Journal of Experimental and Clinical Medicine

The aim of the The Journal of Experimental and Clinical Medicine (JECM) is to help encourage, improve and disseminate the best knowledge and ideas in the medicine field and to contribute to the literature by publishing clinical and experimental research articles, case reports, letters to the editor, and editorial comments prepared in accordance with the ethical guidelines in all disciplines of health sciences. By doing this, the journal serves to share knowledge with scientific literature on academic platforms and to develop the research culture. The target audience of the journal includes specialists, researchers, and medical professionals working in all disciplines of health sciences.

The Editorial Board of Journal of Experimental and Clinical Medicine adheres to the principles of the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) and Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE).

The JECM is an international, scientific, double-blinded and peer-reviewed, open access, and academic official journal of the Ondokuz Mayıs University, Faculty of Medicine (p ISSN 1309-4483, e ISSN 1309-5129). The journal publishes clinical and experimental research articles, review articles, case reports, and editorial comments prepared in accordance with the ethical guidelines in all disciplines of health sciences. The JECM article evaluation and publishing processes are completely free of charge and available in PDF format online at http://omujecm.com and https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/omujecm. The journal is published electronically and four times annually. The journal publishes content in English. All responsibility for the scientific content and statements in an article published in the JECM belongs to the authors.

GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

PREPARING ELECTRONIC MANUSCRIPTS:

Please keep text, tables and graphics, as separate files in other word do not import the figures or tables into the text file. Text files should be supplied in one of the following formats: Microsoft Word.

ORGANIZATION OF THE ARTICLE:

The main document and the tables, should be prepared with “Microsoft Office Word software”. Times New Roman font (size 12) should be used throughout the main document with 1.5 line spacing. The side margins of the main document should be set at 25 mm from all sides. Words should not be hyphenated to fit on a line. Pages should be numbered sequentially.

1-TITLE PAGE: The title page should contain the following items:

(1) complete title;

(2) full names of all authors;

(3) complete affiliations of all authors;

(4) the ORCID of all authors;

(5) the name and complete address of the corresponding Author that includes telephone number, facsimile number and E-mail address to whom correspondence and proofs should be sent.

*The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) number of the all authors should be provided while sending the manuscript.

2-MAIN TEXT:

a) Original articles: Introduction; Materials and methods (with explicit reference to compliance with ethical standards, including the name of the Ethics Committee that approved the study and the informed consent declaration); results; discussion; acknowledgments; funding; conflict of interest; references.

b) Review: Systematic review or meta-analysis on data from the literature and critical analysis of the present state of knowledge should be represented with appropriate headings.

c) Case Report: Introduction; Case Report; Discussion; informed consent; conflict of interest; references.

The main text should contain the following items:

Abstract: The abstract should be unstructured, a single paragraph that briefly summarizes each main section of the paper. This should provide a concise description of the purpose of the report or summary of the review and should not exceed 300 words. Avoid abbreviations, unless they are used universally.

Keywords: Provide at least 4-6 keywords. Only use terms that are include in the Medical Subject Headings - MeSH (https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search).

Introduction: The objectives of the research should be clearly stated in this section. Relevant background information and recent published studies should be described concisely, and be cited appropriately.

Materials and Methods: This section should contain all the details necessary to reproduce the experiments. Avoid re-describing methods already published; only relevant modifications should be included in the text.

Ethical statement
Research carried out on human participants must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013. (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/). The written consent of each subject should be taken. Therefore for any research studies or evaluations involving human participants (including students, residents, fellows and faculty members), authors need to provide information regarding ethical approval for the research presented in the manuscript. A statement to this effect must be incorporated into the ‘‘Materials and Methods’’ section and should include the name of the approving committee (e.g., Institutional Review Board, Ethics Committee on Human Research, etc.), the name of the institution at which approval was granted and a reference number where appropriate. When experimental animals are used, the methods section must clearly indicate that adequate measures were taken to minimize pain or discomfort. Experiments should be carried out in accordance with the European Communities Council Directive of 24 November 1986 (86/609/EEC), or with the animals for experimental procedures.

Results: This section should present the results and interpret them in a clear and concise manner. Results should usually be presented descriptively and be supplemented by figures.

Discussion: Extensive citations and discussion of published literature should be not be used.

Ethics Committee Approval

The Ethics Committee Approval date and number should be stated.

Conflict of Interest

All potential conflicts of interest must be stated within this section. This pertains to relationships with industry and other corporations whose products or services are related to the subject matter of the submitted manuscript.

Funding

All funding agencies should be stated in this section.

Acknowledgments

Author acknowledgments should be written in the third person ("The authors wish to thank...") and written permission should be obtained from all individuals who are listed in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

Material in this manuscript previously presented in a different form, such as an oral presentation at a conference or meeting, must be reported.

Author Contributions

All submissions should contain a contributor’s statement page. Each manuscript should contain substantial contributions to concept, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of findings. All persons designated as an author should qualify for authorship, and all those that qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for appropriate portions of the text.  Here is the example: Concept, Design, Data Collection or Processing, Analysis or Interpretation, Literature Search, Writing

References:

The NLM format is the style recommended by the journal.

