Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences

Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences (TUJNS) publishes studies with strong scientific content in the fields of Biology, Biotechnology and Basic Medicine Sciences in order to make articles available to a wide range of scientists at the international level. The journal provides researchers with a fast and fair environment to submit, improve and publish their studies. The journal is not only free of any kind of submission and publication charge but also it allows free online access to published articles.

Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences (TUJNS) publishes experimental and theoretical contents in the form of research articles, short communications, technical notes, reviews, letters to the editor and book introductions in fields of Life Sciences. The main feature of publishing policy is the contribution to science. Studies for which no scientific contribution decision was reported by reviewers are not published.

Writing Rules

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

All submissions uploaded to the manuscript evaluation system will be investigated in weekly meetings by the Editorial Board for the control of their scientific contents. Individual views of board members are received and the final decision on the submission is given by the Editor in chief. Submissions with scientific contents are assigned a section editor for further processes. Section editors send a manuscript as soon as possible to 2 reviewers with a PhD degree at the least for a review request. The reviewers are asked to inform the section editors in 7 days to inform the section editors about their decisions (accept or refuse to review) on the evaluation of the manuscripts. Section editors assign new reviewers for those who refuse the review request or who do not respond in 7 days. Reviewers accepting the manuscripts for evaluation complete their review tasks in 21 days and send their review reports to section editors with which they reject the manuscript or ask for a resubmission after revision. TUJNS applies a double-blind review process. Section editors make a decision considering the reviewers’ reports and inform the Editor-in-Chief. Then Editor-in-Chief gives the final decision about the manuscript and informs the author(s) about the decision.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES

All submissions to the Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences should be original studies. The authors are encouraged to follow the ethical guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All submissions undergo plagiarism control by the Editor using the web-based iThenticate program to confirm their originality as a natural necessity to keeping the rights of the authors and to meet the journal editorial responsibilities. The editor considers the report of the plagiarism control in terms of not only numerical values of the overlap but also in other ethical points that authors should pay attention to in citations and then makes a decision to move the manuscript in further evaluation steps or not.

For more information about TUJNS Ethical principles click here.

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA

Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences follows the below authorship criteria of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and every corresponding author should fill the Authorship contribution form based on these criteria of COPE.

Only persons who meet these authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content:

1. Made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study,

2. Drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content,

3. Have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication.

All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but who do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but should be acknowledged in the “Acknowledgements” section after their written permission to be named has been obtained. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the author list and verify that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences (TUJNS) accepts and follows the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJJE) in case financial and non-financial relations and activities create a conflict of interest. In the conflict of interest, it is important that the participants (authors, referees, editors and journal staff) clearly state the effects in terms of providing financial gain as well as the effect made in terms of ensuring the well-being of patients or ensuring the validity of the research. The corresponding author who submits a manuscript to TUJNS has to upload the conflict of interest discloser form to the article submission section by having all authors sign it.

Authors are obliged to disclose in the TUJNS conflict of interest disclosure all relations and activities that may create bias with their work in the manuscript they submit to TUJNS.

Referees invited to evaluate a manuscript in TUJNS should decline the invitation to referee in case of any conflict of interest regarding the manuscript or authors. It is recommended that the reviewer contact and consult with the Editor in case of doubts about situations that may lead to a conflict of interest.

Journal employees can publish manuscripts in TUJNS. However, a limited number of manuscripts can be accepted in an issue. In studies accepted for evaluation, manuscript authors who are journal employees are excluded from all processes, and this is clearly stated at the end of the article in the conflict of interest section.

DATA SHARING POLICY

TUJNS requires the authors to select at least one proper Data Sharing Statements and to indicate it in their manuscript as standardized below. Authors can select more than one statement if their data are under different conditions.

Authors are encouraged to visit the ICMJE recommendations web page for more information.

Selected statements publish at the end of the manuscript under the“Data Sharing” header.

• Data are in an open access repository

The author(s) should clearly state the repository's name, URL, and the repository's conditions for using the data.

• Data available on reasonable request

The author(s) should be given detailed information about the special conditions regarding the use of the requested data.

• Data obtained by third parties can be provided on request

It should be stated by which institution or organization the data is provided. It should be clearly stated what the data is, and detailed information should be given about which requests can be made on-demand and the special conditions, if any, related to its use.

• All data are available within the study

It is sufficient to write the above statement regarding this situation.

• The data set has not been created

In cases where a data set is not created for the study, it is sufficient to write the statement "Not applicable".

• No data

In cases where data is not collected for the study, it is sufficient to write the statement "Not applicable".

