Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

1. General Principles and Publication Ethics

Troia Medical Journal is a peer-reviewed, open-access medical journal committed to the impartial, reliable, transparent, and ethical generation and dissemination of scientific knowledge.

The journal’s editorial and publication processes are conducted with reference to internationally recognized principles of research and publication ethics, particularly the relevant recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher are responsible, within their respective roles, for safeguarding scientific integrity, editorial independence, confidentiality, intellectual property rights, and research ethics.

The journal does not tolerate plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, deceptive image manipulation, citation manipulation, duplicate or redundant publication, inappropriate authorship, or other forms of research or publication misconduct. Suspected cases are assessed individually on the basis of their nature and available evidence, with relevant COPE guidance and flowcharts followed where appropriate.

2. Editorial Independence and Impartiality

All editorial decisions at Troia Medical Journal are based on scientific merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal’s scope.

The journal owner or publisher, institutional relationships, financial interests, political considerations, or other external factors do not influence manuscript evaluation, reviewer selection, or acceptance and rejection decisions.

The Editor-in-Chief has final authority over the journal’s editorial content and publication decisions. Editors make decisions independently of the nationality, ethnicity, sex or gender, religious or political beliefs, institutional affiliations, or other non-scientific characteristics of authors.

Editors and Editorial Board members must disclose any competing interests related to manuscripts they handle and must recuse themselves from the editorial process when appropriate.

3. Prevention and Handling of Research and Publication Misconduct

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. Similarity reports are evaluated by editors in context. A specific similarity percentage alone does not establish plagiarism or constitute an automatic basis for rejection.

Allegations or concerns involving plagiarism, inappropriate text recycling, data fabrication or falsification, deceptive image manipulation, citation manipulation, inappropriate authorship, duplicate publication, or other suspected research or publication misconduct are handled confidentially and impartially.

When concerns arise, the journal may:

• request explanations or supporting documentation from the authors;
• request raw data or analytical records;
• suspend evaluation or reject the manuscript;
• contact the authors’ institutions or research funders when appropriate; or
• initiate a correction, expression of concern, or retraction process for published work.

Each case is assessed individually. Automatic or indefinite bans on future submissions are not the journal’s standard approach.

4. Ethical Oversight, Human Research, and Animal Studies

Research involving human participants, human data, tissues, or biological materials must be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and applicable national, institutional, and ethical requirements.

Where applicable, approval or an exemption determination must be obtained from an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review board before the study begins. The manuscript should state the name of the committee, the decision or reference number, and the approval date where available. Editors may request documentation when necessary.

Informed consent for research participation must be obtained in accordance with the study design, applicable regulations, and the decision of the relevant ethics committee. Where consent is not required or has been waived by an ethics committee, this should be stated in the manuscript.

Information that may directly or indirectly identify a patient should not be published unless scientifically necessary. Appropriate written consent for publication must be obtained when identifiable patient information or images are included.

Written consent for publication from the patient or legally authorized representative is required for Case Reports submitted to Troia Medical Journal.

Animal research must comply with applicable institutional and national regulations and accepted ethical standards for the care and use of experimental animals. Required institutional animal ethics approval must be reported in the manuscript.

5. Authorship and Contributorship

Troia Medical Journal follows the ICMJE criteria for authorship. To qualify as an author, an individual must meet all four of the following criteria:

1. Make substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data.
2. Draft the manuscript or revise it critically for important intellectual content.
3. Approve the final version to be published.
4. Agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Funding acquisition alone, data collection alone, general administrative support, or general supervision of a research group does not justify authorship.

Contributors who do not meet the authorship criteria should be acknowledged, with their permission, in the Acknowledgments section.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all listed authors meet the authorship criteria, that eligible contributors have not been omitted, and that all authors have approved the submitted version.

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be justified. Such changes may be considered in exceptional circumstances following editorial review and written agreement from all affected authors.

6. Competing Interests and Funding

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose all financial and non-financial relationships or activities that could influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, their work or judgment.

