal  are as follows:
• Referees are only required to referee articles related to their field of expertise.
• Referees are expected to agree to referee articles that do not have conflicts of interest. When reviewers realize any conflict of interest, they should notify the editor and refuse to referee the article.
• Reviewers should evaluate the articles impartially and objectively.
• Referees are required to fill in the Referee Evaluation Form for the articles they evaluate. In this form, the referees are required to state their decision on whether the article they are evaluating is publishable or not, and the reasons for their decision.
• Referees are required to complete their evaluations within the time given to them and are expected to comply with the ethical responsibilities set forth herein.
Editor
The editor is responsible for all articles published in the journal. The ethical duties and responsibilities of the editor are as follows:
General Responsibilities
• The editor is responsible for making efforts to increase the quality of the journal and contribute to its development.
• The editor must support the freedom of expression of the authors.
Relations with Readers
• The editor should make sure that the sections in the journal that do not require peer review (correction, invited papers, conference announcements, etc.) are clearly stated.
• The editor should make an effort to match the published articles with the knowledge and skills of the journal readers.
Editors’ Relationships with Readers
The editors are responsible for taking into account the feedback from the readers, researchers and practitioners about the published works and to provide the necessary responses and take necessary actions.
Editors’ Relations with the Reviewers
The editor should ask the referees to evaluate the articles according to their knowledge and expertise. Thus, it should be ensured that the articles are evaluated appropriately by experts in the field.
• The editor is obliged to request that the referees state that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the article before evaluating it.
• The editor is required to convey to the referees all necessary information regarding the referee evaluation process and what is expected from the referees.
• The editor should ensure that the peer-review process is carried out with double-blind peer-review and should not disclose the referees to the authors and the authors to the referees.
• The editor should evaluate the referees according to their timing and performance.
• The editor should create a database of referees and update the database according to the performance of the referees.
• The editor should remove the referees who make rude and unqualified comments or return late from the referee list.
• The editor should constantly renew and expand the referee list according to the referees' fields of expertise.
Relations with Authors
• The editor should constantly update the publication and writing guidelines and the sample template regarding what is expected of the authors from them.
• The editor should evaluate the articles sent to the journal in terms of journal writing rules, the importance of the work, and originality, and if he decides to reject the article during the first submission process, he should clearly and impartially convey to the authors the reason for this. During this process, if it is decided that the article needs to be revised in terms of grammar, punctuation and/or spelling rules (margins, appropriate reference, etc.), the authors should be informed about this issue and they should be given time to make the necessary corrections.
• Submission and acceptance dates should be included in the articles.
• When the authors request information about the status of their articles, the authors should be informed about the status of their articles in a way that does not disturb the double-blind peer-review process.
Relations with the Editorial Board
• The editor should communicate the publishing and writing rules to the new editorial board members and explain what is expected of them.
• The editor should convey the most up-to-date version of the publishing and writing rules to the members of the editorial board.
• The editor should evaluate the members of the editorial board and elect the members who will actively participate in the development of the journal to the editorial board.
• The editor should inform the members of the editorial board about their roles and responsibilities below.
- Supporting the development of the journal
- Writing reviews on their areas of expertise when requested
- Reviewing and improving publishing and writing rules
- Fulfilling the necessary responsibilities in the operation of the journal
Plagiarism and Unethical Behaviors
In order to check Lokman Hekim Journal for plagiarism, a similarity (plagiarism) report for the article must be uploaded during the application to be made from the "Send Article" page on the DergiPark System. It does not publish articles uploaded to our journal (similarity rate ≤15%) and articles with the possibility of plagiarism. Articles exceeding this rate are examined in detail and sent back to the authors for revision or correction if deemed necessary. If plagiarism or unethical behavior is detected, they are rejected for publication.
However, if there is an opinion that any article, such as an article, book, newspaper, belonging to someone else, a part of the work, completely or partially - without specifying the source, is copied or used by changing the linguistic and structural expression of the thoughts and views in any work, even if the similarity rate is low. Even correction can be requested or denied.
Listed below are some unethical behaviors:
• Mentioning those who did not contribute intellectually to the study as authors.
• Not specifying the people who contributed intellectually to the study as authors.
• Not specifying if the article was produced from the author's master's/doctoral thesis or a project.
• Slicing, that is, publishing more than one article from a single study.
• Not reporting conflicts of interest regarding submitted articles.
• Deciphering the double-blind refereeing process.

