Publication Policy
Journal of TOGU Health Sciences is the publication organ of Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa University Faculty of Health Sciences. Journal of TOGU Health Sciences is a double blind peer reviewed, open access journal and published electronically three times a year, in January, May and September.
It is published electronically in order to follow the developments in the field of health sciences and medicine, to create a qualified resource in this field and to support the development of qualified academic publications in this field in our country.
The language of publication of the articles to be published in the journal is Turkish or English. It is important to use a proper Turkish in articles written in Turkish. For this reason, the Turkish dictionary of the Turkish Language Association or the address https://sozluk.gov.tr/ and the terms dictionary of the Turkish medical associations should be taken as a basis.
In addition to giving priority to research articles, the journal also publishes review articles, case reports, letters to the editor, technical notes and meeting reports. Scientific and theoretical articles are also accepted for review for publication. Review articles are generally in the form of invitation, but priority is given to these invitation review articles. Maximum 4 review articles are accepted in each issue.
The editorial board may request the articles submitted for publication to be reviewed and corrected or rearranged in order to comply with the spelling rules. If the article sent to the journal is in conformity with the formal principles, it is published after the editor and at least two referees have been examined, and if necessary, the requested changes are made by the authors.
Article submission is done "electronically". Article acceptance procedures are made through the web address (https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/togusagbilderg/). Only articles submitted this way are processed. You can also follow all the processes related to your articles from this address.
The editorial rules of the journal are based on the standards of the document titled “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals-International Committee of Medical Journal Editors” (http://www.icmje.org/) and “Committee on Publication Ethics-COPE (https://publicationethics.org/).
If the article sent to the journal conforms to the formal principles, the “Ethics Committee Approval Document” must be uploaded.
When applying to the journal, the copyright transfer form is signed by the all authors for the articles. The "Copyright Transfer Form" must be signed with e-signature or wet signature and scanned and uploaded to the system together with the article. The author responsible for communication is the one who carries out all kinds of correspondence from the presentation of the article to its publication. Authors whose names are mentioned on the copyright transfer form must have a direct contribution to the submitted article.
The name designated as the author must have all of the following attributes:
He/she should contribute to the planning of the study and the collection of the data or the analysis and interpretation of the data.
He/she should contribute to the drafting or revision of the article.
He/she must read and accept the final version of the article to be sent to the journal and published. Excerpts from previously published articles, books or magazines are included in the article, table, figure, etc. If available, authors must obtain written permission from the copyright owner and authors of the relevant article, table, figure, questionnaire and scale, send the permission letter with the article and indicate this in the article.
If citations, tables and figures that were previously published in a manuscript, book or a journal are used in the current paper, the authors must obtain written permission from the copyright holder and authors of the relevant article, table, figure, questionnaire and scale and must send the permission letter with the article and indicate this in the text.

Ethical Principles
In the studies submitted to our journal, the following issues should be followed under the heading of ethical rules:

Ethics committee approval must be obtained separately for research in all disciplines, including social sciences, and for clinical and experimental studies on humans and animals that require an ethical committee decision, this approval must be stated and documented in the article.
Articles should include a statement that the Research and Publication Ethics are complied with.
In studies requiring ethics committee approval, information about the permission (name of the board, date and number) should be included in the method section and also on the last page of the article. In case reports, the information that the informed consent form was signed should be included in the article.
In accordance with the ethical rules recommended by TR Index, which is a bibliographic / full-text database developed by TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM;
"In the studies that require the permission of the ethics committee, the information about the permission should be included in the article". In the articles to be evaluated in our journal, it should be stated in the article that the approval of the ethics committee was obtained. It should be clearly presented from which institution, on what date and with which decision or issue number the permissions were obtained.

Researches requiring Ethics Committee permission are as follows:
All kinds of research conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require data collection from participants using questionnaires, interviews, focus group work, observation, and experimentation.
Use of humans and animals (including material / data) for experimental or other scientific purposes,
Clinical studies on humans,
Research on animals,
Retrospective studies in accordance with the law on protection of personal data
It should be stated that permission is obtained from the owners for the use of scales, surveys, photographs belonging to others, and the copyright regulations are complied with for the ideas and works of art used.
Publisher's Ethical Responsibilities

Journal of TOGU Health Sciences is the publication organ of Tokat Gaziosmanpasa University Faculty of Health Sciences. In this context, fee or donation for evaluation or printing cannot be requested from any author at any stage of the journal's publication process or after the article is published.
Members of the Editorial Board are appointed for three years, taking into account the branches of health sciences.
According to the field of the article, the editor in chief or editorial board may also send an article to academicians who are not members of the Editorial Board for review as assistant editors, if necessary.
The editor first evaluates the conformity of an article submitted for evaluation to the publication ethics and examines the scientific importance, originality, scientific validity and relevance of the subject to the field of the journal and submits the article to the editorial board or referees.
In the event of a negative situation about the article, the editor can use the right to "reject" the article or send it back to the author without taking it into consideration.
The editor is responsible for the selection of referees from among the academicians who have a command of the subject, the "blindness" of the referees to the authors and their institutions, and the "blindness" of the authors to the referees unless the referee specifically requests them.
He/she is responsible for submitting the corrections requested by the referees to the author in an explanatory and polite language. The ethical maintenance of referee evaluations or special evaluations (statistical analysis etc.) within the scope of the "article evaluation form" of the referees and contribution to the authors in the scientific preparation of the articles at higher levels are also in the scope of the editor’s responsibility.
Ethical Responsibilities of Referees

During the article evaluation process of Journal of TOGU Health Sciences, referees cannot communicate directly with the authors in accordance with the "blind" refereeing practice.
The notes specified on the text and requests for correction, primarily the article evaluation forms, are forwarded to the editors via the website / e-mail address. These corrections should be prepared in a way to present the positive and negative features of the article to the editor. Although the referees have been appointed, if they are not experts on the article, they should not accept to evaluate the relevant article.
The referees should make the evaluation confidentially and should not share positive or negative comments about the content of the article before the article is published. They should evaluate in accordance with the principle of impartiality. If they detect a conflict of interest between "author-author" or "author-referee" in the article, they should only report this to the editor.
Referees should make their evaluations in accordance with academic etiquette, especially constructive principles. The referees must evaluate the manuscript, which they have accepted to be evaluated, within the specified period. If the referee will delay the evaluation process for any reason, he/she should report this failure to the editor.

Ethical Responsibilities Demanded From Authors
Ethics committee approval must be obtained for research conducted in all disciplines, and this approval must be clearly stated in the article. If requested by the editor, it should also be documented.
Articles without the approval of the ethics committee will not be accepted for evaluation and will be removed from the process at any stage.
Articles sent to our journal must not have been published in another journal or sent for publication.
If it was presented as a summary text at congresses or meetings, this should be clearly stated during the submission of the article.
Authors should have organized their articles according to the journal's writing rules and should reference all the citations they use in the article.
Authors should declare their scientific contributions to the article by specifying the field of contribution. Authors must ensure that the work is their own and that the article does not contain plagiarism.
All article authors must have read the final version of the article. In the articles submitted for publication, each author who has signed the "Copyright Form" has equal responsibility regarding the ethical principles.
The authors can recommend the referees they hope will contribute to the evaluation process of the article to the editor. The appointment of these referees to the article is at the discretion of the Editor. No communication or interest relationship should be entered into with the proposed referees.

Plagiarism
All submitted works are checked for plagiarism using iThenticate, and then their suitability for publication within the journal is evaluated.
Works with high plagiarism rate, insufficient originality, serious scientific or technical errors are rejected.