Northern Journal of Health Sciences

Northern Journal of Health Sciences aims to publish qualified, clinical, experimental, social and health policy-oriented studies in the field of health sciences with priority in the fields of Disaster Management and Emergency Relief, Nutrition and Dietetics, Child Development, Dentistry, Midwifery, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Gerontology, Nursing, Occupational Health and Safety, Health Management and Education, Social Work and Basic Medical Sciences.

Northern Journal of Health Sciences covers current, clinical and experimental original articles, reviews, case reports and letters to the editor in the field of health sciences.  

Review and Acceptance Process
The Editorial Board first reviews the manuscripts submitted to Sinop University Northern Journal of Health Sciences, which is an internationally refereed and published in English. The Editorial Board evaluates the work in terms of its compliance with the journal's purpose and scope as well as its compliance with the journal's spelling rules. Studies that do not comply with the spelling rules cannot proceed to the next stage and are returned to the author. The manuscripts that pass the Editorial Board and are candidates for publication are sent to at least two referees. The suggestions/corrections from the referees and the corrections suggested by the Editorial Board, if any, are forwarded to the responsible author. After the necessary corrections are made by the author(s), the manuscript is sent back to the referees who provide suggestions/corrections. The approval of the author(s) is obtained on the final version of the manuscript approved for publication by the referees and the Editorial Board. The Editor of the Journal is not responsible for the technical specifications and printing errors of the finalized manuscripts after "Proof". No royalties are paid for the published works. 

WRITING RULES
It is extremely important that the manuscripts are carefully organized according to the journal's spelling rules, as the manuscripts that are not prepared according to the journal's spelling rules will not be evaluated. The responsibility for the ideas defended in the articles belongs to the author. The copyright of the published works belongs to the journal.

General Rules in Article Writing
- Manuscripts should be written in A4 paper size, top, bottom, left and right 2.5 cm margins, justified, 12 pt, 1.5 line spacing, Times New Roman font. Headings should be left justified. The first line of each paragraph should be written 0.5 cm inside the left margin.
- Main headings (first level) should be written in 12-point font, bold and all letters capitalized, and second level subheadings under the main headings should be written in 12-point font, bold and the first letters capitalized. Headings under the second level subheadings (third level) should be written in 12-point, bold, italicized and capitalized in sentence order.
- Abbreviations should be written in parentheses after their first mention in the text, and abbreviations should never be used in the title and abstract.
- Numerical data between 1-10 in the text should be written in writing, 10 and above should be written with numbers.
- There should be no space between the percent (%) sign and the number, the percent sign should be written after the number (e.g. 25%) and where punctuation is used, it should be written without a space before and after the sentence/word. A full stop must be used when separating decimal numbers.
- Drugs should be written with their generic names.
- All tables and figures/graphics must be titled and numbered in the order in which they are used in the text. Photographs and images should be digital and jpeg saved at 300 dpi resolution. All tables, figures and graphs in the article should be given at the end of the references in the text.
- The table should have a title written in bold with the first letter of each word capitalized.
- All abbreviations used in the table should be defined as footnotes. For footnotes, the symbols †, ‡, §, ||, †† and "*, **" for p values should be used respectively.
- Figures/graphics should have a title written in bold with the first letter of each word capitalized.

Title Page: The title page should be prepared as a separate file and the title page should include the title of the article, article type and author information. The title of the article should be written in 14 pt, bold, the first word should be capitalized, the others should be lowercase and centered. If there are genus and species names, the names should be italicized. On the title page, the name-surnames, e-mail addresses, ORCID information and affiliated institution (University, Faculty / Institute / School, Department), city, country should be written in order. Corresponding author should be indicated. In addition to this information, the address and telephone information of the corresponding author should also be written.
On the title page, the status of the study being presented in any congress/symposium, the status of being produced from thesis work, acknowledgment (if any), ethics committee approval (with date and number), conflict of interest declaration, financial support declaration information should be given.

Manuscript

Research Article: Abstract, Keywords, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and References.

Review Article: Abstract, Keywords, Summary, Keywords, Introduction, Main and Subsections, Results and References. Review articles should not exceed 12 pages and 6000 words excluding figures, tables and references.
In Systematic Review studies, the title of the study should include the term systematic review. The purpose of the study should be explained and the research question should be written in line with the participants, interventions, comparison groups, results and study design. In the method section, it should be stated that it is a systematic review, the eligibility criteria of the studies to be included, the problem of the studies, interventions and comparisons should be explained. In the Results section, the characteristics of the data extracted for each study should be included and all findings for each study used in the systematic review should be stated.

Case Reports: Abstract, Keywords, Summary, Keywords, Introduction, Case Report, Discussion and References sections. The purpose/focus of the study should be stated in the title and the phrase case report should be included. In case presentations, it is mandatory to obtain informed written consent from the patient/individual. Case reports should not exceed 6 pages and 3000 words excluding figures, tables, photographs/schematics and references.

Abstract
It should be written in English and Turkish respectively and should not exceed 250 words. The abstract should be written in a straight paragraph, including the purpose, method, findings and conclusion of the study. Abbreviations should not be used in the abstract and references should not be cited.

Keywords
Keywords should be written in the same language, at least three and at most five, immediately after the abstract. Keywords should be written in English alphabetical order, in lower case and separated by commas. Turkish keywords should be written according to the English keyword order. English keywords should be selected from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and Turkish keywords should be selected from Turkish Scientific Terms.

