Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

Ethical Board Approval arranged in the framework of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (October 2013, www.wma.net) is obligatory for experimental, clinical, medication research and case reports with any intervention. The report of ethical approval could be requested from the authors, if necessary. For experimental studies on humans, a statement that the participants are informed about the applied procedure and taken their consent and detailed information about the procedure should be presented in the main text. Ethical board approval in the framework of the Helsinki Declaration is also required for research on experimental animals. Definition of the procedure applied on experimental animals and a statement of effects of this procedure on animals should be frankly presented in the main text. 

The name of the institution where the approval is received, the number and the date of the approval, and a statement about informed consent should be presented in Methods. Confidentiality of the identity of the patients or participants is the responsibility of the authors. In the case of using the photo of the patient, a signed permit taken from the patient or his/her legal representative must be sent to the journal along with the article.
The Editorial Board will act within the scope of COPE guidelines if there is an allegation or suspicion of plagiarism, citation manipulation or data fraud for a submission.  All submissions are screened by a similarity detection software iThenticate.

If there is a citation from the previously published articles, the author of the article must have the right to publish the article and have written consent from the authors and state it in the article. The consent document must be sent to the editorial board along with the article. Reviewers are expected to comment on potential research or publication misconduct such as unethical research design, duplication, plagiarism, etc.

The Editorial Board of the journal handles all appeal and complaint cases within the scope of COPE guidelines. Authors could contact with Editorial Board for any rejection or complaint. If necessary, Editorial Board will appoint an unbiased agent for issues that can not resolve on their own. In the process of rejection and complaints, the final decision will be given by Editor-in-chief.