1. AIMS & SCOPE

Mucosa is the official journal of the Society of the Eastern Black Sea Dermatology and Venereology. It is an open access peer-reviewed journal published in English as three issues a year, in January, May

Mucosa publishes original articles, review articles, case reports, and letters to editor in the fields of mucosa-related disciplines. Our aim is to provide a new forum to discuss all aspects of mucosal tissues, this journal primarily targets the interests of researchers studying on oral, nasopharyngeal, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, pulmonary and ocular mucosa in different basic and clinical disciplines. 

2. MANUSCRIPT CATEGORIES

Original articles: This type of articles are the primary aim of Mucosa to publish. Original articles must include a structured abstract (maximum 300 words), and should not exceed 3000 words of body text.

Review articles: Concise and high-quality review articles of recent advances in clinical or laboratory research are welcomed. Authors with extensive knowledge and experience on a particular subject may even be invited. Review articles must include an unstructured abstract (maximum 300 words), and should not exceed 4000 words of body text. Use of tables and figures is encouraged.

Case reports: Reports on rare cases or conditions, or challenging cases on diagnosis or treatments are welcomed with a limited space. Case reports must include an unstructured abstract (maximum 200 words) and should not exceed 1000 words of body text, and 10 references and two figures.

Letters to the Editor: This type of articles may be in response to issues arising from previously published articles, or short, free-standing parts expressing an opinion. Letters to the Editor do not require abstracts, should be formatted in one continuous section and should not exceed 600 words of body text, 10 references and two figures.

 All manuscripts are subject to peer review.

3. SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) number of the correspondence author should be provided while sending the manuscript. A free registration can be done at http://orcid.org.

All submissions should be made online at the website of DergiPark Akademik, http://www.dergipark.gov.tr/mucosa. New users should first create an account. Authors must also supply a completed Conflict of Interest Disclosure form(s) (CID). Each author must complete the form and all completed forms must be uploaded via submission system at the same time as manuscript submission: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/journal/2113/file/1174/download  

It is the responsibility of the corresponding author on behalf of all co-authors. Manuscripts without these forms will not be sent for peer-review. Mucosa does not charge a fee for submission, processing or publication from authors.

4. PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Manuscripts must be written in English. Text should be supplied in a format compatible with Microsoft Word for Windows (PC). All manuscripts must be typed in 12 pt font with margins of at least 2.5 cm. Submissions must comply with the word limits defined in section 2.

 Title page: A title page including following information should be submitted with all submissions:

1.     The full title of the manuscript

2.     A short title (running head) of the manuscript, not exceeding 50 characters

3.     Manuscript word, table and figure count

4.     Names of author(s) as initial(s) followed by surnames

5.     Names of the affiliations at which the research was conducted, clearly linked to respective authors

6.     Name, address, telephone and fax number, and e-mail address of the corresponding author

7.     A statement of all funding sources that supported the work

8.     Any conflict of interest disclosures (see sections 3 and 6).

Abstracts: The abstract of Original Articles should be structured with subheadings: Background, Objective, Methods, Results, Conclusion. Review Articles and Case Reports require an unstructured abstracts. Letters to the Editor do not require abstracts. Please note that, a Turkish abstract is also needed.

Keywords: Each submissions should be accompanied by three to six keywords from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) list of the National Library of Medicine. Please note that, Turkish keywords are also needed. 

Main Text: This main part of manuscript in Original Articles should be divided into sections with the following headings: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, References, Tables, Figures and Legends.

Tables and figures: Tables and figures should be included at the end of the manuscript, each on a separate page. Tables and figures should be referred to in text as follows: Fig. 1; Table 1. Each table or figure must have a descriptive legend. If a figure has more than one panel, each panel should be labelled  by using lower case letters in parentheses, i.e., (a), (b), etc., and a brief description of each panel should be given in the figure legend. Colour illustrations are welcomed and all colour is published free of charge. For figures, the minimum resolution should be 300 dpi. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce previously published figures or tables. When an individual is identifiable in a photograph, written permission has to be obtained.