• Data will not be shared
It is sufficient to write the above statement regarding this situation.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS STATEMENTS

Research involving Humans

All data from human subjects, materials or data must comply with the WMA Declaration of Helsinki. An ethics committee approval from the institution where the study was conducted and showing that the study was ethically approved should be documented. In this document, the name of the ethics committee and the relevant permission number should be stated. The editor-in-chief can contact the relevant ethics committee for more information when necessary. In addition, the Editor-in-Chief has the right to reject the articles for which correct applications cannot be made.

Patient Consent

Regarding the confidentiality and security of personal data, the patient's consent to participate in a research or a study should be obtained in accordance with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (www.icmje.org). The editor-in-chief can contact the relevant ethics committee for more information when necessary. In addition, the Editor-in-Chief has the right to reject the articles for which correct applications cannot be made.

Research involving Animals and their biological materials

The welfare of animals used for research should be respected before, during and after treatment. Please follow the guidelines prepared by ARRIVE for important steps such as the design of the study to be used in the research, the number of animals to be used and the experimental procedures. In addition, an ethics committee approval from the institution where the study was conducted and showing that the research was ethically approved should be documented. In this document, the name of the ethics committee and the relevant permission number should be stated. The editor-in-chief can contact the relevant ethics committee for more information when necessary. In addition, the Editor-in-Chief has the right to reject the articles on animal welfare issues where the right practices cannot be applied.

Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences
(Trakya Univ J Nat Sci)

Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences is published twice a year in April and in October and includes theoretical and experimental articles in the fields of Biology, Biotechnology and Basic Medicine Sciences. Original studies, research notes, reviews, technical notes, letters to the Editor and book reviews can be published in the journal. The publishing language for all articles in the journal is English. On the other hand, authors are required to provide a Turkish abstract also. The Turkish version of the abstract will be supplied by the journal for foreign authors. Abstracts should include an introduction, material and methods, results and discussion sections in summary. The authors should pay attention to research and publication ethics Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in preparation of their manuscripts before submission by considering national and international valid ethics. An approval of Ethics and Animal Welfare Committee is mandatory for submissions based on experimental animals and this approval should be provided during the submission of the manuscripts. Articles that have not been published elsewhere previously and whose copyright has not been given anywhere else should be submitted. All responsibilities related to published articles in the Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences belong to the authors.

Submitting articles

Articles should be submitted on the web through https://dergipark.org.tr/trkjnat and all submissions should be performed online.

Authors, who are already a member of the DergiPark system, can enter in the login section using their “user name” and “password“ to submit their articles.

Authors entering the DergiPark system for the first time to submit an article will enter in the “REGISTER” section to submit their articles.

Article preparation rules

Articles should be submitted to the Journal using MS Word preparing 12 points Times New Roman font and 1.5 raw spacing. Author names and contact info must be on the first page, the article must continue on the second page without author names and contact info. The whole article should have been numbered with a line number restarting each page. The author's name must not be specified any academic titles. If studies are supported by a foundation, this support should have been written in the acknowledgement section.

Articles should be arranged as below:

Authors: The name(s) of the author(s) should not be abbreviated and must be written under the title one by one, with surnames in capital letters. Address(es) should be written in full. Corresponding authors in multiple-authored submissions should be indicated, and the address and e-mail of the corresponding author should be written just under the author(s) list. No other information about the manuscript should be included in this page. The main manuscript text should start with the following new page and should not include any author-contact information.

Title: Should be short and explanatory and written in capital letters and centered.

Abstract and keywords: Turkish and English abstracts should not exceed 250 words. “Keywords” should be written under the abstract in small letters and all keywords should be written using a comma after all. Keywords should not be replica of the title words if it is not obligatory. The abstract should begin “Abstract” word from the left side of the page. The main and subheaders (if present) should not be numbered.

Introduction: The aim of the submitted and history of the previous studies should be indicated in this section. SI (Systeme International) system and abbreviation should be used in the article. Other abbreviations- should be explained once in their first appearance in the text. No “.” sign should be used after abbreviations except those used at the end of a sentence (…the determined distance is 45 m. Therefore, …).

Material and Method: If the submitted study is experimental, the methods of the experiments should be given in detail. The method(s) used in the article should be descriptive for others to repeat. If a widely known experimental method is used, the method does not need to be explained in detail. In this situation, indicating only the name of the experimental method or citing the study who used the method for the first time will be enough.

Results: Obtained results should be given in this section without any comment. Results can be explained with tables, figures or graphics, if necessary.

Discussion: Results must be discussed, but unnecessary duplications should be avoided. In this section, rather than giving literature data, authors should focus on their results considering similarities and differences with and between previously conducted researches and should discuss possible reasons of similarities and differences. The contribution to science and the importance of the obtained results should also be mentioned as much as possible in this section.

