INSTRUCTION FOR AUTHORS
Preparation of Manuscripts

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with ICMJE (Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals) (updated December 2015 - http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) standards. Authors should refer to the relevant guidelines according to the type of study. CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) for randomized trials, STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) for original observational studies, PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) for meta-analyses, PRISMA-NMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Network Meta-Analyses) for network meta-analyses and TREND (Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Non-randomised Designs) for non-randomized behavioral and public health evaluations.
Manuscripts should be submitted only through DergiPark, the online manuscript submission and review system of the journal. Manuscripts submitted through any other medium will not be evaluated. Our journal publishes articles with a similarity rate below 20%. Manuscripts submitted to the journal will first be subjected to a preliminary evaluation process by the Editorial Board in terms of compliance with the journal's writing rules and language. Manuscripts that are not deemed appropriate for publication in the "Turkish Medical Journal", do not fulfill the spelling rules and requirements, or are not sufficient in terms of content will be returned to the authors or rejected at this stage.
The main text of the manuscripts to be submitted to the journal can be prepared in Turkish or English. Turkish and English abstracts should not exceed 300 words. The full text of the manuscripts should be uploaded to the system as a separate file "without author names". At least 6 files must be uploaded to the system for an article. These are;
1) Cover letter
2) Title page
3) Full text with author names deleted (must include abstract, full text, references, tables, images or figures)
4) Completed and signed "Copyright Transfer Form"
5) Plagiarism report (Reports that include both the similarity percentage and show similar sentences processed into the text should be combined and uploaded.)
6) Ethics committee approval form (if required) (For articles that do not require ethics committee approval, a signed document stating "Ethics committee approval is not required" must be uploaded)


In addition to these 6 files, additional material, image or graphic files should also be uploaded to the system if necessary. Authors can communicate about the article submission and evaluation process through the system.

After the article is uploaded to the system, the publishing team checks whether the article has been sent in accordance with the spelling rules of the journal, and if there is a file that is not uploaded in accordance with the spelling rules, it is sent back to the author and requested to be made in accordance with the spelling rules.
After the first control phase, the article is examined by the editors and the referee evaluation process is initiated for the articles deemed appropriate. Revisions may be requested from authors in line with the suggestions of referees and editors. If a revision is requested from the author, he/she is expected to respond to each revision suggestion one by one. The author should create a "Response to the Reviewer" file containing his/her answers to the revision suggestions and add it to the system together with the revised files using the "Add Additional File" tab. Since more than one revision suggestion may be sent to the authors, the "Response to the Reviewer " file should be uploaded again during each revision process, and these files should be re-uploaded to the system by adding the symbol indicating the number of revision such as R1, R2, etc. to the header of the file, without deleting the previous one each time.

