Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine (TJIM) is an international, double-blind peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes manuscripts describing both clinical and basic science research in medicine. Manuscripts must describe original data that has not been published previously nor submitted for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts that adhere to the TJIM submission guidelines and are deemed appropriate for the scope of the journal are sent to two reviewers who are specialists in the field.  The reviewers’ comments are then considered by the members of the TJIM Executive Editorial Board who discuss the suitability of each submission. The final decision for all submitted manuscripts rests with the Editor-in-Chief. 

The journal publishes in the field of original research, case report, reviews, and letters to the editor are published only in English.

Editorial Board of the Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine complies with the criteria of the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The journal is published quarterly (January, April, July, and October)

No fee is required for publishing the manuscript.  

All articles are detected for similarity

PEER REVIEWING INSTRUCTIONS FOR TURKISH JOURNAL OF INTERNAL MEDICINE

Introductions

All articles submitted to the Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine (TJIM) evaluate with a double-blind fashion. Both authors and reviewers do not know each other. The suggestion of two reviewers is mandatory at the time of submission, but this would not grant the evaluation with those suggested reviewers. The TJIM may use these suggested reviewers to extend its reviewer pool.

The primary aims of peer review are to decide whether or not an article should be published (based on quality and relevance to the journal) and to improve the article before publication. All submissions first go through an internal peer review process: an assigned editor makes an initial decision to accept or to reject the manuscript (e.g. topic is outside the scope of the Journal, important flaws in scientific validity, etc). If the editor believes the article may be of interest, it is sent out for external peer review. The reviewers are selected by area of expertise (reviewers who grant high-quality reviews within the requested time are preferred). The editorial board is frequently consulted. Once reviews are obtained, the editor makes a judgment considering the critiques and recommendations from reviewers and other factors such as relevance to the Journal’s aims and usefulness to clinicians or researchers.

Peer Reviewer Selection

Reviewers are selected according to their background and experience in some aspects of the subject. The most desirable reviewers identify the strengths and weaknesses of the submitted paper and analyze it from different viewpoints. The peer reviewers are asked to read and analyze the assigned manuscript and provide a written opinion of its quality, novelty, relevance, and suitability for publication in The Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine. Peer reviewers also make suggestions to assist the authors in improving the article. Reviewers must not only analyze and comment on the paper, but also provide opinions about general concerns such as clarity and quality of the writing, the validity of the scientific approach, and whether the article provides new information.

Ethical Guidelines for Journal Peer Reviewers

When a selected individual accepts a peer-reviewing assignment, the reviewer implicitly agrees to the ethical standards that are commonly accepted in biomedical publishing. Ethical guidelines for reviewers, authors, and editors are reported by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors in the ‘Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals’ available from www.icmje.org.

Reviewers for the Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine must agree to:

Provide a balanced critique targeted not only to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the paper but also to provide useful feedback to the authors to improve their manuscript, without being overly critical of minor points.

• Avoid scientific misconduct such as the misappropriation of intellectual property.
• Each manuscript should be treated as an extremely confidential document.
• The privacy of the authors’ ideas must always be guaranteed.
• Direct comments about ethical concerns confidentially to the editors.
• Contacting an author with questions about the manuscript is not allowed.
• All critiques, including the latter, must be reported in the written critique.
• Declare any conflict of interest (real or perceived) identified to the editor before the end of the review. Not every potential conflict necessitates a rejection.
• Reviewers are encouraged to discuss potential conflicts with the editors if they believe they can provide a fair review.
• Reject an assignment if the following conflicts are present: Financial interests (e.g. paid consultancies, stock holdings), significant professional or personal relationships or rivalries, antipathy toward study question/approach, political or special interest affiliations (e.g. religious or deep convictions that conflict with the manuscript topic).

Reviewer Guidelines

Potential reviewers are contacted by e-mail, which contains the manuscript title, abstract, and assignment deadline. The selected reviewer accepts or declines the assignment within 7 days. Failure to reply within the prescribed time will be treated as an implicit rejection. It is acceptable to propose an extended deadline when the given deadline (usually 4 weeks from the task acceptance date) cannot be met. The selected reviewers usually have extensive experience as faculty members, researchers, and published authors. Sometimes reviewers from other specific areas are selected. This selection is always well-thought-out, and we encourage such potential reviewers to consider the assignment if they can make a contribution to some aspect of the work. The following points must be provided by the reviewers in the written response:

• General Overview
• Organized Critique
• Assessment of Strengths and Weaknesses: the following should be evaluated: Literature review is up-to-date; Methods align with study purpose or research questions; Methods described in sufficient and appropriate detail; Research design or study approach is adequate; Approach to data analysis is appropriate; Thoughtful consideration given to the study limitations; Manuscript provides new information that is likely to be of interest to our readers.
• Possible improvements
• Commonly Overlooked Areas: Reviewers should carefully note: title, abstract, tables and figures, references.