Acknowledgements: Should be as short as possible. Thanks are usually made to institutions or individuals who support the study or to experts who reviewed the article before submitting to the journal. The acknowledgement section should be given before the references section in a separate header.

References: Unpublished information should not be given as a reference (examples of unpublished references: articles in preparation or submitted somewhere, unpublished data or observations, data obtained based on interviews with individuals, reports, lecture notes, seminars, etc.). However, thesis completed and signed by a jury and articles with DOI numbers given can be used as reference. References should be given at the end of the text, sorted alphabetically by author’s surname and should be given with numbering.

Reference style:

You can download the Endnote style of TUJNS from here.

Or you can follow the instruction below.

Articles: Surname of the author, the first letter of author’s first name, publication year, article title, the name of the journal, volume, issue, page numbers. Journal name is written in italics.

Example:

Articles with single author

Surname, N. Year. Article title (First letter of all words small). Whole name of journal, Volume (Issue): page range.

Aybeke, M. 2016. The detection of appropriate organic fertilizer and mycorrhizal method enhancing salt stress tolerance in rice (Oryza sativa L.) under field conditions. Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences, 17(1): 17-27.

Articles with two or more authors

Surname1, N1. & Surname2, N2. Year. Article title (First letter of all words small). Whole name of journal, Volume (Issue): page range.

Dursun, A. & Fent, M. 2016. Contributions to The Cicadomorpha and Fulgoromorpha (Hemiptera) fauna of Turkish Thrace region. Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences, 17(2): 123-128.

Surname1, N1., Surname2, N2. & Surname3, N. Year. Article title (First letter of words small). Whole name of journal, Volume (Issue): page range.

Becenen, N., Uluçam, G. & Altun, Ö. 2017. Synthesis and antimicrobial activity of iron cyclohexanedicarboxylic acid and examination of pH effect on extraction in water and organic phases. Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences, 18(1): 1-7.

Book: Surname of author, first letter of author’s first name, Year. Book title (name of translator or book editor if present), volume, edition number, press, city, page number.

Example:

Surname, N. Year. Book Title (First letter of words small and italic), volume, edition number, press, city, page number.

Czechowski, W., Radchenko, A., Czechowska, W. & Vepsäläinen, K. 2012. The ants of Poland with reference to the myrmecofauna of Europe. Museum and Institute of Zoology PAS, Warsaw, 496 pp.

Book Section: Surname of author, first letter of the author’s first name, Year. Section name, page range. In: (Editor(s) of Book, Book title, press, city, page number).

Example:

Surname, N. Year. Section name, page range. In: Editor of Book, Book title (First letter of words small and italic), press, city, page number.

Jansson, A. 1995. Family Corixidae Leach, 1815—The water boatmen. pp. 26-56. In: Aukema, B. & Rieger, C.H. (eds). Catalogue of the Heteroptera of the Palaearctic Region. Vol. 1. Enicocephalomorpha, Dipsocoromorpha, Nepomorpha, Gerromorphaand Leptopodomorpha. The Netherlands Entomological Society, Amsterdam, xxvi + 222 pp.

Congress, Symposium: Surname, N. Year. Presentation title (first letters of all words small), page range. Name of Congress/Symposium, Date (day range and month), place.

Example:

Bracko, G., Kiran, K., & Karaman, C. 2015. The ant fauna of Greek Thrace, 33-34. Paper presented at the 6^th Central European Workshop of Myrmecology, 24-27 July, Debrecen-Hungary.

Internet: If any information is taken from an internet source (articles published in journals and taken from internet excluded), internet address should be written in full in references section and access date should be indicated.

Surname, N. Year. Name of study (First letter of words small). http://www...... (Date accessed: 12.08.2009).

Hatch, S. 2001. Student sperception of online education. Multimedia CBT Systems. http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/sawd/moconf/papers2001/hatch.pdf (Date accessed: 12.08.2009).

References within the text should not be numbered and indicated as in the following examples.

Examples:

... atmospheric pollution is causing by x matter (Landen 2002). If an article has two authors, it should be indicated in the text as (Landen & Bruce 2002) or ... according to Landen & Bruce (2002) .... If there are three or more authors, references should be indicated as (Landen et al. 2002) or according to Landen et al. 2002 ...

Graphics and tables: All photos, pictures, drawings and graphics except tables should be indicated as Figures. Pictures, figures and graphics should be clear and ready to print with the offset technique. The places of all tables and figures should be indicated in the text. All tables and figures should be numbered within the text respectively (Table 1, Fig. 1, Figs 3, 4). Figure numbers and legends are written below the figures, table numbers and legends are written above the tables.