Submission Type

Turkish Medical Journal accepts original articles as well as many types of manuscripts including short reports, review articles, case reports, letters to the editor, educational articles, literature summaries and congress/meeting impressions.
-Research Articles: Turkish Medical Journal accepts original clinical (conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention) or experimental (human, animal or in-vitro) research articles in all fields. These articles may include randomized controlled trials, observational studies (cohort, case-controlled or cross-sectional), diagnostic accuracy studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, non-randomized behavioral and public health intervention studies, experimental animal studies or other clinical and experimental studies.
-Case reports and case series: Turkish Medical Journal publishes original, educational or rare case reports and case series.
-Reviews: Turkish Medical Journal publishes clinical reviews written for clinicians on the natural course of diseases, current diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, basic science reviews on the scientific basis of the mechanism and treatment of diseases, and current reviews on new drugs and devices.
-Short reports: Publishes research data that can make a significant contribution in the relevant field in a short and concise manner. Short reports should include a title in Turkish and English, a one-paragraph abstract in Turkish and English, and keywords in Turkish and English. Short reports should include at most two tables and one figure/graphic/picture. There is no need to prepare a segmented abstract.
Manuscript Preparation
- Research articles should be less than 4000, systematic reviews and meta-analyses should be less than 5000, and case reports should be less than 2500 words (excluding abstracts/tables/figures/references). All manuscripts except the first page should have page numbers in the lower right corner. The manuscript should contain appropriate number and content of tables and figures necessary for the understanding of the subject. Manuscripts should contain a maximum of five tables and 3 figures.
- General Format: All manuscripts should be written in A4 size, and the margins of the page should be 2.5 cm from the top, bottom and sides. References should be arranged according to the order of citation in the article. All of the text, including references, tables and figure legends, should be written with 1.5 line spacing, justified on both sides and using 12-point font. Whenever possible, "Times New Roman" 10-point font should be used for footnotes, symbols and other special characters. Explanations of abbreviations should be given where they are first used, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Abbreviations used in the article should be internationally accepted.
- Case presentations should be organized under the headings of introduction, case presentation and discussion after the abstract.
- Sections of the manuscript: All research articles should be written in accordance with the following headings:
- Letter of application: Authors should indicate the title of the manuscript, the type of manuscript, and whether the submitted work has been previously presented at a scientific meeting. The submission letter should include a statement that the manuscript will not be published or considered for publication elsewhere while it is under review by Turkish Medical Journal. Contact information, including full name, address, telephone number and e-mail address of the corresponding author should be provided at the bottom of the submission letter. The submission letter should be signed by the author responsible for the correspondence, scanned and submitted in jpg or pdf format together with the other files of the manuscript.
- Cover Page: The cover page is prepared as a separate electronic file containing the following elements. Information should be provided in this file in the following order:
- Title of the manuscript (in Turkish and English, descriptive and without any abbreviations): The title of the article should be as short and descriptive as possible; all words in the title should begin with a capital letter (except conjunctions), should be in bold font, and should be placed in the center of the page. For Turkish articles, the title should be written in both Turkish and English. Abbreviations should never be used in the title of the article.
- Full names and institutions of all authors should be clearly written and no academic title should be used.
- The cover page should include the institutional information of all authors (name of the institution, city and country).
- Authors should be identified by the designators "1" "2" "3" in the upper right corner of the author's name and at the beginning of each institution.
- The author responsible for correspondence should be indicated in the article, marked with "*", and his/her name, e-mail address and telephone number should be indicated.
- ORCID numbers of all authors should be included on this page.
- If available, the place and date of the scientific meeting where the study was presented should be indicated.
- If any financial support was received for the study, it should be indicated.
- Abstract: Turkish and English abstracts should be written on separate pages after the title page. Turkish and English abstracts should contain a maximum of 300 words and should be formatted according to the following headings: (1) Objective, (2) Method, (3) Results, (4) Discussion. Under the above headings, the subject of the article, how the study was conducted, the main findings and the conclusions drawn by the authors from these findings should be briefly presented. Abstracts of case reports and reviews should not have any sub-headings. Abstracts should use as few abbreviations as possible and should not include references.
- Keywords: English keywords should be a maximum of six in accordance with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Turkish keywords should be a maximum of six in accordance with Turkish Scientific Terms.
- Introduction: Briefly, the purpose of the study should be written together with the available data on the topic under investigation. The originality of the subject and its contribution to the literature should be addressed.
- Materials and Methods: How the study was conducted, how the participants were selected and which methods were used should be written in detail in this section. New or modified methods used should be described in detail. Doses, concentrations, route and duration of administration of drugs and chemical agents should be specified. Ethics committee approval (the name of the ethics committee should be concealed, date of approval, issue number) should be stated. For studies requiring administrative permission, the permission obtained from the relevant authorities should be indicated. Under a subheading in the Methods section, all statistical methods used, including summarizing the data, testing the hypothesis and the level of statistical difference based on the tests, should be written briefly and concisely. The software used should be described.
- Findings: Findings should be written in a logical order and as detailed as possible in the text, supported by figures and tables, and the information given in figures and tables should not be repeated in the text unless necessary.
- Discussion: The primary and secondary results of the study should be briefly presented and compared with similar and different findings in the literature. Limitations and strengths of the study should be mentioned in this section.
- Conclusion: The conclusions and recommendations reached in the study should be summarized in this section. Inferences that are not supported by the results of the study should be avoided.
- Conflict of Interest: Under this heading all potential conflicts of interest and areas of competition, if any, should be declared. All relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers or other companies with services or products related to the subject of the article should be clearly stated. If there is no conflict of interest, the statement "no conflict of interest" should be written in this section.
- Financial support: Under this heading, the names of the funds or organizations supporting the study, if any, should be written.
- Acknowledgments: The names of individuals who contributed to the study but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be given in this section. The approval of all individuals mentioned should be obtained.
-Author contribution: The role of each author in the manuscript must be stated. Each author must contribute to at least three of the tasks specified in the copyright transfer form.
- References: The number of references can be maximum 50 in research articles and maximum 30 in case reports. The maximum number of references can be 30 for short literature reviews and/or case series and 80 for reviews (excluding systematic reviews and meta-analyses, there is no number of references limit for those). References should be written according to "APA" citation format in the order of occurrence in the manuscript. Examples of APA citation formats for different types of references can be found here.

- Figures: Figures should be prepared and uploaded separately from the full text file. Each figure should be presented on separate pages within its own file. X-rays, CT, MRI films and other diagnostic imaging and photographs of pathologic specimens can be saved as an electronic file in JPEG or GIF format that will create a high resolution image (at least 300 DPI). The letters, numbers and symbols on the images should be clear and uniform throughout the manuscript and of a size that can be read even when reduced for publication. As far as possible, images should be understandable on their own. If a patient photograph is to be used, written permission must be obtained from the patient or legally responsible relative. The maximum number of figures and pictures can be three.
- Tables: Tables should be prepared and uploaded separately from the full text file. Each table or figure should be presented on separate pages within its own file. Each table should be given a short title. Explanations should be made in footnotes, not in the title. All non-standard abbreviations should be explained in the footnotes. Make sure that each table is cited in the text. If the tabular data or figures are taken from another published source, the necessary permissions should be obtained. Manuscripts should contain a maximum of five tables.
Evaluation of Articles
- Uploading the manuscript to the Turkish Medical Journal system means that it has not been previously published (except as an abstract or as part of a presentation, review or thesis), that it is not intended to be published elsewhere, and that publication in the Turkish Medical Journal has been approved by all authors.
- Manuscripts deemed appropriate by the editorial board are sent to referees for further evaluation. Correction(s) may be requested from the author(s) according to the referee reports and editorial evaluation results. All changes suggested by the referees or the editorial board should be responded severally and the changes should be indicated in the text when uploading revised manuscripts. Acceptance of manuscripts is subject to the journal's editorial policies regarding originality, ethics, scientific content and subject matter. All objections and requests should be notified to the editors in writing. The Editorial Board is authorized to make corrections in the text without changing the essence of the manuscript when deemed necessary.
- Turkish Medical Journal has adopted a double-blind review process for the evaluation of manuscripts. Manuscripts deemed appropriate by the Editorial Board are sent to relevant referees whose names are kept confidential. The editorial board is authorized to appoint referees. The Editorial Board takes into account the referee reports and many other factors.
Accepted articles and publication process:
- Accepted manuscripts are subject to editorial revisions and copyediting. The pre-print proof of the manuscript is sent to the author responsible for the correspondence and requested to be checked and sent back to the journal within two days. Accepted manuscripts are queued for publication with the approval of the Editorial Board and published online as soon as possible.