General information

• Turkish Journal of Internal Medicine (TJIM) is an international peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes manuscripts describing both clinical and basic science research in medicine.
• Manuscripts must describe original data that has not been published previously nor submitted for publication elsewhere.
• Manuscripts that adhere to the TJIM submission guidelines and are deemed appropriate for the scope of the journal are sent to two reviewers who are specialists in the field.
• The members of the Editorial Board who discuss the suitability of then consider the reviewers’ comments on each submission.
• The final decision for all submitted manuscripts rests with the Editor-in-Chief.

Institutional review board/ethics committee approval (IRB)

If a study involves either human subjects, human-derived materials, and/or medical records, authors must include in the Methods section either a statement that an Institutional Review Board (IRB)/Ethics Committee approval has been obtained or a statement that the IRB/Ethics Committee had ruled that approval was not required for the study.

When reporting experiments conducted with humans indicate that the procedures were in accordance with ethical standards set forth by the committee that oversees human experimentation. Approval of research protocols by the relevant ethics committee, in accordance with international agreements (Helsinki Declaration of 1975, revised 2002 available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm, “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals” www.nap.edu/catalog/5140.html/), is required for all experimental, clinical, and drug studies. Patient names, initials, and hospital identification numbers should not be used. Manuscripts reporting the results of experimental investigations conducted with humans must state that the study protocol received institutional review board approval and that the participants provided informed consent.

Copyright transfer

The publisher retains the copyright to all material published in the TJIM. The publisher is not responsible for any legal claims arising from the publication of a manuscript.

A Copyright Transfer Agreement form must be submitted together with the manuscript at the time of initial submission. The corresponding author must sign the form on behalf of all authors, indicating that they agree to the publication of their manuscript in the TJIM should their manuscript be accepted.

A scanned file (PDF, TIFF, or JPEG) of the signed Copyright Transfer Agreement may be submitted at the time of online submission of the manuscript. The Editorial Office must receive the Copyright Transfer Agreement before any action can be taken regarding the manuscript.

Conflict of interest policy

Authors are required to disclose all conflicts of interest that may have influenced their research or the preparation and writing of their manuscript. Conflicts of interest may include both financial and non-financial relationships. Because it is often difficult to determine whether a conflict of interest exists, the Editorial Board requests that all potential conflicts be declared at the time of the initial submission of the manuscript on the title page. Other pertinent relationships that may be relevant should be disclosed to the Editor-in-Chief in the cover letter at the time of submission.

Manuscript submission

All manuscripts must conform to the language and writing style of the TJIM. This includes submission of the manuscript with correct medical English as well as submission of any figures and tables in the formats specified. Authors should submit their manuscript and accompanying material to the TJIM via the online Editorial Manager system by logging on https://dergipark.org.tr/tjim and uploading all manuscript files following the instructions given.

Authorship

All authors should have been directly involved in the work described in the manuscript.  Additional contributors to a manuscript, such as professors or others who gave helpful advice or companies that donated material, maybe thanked in the Acknowledgments section following the main text. There should be no more than six authors in the case reports. The TJIM does not permit two or more authors to be “equal contributors” to a manuscript.

Permission

All figures, tables, and text passages that have been previously published require permission from the copyright owner(s) for the TJIM. All expenses related to obtaining such permission must be borne by the authors. By signing the copyright form, you state that the TJIM owns the copyright to the material in your article. Permission must be obtained for any material to which the authors do not own the full copyright. No material such as clinical images or charts, photos, and graphs as well as images of devices that may have been obtained from their producers, can be published without such permission. To secure the right to publish material that you do not own, contact the holder of the copyright (journal in which it was published, book publishers, or company that developed the instrument) by e-mail describing in detail the material you wish to use and stating that you wish to include that material in your manuscript (including the title The copyright owner will usually reply stating that permission has been granted. A copy of the reply must be forwarded to the TJIM offices with the number of your manuscript and a description of the materials in question. Most copyright permissions will specify conditions relating to the way in which reference to the permission should be stated. These conditions must be adhered to in full, otherwise, the permission may be invalid. 

Note that in some instances copyright owners may require payment. In these cases, the authors must bear all such costs. As papers cannot be changed once accepted, authors are advised to apply for copyright permission early to prevent the possibility of the paper having to be withdrawn from publication. Note that receiving permission may take up to eight weeks and that the paper cannot be processed for publication before such permission has been granted.

Manuscript preparation

Manuscripts should be created using Microsoft Word and be double-spaced with 2.5-cm margins on all sides. Pages should be numbered consecutively, with consecutive line numbering from the first through the last page, using the automatic numbering function of the software. The recommended font is Times New Roman and the recommended font size is 12 points.

