İstanbul Tıp Fakültesi Dergisi

Journal of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine (J Ist Faculty Med) is an international, open access, peer-reviewed and scientific publication of İstanbul University, İstanbul Faculty of Medicine. It is published quarterly on January, April, July and October. The publication language of the journal is English.

Journal of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine (J Ist Faculty Med) aims to contribute to the literature by publishing manuscripts at the highest scientific level on all fields of medicine. The journal publishes original experimental and clinical research articles, reports of rare cases, invited reviews that contain sufficient amount of source data conveying the experiences of experts in a particular field, and letters to the editors as well as brief reports on a recently established method or technique or preliminary results of original studies related to all disciplines of medicine from all countries.

The journal’s target audience includes researchers, physicians and academicians who are interested or working in all medical disciplines.

• Web of Science - Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)
• Scopus
• TUBITAK-ULAKBIM TR Index
• DOAJ
• CABI Global Health Database
• EBSCO Academic Search Complete​
• EBSCO Biomedical Index
• SOBİAD
• Gale Cengage
  

The journal is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and pays regard to Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) on https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing

The subjects covered in the manuscripts submitted to the Journal for publication must be in accordance with the aim and scope of the Journal. Only those manuscripts approved by every individual author and that were not published before in or sent to another journal, are accepted for evaluation.

Changing the name of an author (omission, addition or order) in papers submitted to the Journal requires written permission of all declared authors.

Plagiarism, duplication, fraud authorship/denied authorship, research/data fabrication, salami slicing/salami publication, breaching of copyrights, prevailing conflict of interest are unethical behaviors. All manuscripts not in accordance with the accepted ethical standards will be removed from the publication. This also contains any possible malpractice discovered after the publication.

Plagiarism
Submitted manuscripts that pass preliminary control are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. If plagiarism/self-plagiarism will be found authors will be informed. Editors may resubmit manuscript for similarity check at any peer-review or production stage if required. High similarity scores may lead to rejection of a manuscript before and even after acceptance. Depending on the type of article and the percentage of similarity score taken from each article, the overall similarity score is generally expected to be less than 15 or 20%.

Double Blind Peer-Review
After plagiarism check, the eligible ones are evaluated by the editors-in-chief for their originality, methodology, the importance of the subject covered and compliance with the journal scope. The editor provides a fair double-blind peer review of the submitted articles and hands over the papers matching the formal rules to at least two national/international referees for evaluation and gives green light for publication upon modification by the authors in accordance with the referees’ claims.

The journal is an open access journal and all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Except for commercial purposes, users are allowed to read, download, copy, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

The open access articles in the journal are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

All expenses of the journal are covered by the Istanbul University. Processing and publication are free of charge with the journal. There is no article processing charges or submission fees for any submitted or accepted articles.

Authors publishing with the journal retain the copyright to their work licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) and grant the Publisher non-exclusive commercial right to publish the work. CC BY-NC 4.0 license permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Editor should consider publishing correction if minor errors that do not effect the results, interpretations and conclusions of the published paper are detected. Editor should consider retraction if major errors and/or misconduction that invalidate results and conclusions are detected.

Editor should consider issuing an expression of concern if there is evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors; there is evidence that the findings are not reliable and institutions of the authors do not investigate the case or the possible investigation seems to be unfair or nonconclusive.

The guidelines of COPE and ICJME are taken into consideration regarding correction, retractions or expression of concern.

To guarantee that all papers published in the journal are maintained and permanently accessible, articles are stored in Dergipark which serves as a  national archival web site and at the same time permits LOCKSS to  collect, preserve, and serve the content.

Additionally, authors are encouraged to self-archive the final PDF version of their articles in open electronic archives with  that conform to standards of Open Archives Initiative (https://www.openarchives.org/). Authors should provide a link from the deposited version to the URL of IUPress journal website.

Journal of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and pays regard to Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) on https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing

All parties involved in the publishing process (Editors, Reviewers, Authors and Publishers) are expected to agree on the following ethical principles.

All submissions must be original, unpublished (including as full text in conference proceedings), and not under the review of any other publication synchronously. Authors must ensure that submitted work is original. They must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere or is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere, in any language. Applicable copyright laws and conventions must be followed. Copyright material (e.g. tables, figures or extensive quotations) must be reproduced only with appropriate permission and acknowledgement. Any work or words of other authors, contributors, or sources must be appropriately credited and referenced.

Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees under double-blind peer review process. Plagiarism, duplication, fraud authorship/denied authorship, research/data fabrication, salami slicing/salami publication, breaching of copyrights, prevailing conflict of interest are unethical behaviors.

All manuscripts not in accordance with the accepted ethical standards will be removed from the publication. This also contains any possible malpractice discovered after the publication.

The journal adheres to the highest standards in research ethics and follows the principles of international research ethics as defined below. The authors are responsible for the compliance of the manuscripts with the ethical rules.

-    Principles of integrity, quality and transparency should be sustained in designing the research, reviewing the design and conducting the research.

-    The research team and participants should be fully informed about the aim, methods, possible uses and requirements of the research and risks of participation in research.

-    The confidentiality of the information provided by the research participants and the confidentiality of the respondents should be ensured. The research should be designed to protect the autonomy and dignity of the participants.

-    Research participants should participate in the research voluntarily, not under any coercion.

-    Any possible harm to participants must be avoided. The research should be planned in such a way that the participants are not at risk.