References must be numbered in parenthesis within the article and listed in order of their first appearance in the text. All references cited in the text should be listed at the end of the manuscript on a separate page. The accuracy of references is the responsibility of the author. The references should include only articles that are published or in press. Unpublished data, submitted manuscripts, or personal communications should be cited within the text only. Personal communications should be documented by a letter of permission. All items in the list of references should be cited in the text and, conversely, all references cited in the text must be presented in the list.

Identify references in text by Arabic numerals in parenthesis as follows: "as shown by Yasargil (1)"; if two authors; "Yasargil and Kadri (2)"; if more than two authors; "Yasargil et al. (3)". The style of references must follow the NLM system and for the abbreviations of journal titles; please consult the List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus, published annually as a list in the January issue of Index Medicus, also accessible at www.nlm.nih.gov).

Please use the following style for references:

Article in a periodical:

Yaşargil MG, Kadri PA, Yasargil DC. Microsurgery for malignant gliomas. Neurooncol. 2004; 69(1-3): 67-81.

More than 6 authors: Rose ME, Huerbin MB, Melick J, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Regulation of interstitial excitatory amino acid concentrations after cortical contusion injury. Brain Res. 2002; 935(1): 40–46.

Chapter in a book (within a series):

Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW, editors. The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002, p. 93-113.

An entire book: Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002.

Web page:

Atherton, J. Behaviour modification [Internet]. 2010 [updated 2010 Feb 10; cited 2010 Apr 10]. Available from: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/behaviour_mod.htm.

Dissertation:

Borkowski MM. Infant sleep and feeding: a telephone survey of Hispanic Americans [dissertation]. Mount Pleasant (MI): Central Michigan University; 2002.

Graphic files: Journal only accepts PNG, TIFF and EPS formats for graph. Each figure should be a separate file and not be embedded in the text. All graphic files must be submitted in sufficiently high resolution, for grey scale and color images 250 dpi and 500-800 dpi for line art) to allow for printing.

Electronic submission of articles via the Web; http://dergipark.org.tr/omujecm

Full instructions for uploading data and files etc. are given on the website when submitting a manuscript. It is the responsibility of the Authors to create the proper files as instructed above for the electronically submitted manuscript. The editorial office cannot make conversions beyond the supported file types. After online submission, there is no need sending a hardcopy of manuscript or illustrations to the Editors. Please note that the electronic files supplied will always be used to produce the illustrations, including those for the print version of the article; it is the Authors’ responsibility to ensure that these files are of suitable quality. 

The journal routinely screen article submissions for plagiarism.

PUBLICATION POLICY
Goal and Scope

JECM is a double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal published electronically and periodically. The goal of the journals is to improve the research culture and help knowledge spread rapidly in the academic world by providing a common academic platform. JECM is published in English. All responsibility for the scientific content and statements in an article published in JECM belongs to the authors.

Assessment and Publication
All manuscripts submitted to JECM undergo preliminary evaluation for their compliance with the instructions for authors, language, contribution to science, and originality. Manuscripts that are evaluated as insufficient or noncompliant with the instructions for authors may be rejected without peer review.
Subject Editors and referees who are expert researchers in their fields assess scientific articles submitted to our journals. A blind peer review policy is applied to the evaluation process. The Editor-in-Chief, if he sees necessary, may assign a Subject Editor for the article or may conduct the scientific assessment of the article himself. Editors may also assign referees for the scientific assessment of the article and make their decisions based on reports by the referees. The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision regarding the publishing of the article.
Articles are accepted for publication by the Editor-in-Chief in accordance with the journal’s instructions for authors. Authors can access these instructions online by the JECM website. Articles are accepted for publication on the understanding that they have not been published and are not going to be considered for publication elsewhere. Authors should certify that neither the manuscript nor its
main contents have already been published or submitted for publication in another journal with the Copyright Release Form.

The Role of Journal Editors-in-Chief
The crucial role of a journal Editor-in-Chief is to monitor and ensure the fairness, timeliness, thoroughness, and civility of the peer-review editorial process. The main responsibilities of the editor are:
• Selecting manuscripts suitable for publication while rejecting unsuitable manuscripts,
• Ensuring a supply of high-quality manuscripts to the journal by identifying important “hot topics”,
• Increasing the journal’s impact factor and maintaining the publishing schedule,
• Providing strategic input for the journal’s development,
• Organizing the flow of manuscripts by communicating with the authors, referees, and publishers,
• Describing, implementing, and regularly reviewing policies for handling ethical issues and allegations or findings of misconduct by authors and anyone involved in the peer-review process,
• Treating all authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty, and transparency,
• Protecting the confidentiality of every author’s work,
• Setting up a reliable panel of expert reviewers.

Editors are also responsible for offering feedback to reviewers when required and ensuring that any feedback to authors is constructive.

Cancellations/Returns

Articles may be returned to authors in order to increase the authenticity and reliability and to prevent ethical breaches, and even if articles have been accepted or published, they can be withdrawn from publication if necessary. The Editors-in-Chief of the journal have the right to return or withdraw articles in the following situations:
• When there is proof of ruling out the findings obtained by the research,
• When the article is undergoing an assessment or publication process by another journal, congress, conference, etc.,
• When the article is not within the scope of the journal,
• When the scientific quality and content of the article does not meet the standards of the journal and a referee review is not necessary,
• When the article was not prepared in compliance with scientific publication ethics,
• When high similarity to another work is detected by the plagiarism detection software (iThenticate) used by JECM,
• When any other plagiarism is detected in the article,
• When the authors do not perform the requested corrections within the requested time,
• When the author does not submit the requested documents/materials/data etc. within the requested time,
• When the authors make changes that are not approved by the editor after the article was submitted,
• When an author is added/removed, the order of the authors is changed, the corresponding author is changed, or the addresses of the authors are changed without the consent of the Editor-in-Chief,
• When a statement is not submitted indicating that approval of the ethics committee or permission of the related hospital administration was obtained for the following (including retrospective studies):
• Studies in which hospital records services are used,
• Studies in which pathology preparations are reevaluated or additional stainings are applied,
• Studies in which social insurance/ministerial records systems are used,
• When human rights or animal rights are violated,
• When data used in the study cannot be provided upon requested.

Ethical Issues
Conflicts of Interest
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors definition of conflicts of interest is as follows: “A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.”
A conflict of interest defines the situations that might raise the question of bias, direct or indirect, in the work reported. These situations occur when an individual’s objectivity is potentially compromised by a desire for financial gain, prominence, professional advancement, or a successful outcome. Conflicts can also arise for other reasons, such as personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and intellectual beliefs.
Authors should avoid entering into agreements with study sponsors, both for-profit and nonprofit, that interfere with authors’ access to all of the study’s data or that interfere with their ability to analyze and interpret. In order to preserve the reliability of JECM, authors are required to disclose all and any potential conflicts of interest when they submit their manuscripts.
Conflicts of interest are the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and science itself. That is why the editors are working diligently to ensure that what is published in the journal is balanced, evidence-based, and evaluated independently. In this manner, Subject Editors and reviewers are required to notify the journal if they find they do not have the necessary expertise to assess the relevant aspects of a manuscript, if they decide that the manuscript is very similar to one in preparation or under consideration by another journal, or if they suspect the identity of the author(s), which raises potential competing or conflicting interests.

Human and Animal Rights
Ensuring that the studies published in JECM are conducted in a fair and ethical manner is one of our major missions. We publish across multiple research areas, many of which have their own standards and methods of governing research practice.
When reporting experiments with human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation. For manuscripts reporting medical studies involving human participants, authors are required to provide a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study and confirming that the study conforms to recognized standards, for example:
• Declaration of Helsinki
• US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects
• European Medicines Agency Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice

These standards encourage authors to conduct studies in a way that ensures adequate steps have been taken to minimize harm to participants, to avoid coercion or exploitation, to protect confidentiality, and to minimize the risk of physical and psychological harm.
If the editors or referees doubt whether the research was conducted in accordance with ethical standards, they may ask the authors to explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. The Editorial Board has the right to reject any studies not meeting the criteria.
One of our main principles in studies involving human subjects is to ensure that a patient’s right to privacy has not been infringed without prior informed consent. Authors are encouraged to follow the ICMJE guidelines for reporting on human subjects. For publication of material that contains detailed patient information about a living individual, it is compulsory for a signed patient consent form to be obtained. Any identifier that might reveal a patient’s identity must be removed (from X-rays, MRIs, charts, photographs, etc.). Written informed consent is required from any potentially identifiable patient or legal representative and should be presented in either the Materials and Methods section or the Acknowledgments.
Research involving animals should be conducted with the same rigor as research involving humans. When reporting experiments on animals, authors are asked to indicate whether the institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
Where animals are used in research we expect them to have been treated in a humane manner and complying with the ARRIVE guidelines and the Consensus Author Guidelines For Animal Use developed by the International Association of Veterinary Editors. The editors and referees also handle submissions involving these guidelines. Editors may ask authors to describe in their manuscripts how discomfort, distress, and pain were avoided and minimized, and to confirm that animals did not suffer unnecessarily at any stage of an experiment. Editors may request that reviewers comment on the standard of experimental reporting, experimental design, or any other aspects of the study reported that might cause concern. If concerns are raised or clarifications are needed, they may need to request evidence of ethical research approval or question the authors.
Animal ethics-based criteria for manuscript rejection are:
• Manuscripts and authors that fail to meet the aforementioned requirements,
• Studies that involve unnecessary pain, distress, suffering, or lasting harm to animals.
Editors retain the right to reject manuscripts on the basis of ethical or welfare concerns.

Advertising
JECM does not accept advertising and sponsorships that are believed to create a potential conflict of interest.
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org

The JECM accepts English-language manuscripts in all fields of medicine and related health sciences. Contribution is open to researchers of all nationalities. The journal’s full text is available online at omujecm.com. The journal allows free access (Open Access) to its contents. The journal does not charge for submission, processing or publication of manuscripts and even for color reproduction of photographs. The following types of papers are welcome: original articles (for the presentation of clinical and laboratory studies), review articles, case reports and letters to the editor.