PUBLICATION POLICY
The authors undertake that their publications are created in accordance with all universal ethical rules, and research is accepted accordingly.
Authors are responsible for all statements in their work. Submitted studies should be prepared in accordance with the writing rules of the journal. Studies that do not comply with the spelling rules are rejected or sent back to the authors for correction.
The journal reserves the right to make language corrections in accepted studies without changing the content and meaning.
The journal accepts the research provided that it has not been published in another journal or publication.
All authors must state their affiliation with persons or organizations that may have a conflict of interest. If there is support received for the study, it should be stated in detail. Conflicts of interest should also be stated on the title page.
In the management and publication processes of the journal, the publication principles of the "International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)" and "Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)" are taken into consideration.

Evaluation process
-Only manuscripts uploaded to the journal's system are evaluated. Studies sent via e-mail will not be evaluated.
-All submitted works go through pre-evaluation, language editing, statistics editing and referee evaluation processes. The evaluation process is carried out by the editor of the journal.
Preliminary Evaluation Process
After the manuscript is uploaded to the journal, the pre-evaluation process begins. At this stage, the editor examines the manuscript in terms of content, form, suitability for the aim and scope of the journal. As a result of this review, the editor
• may decide that the study is not suitable for the journal and reject the study.
• may resend the work to the responsible author for corrections.
• may send it to the language editor and can request correction.
• may evaluate by sending it to the statistical consultant. After this evaluation, the editor may request corrections from the author.
• may refer the article to the referees and initiates the referee evaluation process.

Peer Review Process
All articles in the journal are subject to double-blind peer review. To ensure the objective evaluation process, each article is evaluated by at least two independent referees who are experts in their fields. In cases where there is no consensus among the referees, the article is evaluated by the third referee. In the decision-making processes of all articles, the editor-in-chief makes the final decision.

Revision
Authors should mark the changes they made in the main text in color when submitting the article revision files. The responses to the referees should be specified in a separate Word file. Revised articles should be sent to the journal within one month following the decision. If the revised version of the article is not uploaded within the specified time, the revision option may be canceled. If authors need additional time for revision, they should submit their publication requests to the journal before the end of one month.
The manuscripts accepted for publication are checked again for grammar, punctuation and format.
Accepted manuscripts are arranged in accordance with the publication format of the journal, and the final version is sent to the responsible author in pdf format before publication and approval is received for publication. Authors should review their article and give approval for publication. If any correction is required in the article other than the publication format, the correction request is notified to the editor at ulkukaraman44@hotmail.com. Correction requests are evaluated by the editor and reported to the responsible author. Articles that are not approved by the corresponding author will not be published.

Plagiarism
The similarity rate control of the articles should be made on iThenticate and should be at most 20%, excluding the "References" section.
The journal is published online only.
The journal is free of charge and no publication fee is requested from the researchers.

The journal is published by Ordu University.
Journal contact
ulkukaraman44@hotmail.com

Publication Ethics Statement
ODU Medical Journal adheres to the standards in publication ethics in research in health science and also adopts the ethical publishing principles published by Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive of the Council of Higher Education, Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). The address for the principles expressed under the title of Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing is given below.
https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing
Submitted studies must be original, unpublished, and not in the evaluation process of another journal. Each article is double-blindly evaluated by one of the editors and at least two referees. Plagiarism, duplication, false authorship/denied authorship, research/data fabrication, article slicing, publishing by slicing, copyright infringement and concealment of conflict of interest are considered unethical behaviors.
All articles that do not comply with ethical standards are removed from the publication even if accepted. This also applies to articles with possible irregularities and inconsistencies detected after publication.

Research Ethics
• Compliance of the articles with ethical rules is the responsibility of the authors.
• The ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki must be complied with in studies on humans.
• Consideration should be given to ethical principles in the design, review and conduct of research.
• The research team and participants should be fully informed about the purpose of the research, the rules of participation and the risks, if any.
• Confidentiality of the information and answers given by the research participants should be ensured. Research should be designed in such a way as to preserve the autonomy and prestige of its participants.
• Those who will participate in the research should take part in the research voluntarily and should not be under any coercion.
• The research should be planned in a way that does not put the participants at risk.
• Research should be clear and unambiguous about its independence. If there is a conflict of interest, it should be stated.
• In experimental studies, written informed consent must be obtained from participants who decide to participate in the research. The consents of the legal guardians of children, ones under guardianship and those with a confirmed mental illness must be obtained.
• If the study will be carried out in an institution or organization, the necessary approval must be obtained from this institution or organization.
• In studies with human, it should be stated in the “methods” section that “informed consent” was obtained from the participants and ethics committee approval was obtained from the institution where the study was conducted.

Authors Responsibility
Compliance of the articles with scientific and ethical rules is the responsibility of the authors. The author must provide assurance that the article is original, has not been previously published elsewhere, and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and in another language. Applicable copyright laws and agreements must be observed. Copyrighted material (for example, tables, figures, or large quotations) should be used with appropriate permission and acknowledgements. The work of other authors, contributors, or references should be used appropriately and cited in references.
All authors must have a direct academic and scientific contribution to the submitted manuscript. So, “author” is someone who contributes to the conceptualization and design of a published research, the obtaining, analysis or interpretation of data, writing the article or critically reviewing it in terms of content. Other conditions for being an author are planning or executing and/or revising the work on the manuscript.
Funding, data collection, or overall supervision of the research group alone does not confer authorship. All individuals listed as authors must meet all the criteria listed, and any individual who meets the above criteria may be listed as an author. The order of the authors’ names should be a joint decision. All authors must indicate the author rank on the Copyright Agreement Form signed.
All individuals who did not meet the criteria for authorship but contributed to the study should be listed in the "acknowledgments" section. Examples of these are people who only provide technical support, help with writing, just provide general support, and financial and material support.
All authors must declare financial relationships, conflicts of interest, and competition of interest that have the potential to affect the results of the research or scientific evaluation. If an author detects a significant error or inaccuracy in his or her published article, it is the responsibility to immediately contact and cooperate with the editor for correction or retraction of these inaccuracies.

Editor and Reviewer Responsibilities
The editor-in-chief evaluates articles regardless of the authors' ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religious beliefs, and political philosophy. S/he ensures that the articles submitted for publication undergo a fair double-blind peer-review. S/he guarantees that all information regarding the submitted articles will remain confidential until the article is published. The editor-in-chief is responsible for the content and the overall quality of the publication. If necessary, it should publish an error page or make corrections.
The editor-in-chief does not allow any conflict of interest between authors, editors and referees. It has full authority to appoint a referee and is responsible for making the final decision on the articles to be published in the journal.
Reviewers should not have conflicts of interest with the research, the authors and/or the financial supporters of the research. They should reach an impartial judgment as a result of their assessment. They should ensure that all information regarding the submitted manuscripts is kept confidential and should report any copyright infringement and plagiarism on the part of the author to the editor. The referee should notify the editor of this situation and state that s/he cannot be a referee in cases where the subject of the article is not his area of expertise or s/he cannot return on time.
Reviewers and editorial board members cannot discuss articles with other people. Attention should be taken to keep the identity of the referees confidential. In some cases, with the decision of the editor, the comments of the relevant referees for the manuscript can be sent to other referees who comment on the same manuscript.