Tables
Tables should be numbered according to the order of occurrence in the main text and each table should have a title above it. The title of the table should be written in 12 pt. and the first letter of each word should be capitalized and bold. Table content should be written in 10 pt. and single spaced. Tables should be given after the references in the text. Each table should be cited in the text. In table drawing, horizontal lines should be used only in the title line and the upper and lower lines of the table. Table explanations should be made using symbols in footnotes. The number of tables/figures/graphs/images should not exceed 6 in total.

Figures and Illustrations
Figures and illustrations should be numbered according to the order of occurrence in the main text and the title should be written under each figure/picture. The magnification ratio of microscopic pictures and the staining technique used should be indicated. Figures/pictures should be cited in the text. Photographs and pictures should be separate JPG, JPEG or TIFF files with a resolution of at least 300 dpi. The number of tables/figures/graphics/images should not exceed 6 in total.

Measurement Units

Units of weight, length and volume should be reported in kilograms, meters, liters and their multiples of ten. Both local and International System of Units (SI) should be used for units of measurement. For numbers with four or more digits, spaces should be left between the thousand digits (Example: 1 000 000). Double-digit numbers should be given in numerals in the text and single-digit numbers should be given in writing. However, in expressions indicating values, single digits should be given in numerals (Example: 1 lt). In text and tables, percentage values should be given as two digits after the period (Example: 70.10%), p values should be given as three digits after the period (Example: 0.001). Decimal numbers in articles, tables and figures should be separated by a period.

Conflict of Interest
Any conflict of interest, any financial support/project support details should be written on the title page. When the study is accepted for publication, this section will be placed at the end of the main text before the references.

Acknowledgments (if any)

Acknowledgments, if any, should be included on the title page. In addition, if financial support was received for the study (from University Scientific Research Projects, The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) projects and similar institutions), the project number should be written and indicated on the title page. When the study is accepted for publication, this section will be placed at the end of the main text before the references.

References
-APA 7 style should be used for citation. Click https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-examples.pdf for detailed information.
- References page should start from a new page.
-All works cited in the text should be included in the reference list at the end of the text. The references section should be alphabetized according to the surnames of the authors, and the second and subsequent lines of the references should be written 0.5 cm inside.
-If there is more than one source in parentheses at the end of a sentence in the text, they should be listed in alphabetical order and a semicolon should be placed between each source (Ex: Holinsen et al., 2024; Potter, 2024; Rogerts & Henson, 2022).
-When two different studies with the same author and the same date are included, the references should be given as a, b. (Ex: (Potter, 2024a)
(Potter, 2024b)
-If the journal does not have volume, issue and DOI information, it may not be included.

Ethics Committee Approval and Permissions
Northern Journal of Health Sciences covers current, clinical and experimental original articles, reviews, case reports and letters to the editor in the field of Health Sciences. The ethical rules that authors, editors, referees and publishers must comply with are carried out in accordance with the guidelines and policies published by the "Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)". The studies submitted to the journal must comply with ethical and scientific standards and the scientific, ethical and legal responsibilities of the published articles belong to the author(s).
Articles submitted to the Northern Journal of Health Sciences must not have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. The formal, scientific and ethical appropriateness of the manuscripts submitted to the journal are reviewed by the editor/field editor and at least three referees, and if deemed necessary, the manuscripts are published after the required changes are made by the authors.
Ethics committee approval must be obtained for all human or animal studies. In the "Materials and Methods" section of the study, the institution where the Ethics Committee Approval was obtained, the approval number and the date (day-month-year) of approval should be specified. In addition, in the "Materials and Methods" section of the study, the authors must state that they conducted the study in accordance with the Principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, and that they obtained ethics committee approval and "informed consent" from the individuals participating in the study. In studies with experimental animals, the authors should state in the "Materials and Methods" section of the study that they protected animal rights in their studies in accordance with the principles of "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" and that they obtained the approval of the ethics committee for animal experiments.
In case presentations, "Informed consent" must be obtained from the patients and must be stated in the study.
In manuscripts submitted for publication, the authors should not be asked to change the order of authorship or add or remove authors. The author(s) should inform the editor and editorial board when they realize the error about their article at the evaluation and early view stage or electronically, and contact them to correct or withdraw it.
If there is a direct or indirect commercial connection or financial support for the study, the authors should indicate the commercial product used; if there is no such situation, they should state that they have no commercial relations with the company or that they have a relationship with the company.

Author's Responsibility
The responsible author of the study should fill out the "Copyright Transfer Form" and sign it on behalf of himself/herself and other authors and upload it to the journal system. He/she should also enter his/her and other authors' ORCID information into the system. All articles submitted to our journal are checked for plagiarism by iThenticate and/or Turnitin programs during the pre-control phase. The similarity rate in the plagiarism report generated after the plagiarism check should be maximum 20%. Articles with a similarity rate above this rate are rejected. Articles submitted for publication in our journal should not be similar to any previously published article, including the authors' personal publications.

COPYRIGHT
All publication rights of the studies accepted for publication belong to the publishing institution. No royalties are paid for the articles published in the journal. Authors should fill out the "Transfer of Publication Rights Form" on the journal website and upload it to the system together with the study. Manuscripts submitted without the Publication Rights Transfer Form will not be evaluated.

PLAGIARISM
All manuscripts submitted to the Northern Journal of Health Sciences should be scanned by the authors using a licensed application (iThenticate) and the similarity report should be uploaded to the system together with the manuscript files. Acceptable similarity rate is below 20%. Manuscripts with similarity above the specified rate are rejected without evaluation.

OPEN ACCESS
Northern Journal of Health Sciences is an open access journal. The journal provides free access to the issues published online in electronic media and the full texts of the articles in the issues as soon as they are published.

No fee is charged to the author or his/her organization under any name.