The entire manuscript for a full-length article, including references and tables, should be no more than 6000 words. Do not use field functions. For indenting, use tab stops, not the space bar. For tables, use the table function, not spreadsheets. For equations, use either the equation editor or MathType.

Abstracts

A structured abstract of no more than 250 words is required. The Abstract for all manuscripts except case reports should be divided into Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.

Keywords

Keywords are required for indexing and abstracting services. Up to six words should be listed.

Main text

The main text of an original article should be divided into Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion sections.

Abbreviations must be defined following their first use in the Abstract as well as in the main text and in the figures and tables. Only commonly accepted abbreviations should be used. Drug and chemical names should be stated using generic or standard chemical nomenclature. Units of measurement should conform to the International System (SI); however, clinical data may be presented in conventional units were deemed more appropriate.

Headings and subheadings

Use no more than three levels of headings.

Footnotes

Footnotes may be used to give additional information but should not consist of a reference citation, which is not included in the reference list at the end of the manuscript and must not contain figures or tables. Footnotes should be numbered consecutively and separately for the title page, the main text, and each table. Footnotes should be indicated by superscript lowercase letters or numbers, or by asterisks for significance values and other statistical data. Footnotes should be positioned at the bottom of the page or table in which they appear.

Acknowledgments

The Acknowledgments section should follow the main text. If data from other published sources are used, the authors must obtain permission as explained above, and state full acknowledgment as indicated by the copyright owners. Acknowledgments should also be made of research grants, technicians, and colleagues who assisted in the study, individuals or companies who provided materials, and mentors who provided advice and encouragement.

References

References should be consecutively numbered in order of appearance in the main text, and be cited using numbers in square brackets before the punctuation (Examples: Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3].) Citation sources of all numbered references should be given in a References section following the Acknowledgments section, and should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been either published or accepted for publication. References should be written appropriately with PubMed style.

Less than six authors:

[1] Duman N, Korkmaz NS, Erol Z. Tissue eosinophilia: a histopathological marker associated with stromal invasion but not histopathological grade in cutaneous squamous neoplasia. Eur Res J. 2015 Nov;1(3):88-93.

More than six authors:

[2] Budak E, Taymur I, Askin R, Gungor BB, Demirci H, Akgul AI, et al. Relationship between internet addiction, psychopathology and self-esteem among university students. Eur Res J. 2015 Nov;1(3):128-35.

Tables

Create tables using Microsoft Word so that any corrections or revisions made can be tracked. Tables should be numbered using Arabic numerals and should follow the References section. Each table should have an appropriate title briefly explaining the contents of the table. Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order. Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption. Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

Figures

Each of figure should be added into the main text following references or tables in separate pages. Number all figures consecutively. For figures with multiple parts, each part should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.). If you use an appendix in your manuscript containing one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of figures from the main text. Do not number the appendix figures “a1, a2, a3, etc.”.

Figure legends

Legends for all figures should be included at the end of the manuscript, beginning with the word “Figure” in bold type, followed by the figure number also in bold type. Do not use any punctuation following the figure number, and do not place any punctuation at the end of the legend. The legend should define all elements included in the figure such as boxes, circles, and arrows. Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure legends.

Multicenter clinical trials

The TJIM welcomes the submission of manuscripts reporting results of multi-center clinical trials. These manuscripts may be submitted with authorship in one of the following styles:

• The name of a study group only (collective authorship)
• The names of no more than five individuals and the name of a study group

In each case, one individual must serve as the corresponding author and the names of all individuals specifically involved in the preparation of the manuscript should be listed under the heading Writing Committee following the Acknowledgments section. This should be followed by a list of investigators from each institution under the heading Study Group Investigators. Each author and each Writing Committee member must sign the Copyright Transfer Agreement.

Proofreading

The purpose of proofreading is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables, and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, or changes in title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the editor. After online publication, further changes can be made only in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Content responsibility

Content and scientific accuracy of all manuscripts as well as of any electronic supplementary material, are the sole responsibility of the authors. No responsibility will be assumed by the TJIM for any legal claim arising from injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of product liability, negligence, or other circumstances; nor from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the published material. No test or procedure should be carried out unless the reader judges it to be safe. Independent verification of all diagnoses and drug dosages should be performed. Discussions, views, and recommendations regarding medical procedures, choice of drugs, and drug dosages are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Disclaimer

Although all advertising material in the TJIM is expected to conform to ethical (medical) standards, their inclusion in this publication does not constitute a guarantee or endorsement by the TJIM regarding the quality or value of any product or of the claim made for it by its manufacturer.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

• Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
• Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
• Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).