References: References should be in Vancouver style and appear as consecutive, unbracketed superscript numbers in the text, e.g., ‘in our previous studies^1,2 and those of Baran et al.^3-6’ and should be listed numerically in the reference list at the end of the article. Reference formats are listed below, please use standard (Medline) abbreviations for journal titles.

1.     Shiohara T, Kano Y. Lichen planus and lichenoid dermatosis. In: Dermatology (Bolognia JL, Jorizzo JL, Schaffer JV, eds.), 3rd ed. Elsevier Saunders, 2012;183-202.

2.     Nousari HC, Anhalt GJ. Pemphigus and bullous pemphigoid. Lancet 1999;354:667-72.

3.     Özkaya E. Alerjik Deri Hastalıklarında Tanı Testleri. İstanbul: Nobel Tıp Kitabevleri, 2015.

4.     European Dermatology Forum. Guideline on the Management of Syphilis. 2016. Available at: http://www.euroderm.org/edf/index.php/edf-guidelines/category/11-iusti-guidelines-developed-in-cooperation-with-edf (last accessed 21 December 2017).

5. DECLARATIONS

Ethics: For manuscripts reporting experiments on human subjects, we require a statement whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983.  For manuscripts reporting experiments on animals, we require a statement whether the institution's or a national research council's guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. Those statements should be included in all manuscripts in the Materials and Methods section. Ethics committee or institutional review board approval should be also stated.

Do not use patients' names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. Images and information from individual patients will only be published if the authors have obtained the individual's informed consent. Patient anonymity must be preserved.

Authorship: Mucosa adheres to the definition of authorship set up by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The ICMJE recommends that authorship should be based on the following 4 criteria: i) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; ii) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; iii) Final approval of the version to be published; and iv) Agreement 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. All others who contributed to the work, and however who do not qualify as authors should be named in the Acknowledgments section.

Conflicts of interest: We require that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. All authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships between themselves and others that might be perceived by others as biasing their work. To prevent ambiguity, authors must state explicitly whether potential conflicts do exist or not. A conflict of interest statement of each author must be included at the same time with manuscript submission (see section 3). Completion of this form is mandatory for all type of articles.

6. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON ACCEPTANCE

Copyright: If your manuscript is accepted, the corresponding author for the manuscript will receive an e-mail to complete the Copyright Transfer Form which can be downloaded from https://dergipark.org.tr/journal/2113/file/1140/download on behalf of all authors of the manuscript.

Proofs: A PDF proof of the accepted manuscript will be sent to the corresponding author and should be returned within 2 days of receipt.

Disclaimer: The Society of Eastern Black Sea Dermatology and Venereology and Editors cannot be held responsible for errors or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal; the opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Society of Eastern Black Sea Dermatology and Venereology and Editors.

Ethical Principles

For manuscripts reporting experiments on human subjects, we require a statement whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 1983. For manuscripts reporting experiments on animals, we require a statement whether the institution's or a national research council's guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. Those statements should be included in all manuscripts in the Materials and Methods section. Ethics committee or institutional review board approval should be also stated.

Do not use patients' names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. Images and information from individual patients will only be published if the authors have obtained the individual's informed consent. Patient anonymity must be preserved.

Publication Policy

Mucosa is an independent international journal based on double-blind peer-review principles. Editorial policies of Mucosa are conducted according to the rules advised by Council of Science Editors (CSE) and are compatible with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication (http://www.icmje.org/).

After pre-evaluation of submitted manuscripts, the papers approved for reviewer evaluation are sent to at least two selected reviewers as blinded-manuscripts. The editorial team including section editors has the all authority for reviewer selection and decision for publication. The reviewers are mainly out of Editorial Board, and they are selected according to the subject. Submitted manuscripts are also subjected for the evaluation of plagiarism or duplicate publishing by automatic software.

Open Access Policy

This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

You are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, or remix, transform, and build upon the material under the following terms:

Attribution: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

NonCommercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes.