Journal of Selçuk Health Writing Rules, Publication Principles, and Evaluation Process
General Information
The Journal of Selçuk Health is the official publication of Selçuk University's Faculty of Health Sciences. It's an electronic journal that aims to track developments in health sciences and medicine, serve as a high-quality resource in these fields, and support the growth of qualified academic publications in Turkey.
The editorial board may request that submitted manuscripts be reviewed, corrected, shortened, or reorganized to ensure they comply with the journal's writing rules.
If a submitted article meets the formal requirements, it will undergo review by the editor and at least two referees. If necessary, it will be published after the authors make the requested revisions.
The short name of our journal is Selçuk Journal of Health.
The Selçuk Journal of Health is published electronically three times a year, in February, June, and November. Special Issues may also be published in addition to regular issues.
Submitted works must not have been previously published, accepted for publication, or submitted to another journal for consideration.
Abstracts presented at scientific meetings are accepted, provided the congress name, location, and date are specified (please indicate this in the cover letter to the editor).
Publications derived from theses are accepted, provided the thesis name, author, thesis number, thesis type, year, etc., are specified (please indicate this in the cover letter to the editor).
The methodology section of the study must clearly state compliance with Research and Publication Ethics.
- Plagiarism Control and Similarity Rate
Before submitting an article to our journal, authors must report its similarity status using appropriate plagiarism software (e.g., iThenticate, Turnitin).
The similarity rate must be below 20% for the entire study and below 5% from a single source. Submissions exceeding these limits will be returned to the author(s).
- Scientific Responsibility
All authors must have a direct academic and scientific contribution to the submitted article and must approve its final version. Authors are responsible for ensuring their articles adhere to scientific standards.
- Copyright Transfer Form
The "Copyright Transfer Form" must be signed and scanned by all authors. This form must be uploaded as a separate file along with the article during the initial submission to the DergiPark system. Once the article is processed for scientific evaluation, the author names and their order specified in the "Copyright Transfer Form" will be considered final. After this stage, no author names can be added to the article, nor can the author order be changed, except for those whose signatures are on the "Copyright Transfer Form." To remove an author's name from an article, written and explanatory permissions from all authors must be obtained.
- Statistical Evaluation
All retrospective, prospective, and experimental research articles must be biostatistically evaluated and presented with appropriate design, analysis, and reporting.
- Article Submission and Process Management
The article submission process is managed through the DergiPark online journal system (https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ssd), which is accessed with a username and password.
Only articles submitted via this method will be processed. You can also track all operations related to your articles at this address.
When submitting articles for publication, authors' communication details, including their name, surname, title, institution, and email address, must be fully entered into the online system.
- Accepted Article Types
The types of articles accepted for evaluation in our journal are Original Research, Case Reports, Letters to the Editor, and Reviews. However, our journal is currently closed to review articles until a new decision. Review articles published in current issues are those whose evaluation processes were already underway.
- Evaluation Process Stages (Summarized in the process flow chart section)
1. Secretariat Pre-review: Articles submitted in compliance with writing rules are first reviewed by the journal secretariat. At this stage, the uploaded work is checked for adherence to the journal's writing rules/sample article template, the similarity report, and the completeness of other necessary files. Submissions that do not conform to the template, do not follow writing rules, contain incomplete files, or do not meet similarity rate criteria will be rejected without further evaluation. Works approved by the secretariat are forwarded to the Editor.
2. Editor Review: The editor rejects articles that fall outside the journal's aims and scope, lack original value, are scientifically weak, do not comply with ethical principles, have language issues, or are not in the journal's publication languages. Works approved by the Editor-in-Chief are then directed to the relevant field editors.
3. Field Editor and Referee Assignment: Field editors ensure that studies they believe will contribute to their respective fields are sent to referees by proposing suitable scientific referees.
4. Referee Evaluation (Double-Blind Peer Review): Submitted studies are evaluated by at least two scientifically qualified referees. Our journal employs a double-blind peer review system, where the identities of both referees and authors are kept confidential from each other and are not shared with third parties. If one referee provides a negative opinion and the other a positive opinion, the article is sent to a third referee. For an article to be published, two referees must provide a positive opinion.
5. Correction Process: For studies requiring major corrections, even if the referees do not explicitly request to see the revised version again, the corrected work may be sent back to the specific referee who requested the revisions after the author has made the changes.
6. Evaluation Period: The peer review process for articles takes an average of 6 to 8 weeks. This period may extend depending on factors such as submission volume.
- Article Structure and Language Rules
The language of articles submitted to our journal will be English only starting from Volume 7.
Articles must include a Turkish and English abstract (250-300 words), and at least three but no more than five keywords.
Original Studies should be prepared with a maximum length of 7000 words.
English articles and English Abstracts must be checked by a professional language expert before submission.
- Post-Publication and Author Responsibilities
-Articles approved for publication in the journal are assigned a DOI number.
-An author can publish only 1 study within the same year.
-New submissions from authors who have an article currently under evaluation in the journal will not be considered until the ongoing evaluation process is completed.
-As of May 1, 2025, it has been decided that individual and/or joint works by members of the Editorial Board will not be published in the journal.
-New submissions from authors who have an article currently under evaluation in the journal will not be considered until that process is finished.
-When submitting, the Cover Letter to the Editor file, containing the applicant's complete information as filled out by the corresponding author, and the Copyright Transfer Form must be uploaded to the DergiPark system. All publication rights, in written and electronic form, for articles accepted and published in the journal belong to Selçuk Journal of Health. Additionally, for studies requiring ethics committee approval, the Ethics Committee Approval Document must also be uploaded to the system.
-Authors of articles published in the journal are not paid any royalties.
-When submitting, the article file, prepared using the article template and without author information (for blind peer review), must be uploaded to the system. Uploads must be in Word (.doc or .docx) format. Uploads that do not comply with the journal's rules will not be sent for evaluation.
-The views expressed in the articles published in the journal are not those of the journal owner or editors. All responsibility lies with the author of the article.
-All rights to articles published in the journal are reserved. They cannot be reproduced in any way without specifying the journal's name.
- Journal Fee Policy:
There are no fees for article publication or for managing article processes in the journal. No submission fees, editorial processing fees, or publication fees are charged for articles submitted to or accepted for publication in the journal.
Files That Must Be Uploaded to the System During Application: (Located in the Documents section on the journal page)
1. Full Text (Article template must be used, without author information)
2. Similarity Report (iThenticate or Turnitin)
3. Copyright Transfer Form (Must be uploaded as a wet-signed and scanned document)
4. Cover Letter to the Editor File (Containing Applicant Information and additional article information)
5. Ethics Committee Approval Document or Declaration Form stating that Ethics Approval is Not Required Additional documents related to the article can be uploaded besides these.
• The top and bottom margins, alignments, font types, text formats, etc., specified in the Word Document provided as the Article Template, must be adhered to for article formatting. Articles submitted to our journal must be prepared according to this template, and no modifications should be made to the template itself.
• Articles that do not comply with the publication principles and do not include all of the above files will not be entered into the peer review process.