All figures (all pictures, drawings and graphics except table) should also be uploaded to the system separately with 300dpi resolution at least as .tif file using the figure numbers in the files name.

Submitted articles are subjected to prior review by the Editorial Board. Editorial Board has the right to reject the articles which are considered of low quality for publish or those which are insufficiently prepared according to the author guidelines. The articles accepted for consideration for evaluation will be sent to two different referees. Editorial Board decides to accept or reject the submissions for publication by taking into account the reports of referees.

COPYRIGHT

The authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights to the article without any restriction.

LICENSE

All articles published in TUJNS is on the “Open Access” terms. All publications are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic Licence (CC BY 4.0) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode) which allows to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format and transform and build upon the material, including for any purpose (including commercial) without further permission or fees being required.

EXPLOITATION ENQUIRY AND COMPLAINTS

All kinds of exploitation doubts and complaints about manuscripts, either published or in the publication process, are evaluated by the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board strictly follows the directives of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) during the evaluations. An ombudsman who has no connection with the parts in any stage of the complaint is appointed and a decision is made. Complaints can be sent to the editor in chief by sending an e-mail to tujns@trakya.edu.tr.

POST-PUBLICATION CHANGE AND WITHDRAWAL OF A MANUSCRIPT

Changes in author ordering, removal or addition of a new author in and withdrawal of a published manuscript can be realized by sending an application to tujns@trakya.edu.tr. The application e-mail should include the reason of the requested change with the evidences. The reasons and the evidence are discussed and finalized by the Editorial Board. Further submissions of authors of a formerly accepted manuscript undergoing a change process are automatically sent back to the authors until the final decision of the manuscript in process.

ADVERTISING

Advertising applications sent to tujns@trakya.edu.tr will be evaluated by the journal owner.

Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENTS

All submissions to Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences should be original studies. The authors are encouraged to follow the ethic guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All submissions undergo a plagiarism control by the Editor using the web-based iThenticate program to confirm their originality as a natural necessity to keeping rights of the authors and to meet the journals editorial responsibilities. The editor considers the report of the plagiarism control in terms of not only numerical values of the overlap but also in other ethical points that authors should pay attention in citations and then makes a decision to move the manuscript in further evaluation steps or not.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS AND THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Editorial Responsibilities and Independence

All editors of Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences are independent in their evaluations and decisions in the journal. No external and/or internal factor can affect their decisions. If the editors are exposed to any kind of positive and/or negative constraints, they keep the right to take legal action against those involved in the constraint. On the other hand, editors are responsible for their decisions in the journal. The editor-in-chief is the only person responsible for journal content and on-time publishing.

Privacy and conflict of interest

Editors and members of the Editorial Board of the journal are forbidden to share submitted materials with third parties other than section editors, statistical editors, Language editors, copy editors, design editors and ombudsman when needed, and to use the submitted materials themselves. If there is a conflict of interest between an editor and an author or institution of the author in terms of cooperation or competition, then another member of the Editorial Board is assigned to manage the evaluation process.

Publishing decisions

Editors provide peer review of submitted manuscripts by assigning at least two reviewers experts in the field. Editor-in-chief is responsible in decision of publishing a manuscript considering the importance of the manuscripts for researchers and readers, reviewer reports, plagiarism and copyright infringement as legal issues. Editor-in-chief can discuss with other editors and reviewers for his/her decision.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS

Contribution to editor decision

Peer-reviewing of a submitted manuscript is the control of its scientific content, scientific layout and suitability according to the principles of the journal, and delivery of the reviewer opinion for unsuitable manuscript content to ensure suitability. The reviewing process not only enables reviewers to forward their evaluations about the manuscripts to the editors but also give them the opportunity to improve the contents of the manuscripts.

Quickness

If a reviewer assigned for evaluation of a manuscript is of expert of a field of science other than the manuscript content, is far to the subject of the manuscript, is short of time for evaluation or possess a conflict of interest, then he/she should inform the assigning editor and ask his/her withdrawal. If the content of the manuscript fits the expertise field of the reviewer, then he/she should complete the evaluation and send the report to the editor as soon as possible.

Privacy

Reviewers assigned for evaluation of manuscripts approve in advance that the manuscripts are secret documents and do not share any information about these documents with third parties except the editors involved in the evaluation. Reviewers continue to not to share information even after the manuscripts are accepted or rejected for publication.

If it is suspected of using an idea in the manuscript that is sent for evaluation to the reviewer without permission, the flowchart of COPE “What to do if you suspect a reviewer has appropriated an author's ideas or data?” is followed.