Authors must disclose all sources of funding, grants, material support, or institutional support related to the study and, where applicable, describe the role of the sponsor in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or manuscript preparation.

When no competing interests exist, this should be explicitly stated.

Reviewers or editors with a significant competing interest related to a manuscript must recuse themselves from its evaluation or decision-making process.

7. Originality, Simultaneous Submission, and Redundant Publication

Manuscripts submitted to Troia Medical Journal must be original and must not be under simultaneous consideration by another journal.

If a manuscript substantially overlaps with work that has previously been published, accepted, or submitted elsewhere, this must be disclosed to the Editorial Office at submission and the related work must be appropriately cited.

Presentation of a study as an abstract or poster at a scientific meeting does not by itself constitute prior publication; however, such presentation must be disclosed at submission.

Duplicate or redundant publication, undisclosed substantial textual or data overlap, and inappropriate text recycling are assessed in accordance with relevant publication ethics principles.

8. Data Sharing and Reproducibility

Troia Medical Journal supports transparency and reproducibility in research.

Authors are encouraged, whenever ethically, legally, commercially, and practically appropriate, to make the data, protocols, code, and other materials supporting their findings available through trusted institutional or discipline-specific repositories.

A data availability statement should be included where applicable. When data cannot be shared openly, the reason should be explained.

Editors and reviewers may request anonymized raw data, analytical records, or other supporting documentation when necessary for scientific evaluation or ethical review.

Authors should retain research records for a reasonable period in accordance with applicable institutional and regulatory requirements.

9. Ethical Responsibilities of the Publisher

The publisher supports editorial independence and ensures that publication decisions remain free from institutional, financial, or political influence.

The publisher is responsible for supporting appropriate infrastructure to:

• safeguard research and publication ethics;
• maintain confidentiality in editorial processes;
• respect intellectual property and authors’ rights;
• support appropriate investigation of allegations of misconduct; and
• maintain and correct the scholarly record when necessary.

The publisher or journal owner does not intervene in individual manuscript acceptance or rejection decisions.

10. Ethical Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for ensuring that manuscripts are evaluated appropriately from both scientific and ethical perspectives.

Editors should:

• assess submissions on scientific importance, originality, methodological quality, clarity, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal’s scope;
• preserve the integrity of the double-anonymized peer-review process;
• select reviewers with appropriate expertise and without relevant competing interests;
• maintain confidentiality regarding submitted manuscripts and peer-review reports;
• ensure that reviewer comments are scientific, constructive, and respectful;
• not exclude negative or unexpected findings solely because of the direction of the results;
• investigate potential ethical concerns objectively;
• ensure appropriate correction of significant errors or ethical problems in published work; and
• evaluate complaints and appeals from authors, reviewers, and readers fairly.

The Editor-in-Chief has final authority over all publication decisions.

11. Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers should accept review invitations only when they have sufficient scientific or methodological expertise and can complete the review within the agreed timeframe.

Reviewers must:

• provide objective, scientific, constructive, and respectful evaluations;
• treat the manuscript and all information, data, and ideas it contains as confidential;
• not contact authors directly or attempt to identify them;
• not use unpublished information or ideas for personal advantage;
• disclose potential competing interests and decline the review where appropriate;
• notify the editor of suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data or image manipulation, or other potential ethical concerns; and
• securely delete or destroy manuscript copies after completing the review.

Review reports must be submitted through the journal’s editorial system.

12. Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for the originality, scientific accuracy, ethical conduct, and reliability of the work they submit.

Authors must:

• prepare manuscripts in accordance with the journal’s editorial and ethical requirements;
• cite sources accurately and completely;
• avoid simultaneous or redundant publication;
• fulfill applicable ethics approval and informed consent requirements;
• report authorship and contributorship accurately;
• disclose funding and competing interests;
• be prepared to provide research data and supporting documentation when reasonably requested by the editors; and
• promptly notify the Editorial Office if they discover a significant error in published or early-release work and cooperate with any required correction or retraction process.

13. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, and readers may submit written complaints regarding editorial processes, ethical matters, or published content to the Editor-in-Chief.