Studies Requiring Ethics Committee Permission
All kinds of research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require data collection from participants using questionnaires, interviews, focus group work, observation, experimentation, interview techniques,
Using human and animals (material / including data) experimental or other scientific purposes,
Clinical studies on humans,
Clinical studies on animals,
Retrospective studies in accordance with the law on protection of personal data.
Application Evaluation Process
Manuscripts sent to Lokman Hekim Journal for evaluation are evaluated by the Editor at the pre-control stage. At this stage, the editor evaluates the compliance of the manuscript with the spelling rules, scientific originality and priority. Manuscripts that are not found appropriate in the pre-check by the editor are rejected. For the manuscripts that are planned to be evaluated by the referee in the pre-control, a double-blind peer review evaluation process is carried out with at least two referees. After the peer-review process, it is decided to accept or reject the article. The author can follow the progress of the article on the journal page. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/mutftd
The average time during which the preliminary assessment of manuscripts is conducted: 15 days
The average time during which the reviews of manuscripts are conducted: 60 days
The average time in which the article is published: 90 days
Material Disclaimer
The opinions and reports in all articles published in our journal are the opinion of the author(s) and not the opinion of the Editor or Editorial Board; The Editor and Editorial Board do not accept any responsibility for these articles. The responsibility of the package programs specified in the method of the manuscripts belongs to the authors, and the editor and the editorial board do not accept any responsibility. If the submitted articles comply with the 'writing rules'; It is published after it has been evaluated by the editor and at least two referees, and after the necessary changes are made by the authors.
PUBLICATION RIGHT
 Lokman Hekim Journal is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution.
 Lokman Hekim Journal is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) For further detailes of the license please see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 

Advertisement Policy
Lokman Hekim Journal does not accept advertisements; the journal is sponsored by Mersin University. The Journal has no direct marketing policy.
Archiving Policy
The content published by  Lokman Hekim Journal  is electronically preserved by using internet archive. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/mutftd/archive
Authorship Policy
All statements and opinions expressed in the manuscripts published in Lokman Hekim Journal  reflect the views of the author(s).
Each individual listed as an author should fulfill the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The ICMJE recommends that authorship should be based on the following 4 criteria:
1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version to be published;
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
In addition to being accountable for their own work, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors and each author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for other parts of the work.
All of those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who provided a contribution but do not meet all four criteria should be recognized separately on the title page and in the Acknowledgements section at the conclusion of the manuscript.
Lokman Hekim Journal  requires that corresponding authors submit a signed and scanned version of the authorship contribution form (available for download through) during the initial submission process in order to appropriately indicate and observe authorship rights and to prevent ghost or honorary authorship. Please note that the list of authors on the final manuscript will be presented in the order provided on this form. If the editorial board suspects a case of “gift authorship,” the submission will be rejected without further review.
Licenses and Copyright Policy
Authors publishing with the journal retain copyright to their work licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) and grant the Publisher a non-exclusive commercial right to publish the work. The CC BY-NC 4.0 license permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that proper attribution is made to the original work.

Corrections & Retractions
The reader expects from a published article to be accurate, complete and attributable. Since articles can be read and cited as soon as they are published, subsequent changes could potentially affect those who read and cite the previous version.
However, if there are errors that may affect the interpretation of the data or information presented in an article in the Lokman Hekim Journal , the article is required to be corrected.
If you, as the author, believe that a correction is necessary in your article, you should apply to the editor with a reasoned article. It is also important that readers notify us if they find errors that may affect the interpretation of the data or information presented in an article.
After the notification is received, the editorial board decides on the publication. In the first issue after the notification, necessary corrections are published with the correction title. After the correction notification is made, a link is given to the main text. An article may be retracted when the integrity of the published work is substantially undermined owing to errors in the conduct, analysis and/or reporting of the study.
If the article has evidence that the findings are unreliable, contains unfair authorship and plagiarism, has been published elsewhere without permission, the article will be taken down.