Standards of objectivity

Reviewers should construct their criticisms on a scientific background and include scientific evidences in their statements. All comments raised by the reviewers to improve the manuscripts should be clear and direct and written in a manner far away from disturbing author feelings. Insulting and derogatory statements should be avoided.

Suitability of the cited references

Reviewers should determine quotations in the manuscripts used without citing a reference. Statements, observations, conclusions or evidences in published articles should be quoted with the citation of the related reference. Reviewers should also be sure about the reality of presence of quotations in the cited reference(s).

Conflict of interests

If a reviewer is in a situation by being involved in one or more interests with the author(s), he/she should inform the editor the assigning editor and ask his/her withdrawal.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AUTHORS

Reporting standards

Authors of original research articles should present the results and discuss on them in a proper way. Since the methodological contents of the articles should be reproducible, the authors should be clear in their statements and should not purposely report wrong or missing data. Authors of review type articles are not recommended to write such articles if they are not an expert of the field of their review topics or when they do not have enough background information or related former studies.

Data accessing and retainment

Authors may be asked to present their Raw data when needed (ethical cases etc.). Therefore, raw data of the manuscripts should be kept in safety to present if needed. The storage period of raw data following publications should be at least 10 years.

Originality and plagiarism

The authors of submitted manuscripts should be sure that their manuscripts are original or include cited references for quotations.

Multiple, repeated, unnecessary or simultaneous submissions

It is not an approved way to produce more than one publication reporting on the same research. The authors should pay attention to such cases and they should not submit the same manuscript to different journals simultaneously.

Authorship of manuscripts

Only the following persons should be included in the manuscripts as responsible authors: i) researchers providing major contribution to concept, design, performing, data collection and/or analysis in a study, ii) researchers involved in preparation or critical revision of manuscripts, iii) researchers approved the latest version of the manuscripts and accepted its submission. Contributors other than the above list (technical assistance, helpers in writing and editing, general contributions etc.) should not be involved in the authors list but can be listed in acknowledgments section. The corresponding authors of manuscripts should provide the separate listing of contributors as authors and those to be involved in acknowledgments section.

Conflict of interests

Authors should clearly declare any kind of conflict of interests in their manuscripts. Absence of conflict of interests about the topic of the manuscripts should also be declared. The most common types of conflict of interests are financial supports, education or other types of funds, personal or institutional relations and affiliations. All sources of financial supports (with their grant or other reference numbers) of the studies should be declared.

Acknowledgment of references

Authors should not use personally obtained information (conversations, correspondences or discussions with bystanders) unless they have the permission of their sources. Information about private documents or refereeing of grant applications should not be used without the permission of the authorities providing the related service.

Peer-Review

Authors are obliged to be involved in the peer review process and should cooperate by responding raw data, evidence for ethical approvals, patient approvals and copyright release form requests of editors and their explanations. Authors should respond either in positive or a negative way to revision suggestions generated by the peer review process. They should be sure to include their counter views in their negative responses.

Basic errors in published manuscripts.

Authors should contact with the journal editor or the publisher for an erratum when they notice an important error or mistake in their published manuscripts. If the editor notices the error, he/she starts the process about erratum on or withdrawal of the published manuscripts.

EXPLOITATION ENQUIRY AND COMPLAINTS

POST-PUBLICATION CHANGE AND WITHDRAWAL OF A MANUSCRIPT

Changes in author ordering, removal or addition of a new author in and withdrawal of a published manuscript can be realized by sending an application to tujns@trakya.edu.tr. The application e-mail should include the reason of the requested change with the evidences. The reasons and the evidences are discussed and finalized by the Editorial Board. Further submissions of authors of a formerly accepted manuscript undergoing a change process are automatically sent back to the authors until the final decision of the manuscript in process.

DISCLAIMER

Editor or members of the editorial board are not responsible for the author opinions and manuscript contents. Authors are responsible for the ethical originality of and possible errors in their manuscripts. They are also responsible for all errors based on page editing before their proofreading. On the other hand, errors taking place after proofreading are in responsibility of the journal directors.

Price Policy

Issue Files

Cover Page

Archive

You can reach the journal's archive between the years of 2000-2011 via https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/trakyafbd/archive (Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences (=Trakya University Journal of Science)

Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Volume: 24 Issue: 1, 4/15/23

Letter to Editor/Editöre Mektup

Page : 1-2

Research Article/Araştırma Makalesi

Page : 3-9

Page : 11-20

Page : 21-29

Page : 31-39

Page : 41-49

Page : 51-62

Page : 63-70

Page : 71-76

Aim & Scope