An appeal of an editorial decision should explain clearly why the decision warrants reconsideration on scientific or procedural grounds and should include supporting information or evidence where appropriate.

Complaints and appeals are evaluated impartially. When a complaint directly concerns the Editor-in-Chief or creates a competing interest, it will be handled by another appropriate editor, Editorial Board member, or the publisher.

Relevant COPE guidance is considered in handling complaints and appeals. Submission of an appeal does not imply that the manuscript will be accepted or that the previous decision will be changed.

14. Post-Publication Discussion, Corrections, and Retractions

Troia Medical Journal supports scientific discussion of published work. Readers may submit scientific criticism, comments, or reports of potential errors to the Editorial Office or, where appropriate, as a Letter to the Editor.

When an error that materially affects the scholarly record is identified in a published article, an appropriate correction notice will be published and linked to the original article.

Where serious scientific or ethical concerns remain unresolved, an Expression of Concern may be published when appropriate.

An article may be retracted in accordance with relevant COPE and ICMJE principles when serious error, research misconduct, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, or another problem substantially undermines the reliability or integrity of the work.

Retracted articles are not removed from the scholarly record. They remain accessible but are clearly identified as retracted, and the original article and retraction notice are linked in both directions. The reason for retraction is clearly stated in the notice.

15. Generative Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

Troia Medical Journal applies principles of transparency, confidentiality, human accountability, and scientific integrity to the use of artificial intelligence and generative AI-assisted technologies in scholarly publishing.

Authors

AI systems, large language models, chatbots, and other AI-assisted tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.

Authors who use generative AI or other AI-assisted technologies in preparing submitted work must disclose the nature and purpose of such use in the Cover Letter and, where appropriate, in the relevant section of the manuscript.

When AI forms part of the research methodology, data generation, data analysis, coding, image analysis, or interpretation of findings, the tool and method must be described in the Materials and Methods section in sufficient detail to support scientific evaluation and reproducibility.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and appropriate attribution of all AI-assisted content. AI-generated output may be inaccurate, incomplete, or biased and must therefore be carefully verified.

AI tools should not be cited as the primary source for scientific claims. Use of AI to fabricate, manipulate, or misrepresent data, images, references, or other scientific content constitutes research misconduct.

Reviewers

Submitted manuscripts are confidential and privileged communications. Reviewers must not upload manuscript text, abstracts, tables, figures, supplementary files, or unpublished data into external AI systems where confidentiality cannot be assured.

If AI use is contemplated during peer review, reviewers must follow the journal’s policy and obtain prior editorial permission where required. AI must not replace the reviewer’s independent scientific judgment. Reviewers remain responsible for the accuracy and content of their reports.

Editors

Editors are similarly required to protect manuscript confidentiality and must not upload submitted content to AI systems where confidentiality cannot be assured.

AI-assisted tools may be used under appropriate privacy and security safeguards for technical checks, metadata processing, or research-integrity screening. AI systems must not independently determine acceptance, revision, or rejection decisions. All editorial decisions are based on human expert judgment.

16. Intellectual Property, Open Access, and Archiving

Authors retain copyright in their published work. Articles published in Troia Medical Journal are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0).

Detailed information regarding open access, copyright, licensing, and self-archiving is provided in the journal’s Open Access Policy, Copyright and Licensing Policy, and Self-Archiving and Repository Policy.

Long-term preservation of published content is supported through DergiPark’s digital archiving infrastructure.

17. Funding, Business Model, Advertising, and Direct Marketing

Troia Medical Journal is published by Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University Faculty of Medicine and operates with institutional support under a Diamond Open Access model.

Authors are not charged submission fees, evaluation fees, article processing charges (APCs), publication fees, page charges, color figure charges, or other publication-related fees. Readers have free access to all published content.

The journal does not accept commercial advertising.

Any calls for papers, manuscript solicitation, announcements, or other direct marketing conducted on behalf of the journal must be appropriate, targeted, unobtrusive, and transparent. Information regarding the journal’s scope, indexing status, peer-review process, open-access model, or fee policy must be accurate and must not be misleading.