-    The independence of research must be clear; and any conflict of interest or must be disclosed.

-    In experimental studies with human subjects, written informed consent of the participants who decide to participate in the research must be obtained. In the case of children and those under wardship or with confirmed insanity, legal custodian’s assent must be obtained.

-    If the study is to be carried out in any institution or organization, approval must be obtained from this institution or organization.

-    In studies with human subject, it must be noted in the method’s section of the manuscript that the informed consent of the participants and ethics committee approval from the institution where the study has been conducted have been obtained.

The Journal takes as principle to comply with the ethical standards of World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and WMA Statement on Animal Use in Biomedical Research.

An approval of research protocols by the Ethics Committee in accordance with international standards mentioned above is required for experimental, clinical, and drug studies and for some case reports. If required, ethics committee reports or an equivalent official document will be requested from the authors. For manuscripts concerning experimental research on humans, a statement should be included that shows that written informed consent of patients and volunteers was obtained following a detailed explanation of the procedures that they may undergo. For studies carried out on animals, the measures taken to prevent pain and suffering of the animals should be stated clearly. Information on patient consent, the name of the ethics committee, and the ethics committee approval number should also be stated in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript. It is the authors’ responsibility to carefully protect the patients’ anonymity. For photographs that may reveal the identity of the patients, signed releases of the patient or of their legal representative should be enclosed.

The journal requires the authors and all individuals taking part in the evaluation process to disclose any existing or potential conflict of interest (such as financial ties, academic commitments, personal relationships, institutional affiliations) that could unduly influence one’s responsibilities.  To disclose potential conflicts of interest, the ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form should be filled in and submitted by authors as explained in the Author Form of the journal. Cases of a potential conflict of interest are resolved  within the scope of COPE Conflict of Interest Flowcharts and ICMJE Conflict of Interest guidelines

Besides conflict of interest, all financial support received to carry out research must be declared while submitting the paper.

It is authors’ responsibility to ensure that the article is in accordance with scientific and ethical standards and rules. And authors must ensure that submitted work is original. They must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere or is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere, in any language. Applicable copyright laws and conventions must be followed. Copyright material (e.g. tables, figures or extensive quotations) must be reproduced only with appropriate permission and acknowledgement. Any work or words of other authors, contributors, or sources must be appropriately credited and referenced.

All the authors of a submitted manuscript must have direct scientific and academic contribution to the manuscript. The author(s) of the original research articles is defined as a person who is significantly involved in “conceptualization and design of the study”, “collecting the data”, “analyzing the data”, “writing the manuscript”, “reviewing the manuscript with a critical perspective” and “planning/conducting the study of the manuscript and/or revising it”. Fund raising, data collection or supervision of the research group are not sufficient roles to be accepted as an author. The author(s) must meet all these criteria described above. The order of names in the author list of an article must be a co-decision and it must be indicated in the Copyright Agreement Form. The individuals who do not meet the authorship criteria but contributed to the study must take place in the acknowledgement section. Individuals providing technical support, assisting writing, providing a general support, providing material or financial support are examples to be indicated in acknowledgement section.

All authors must disclose all issues concerning financial relationship, conflict of interest, and competing interest that may potentially influence the results of the research or scientific judgment.

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published paper, it is the author’s obligation to promptly cooperate with the Editor to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.

Editor-in-Chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, religious belief or political philosophy of the authors. He/She provides a fair double-blind peer review of the submitted articles for publication and ensures that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential before publishing.

Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication. He/She must publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.

Editor-in-Chief does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors and reviewers. Only he has the full authority to assign a reviewer and is responsible for final decision for publication of the manuscripts in the Journal.

Reviewers must have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders. Their judgments must be objective.

Reviewers must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.

A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential information and that this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the manuscripts with other persons. The anonymity of the referees must be ensured. In particular situations, the editor may share the review of one reviewer with other reviewers to clarify a particular point.

The editorial and publication processes of the journal are shaped in accordance with the guidelines of the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), and National Information Standards Organization (NISO). The journal conforms to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (doaj.org/bestpractice).

Originality, high scientific quality, and citation potential are the most important criteria for a manuscript to be accepted for publication. Manuscripts submitted for evaluation should not have been previously presented or already published in an electronic or printed medium. The journal should be informed of manuscripts that have been submitted to another journal for evaluation and rejected for publication. The submission of previous reviewer reports will expedite the evaluation process. Manuscripts that have been presented in a meeting should be submitted with detailed information on the organization, including the name, date, and location of the organization.

Manuscripts submitted to Journal of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine will go through a double-blind peer-review process. Each submission will be reviewed by at least two external, independent peer reviewers who are experts in their fields in order to ensure an unbiased evaluation process. The editorial board will invite an external and independent editor to manage the evaluation processes of manuscripts submitted by editors or by the editorial board members of the journal. The Editor in Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all submissions.

An approval of research protocols by the Ethics Committee in accordance with international agreements (World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects,” amended in October 2013, www.wma.net) is required for experimental, clinical, and drug studies and for some case reports. If required, ethics committee reports or an equivalent official document will be requested from the authors. For manuscripts concerning experimental research on humans, a statement should be included that shows that written informed consent of patients and volunteers was obtained following a detailed explanation of the procedures that they may undergo. For studies carried out on animals, the measures taken to prevent pain and suffering of the animals should be stated clearly. Information on patient consent, the name of the ethics committee, and the ethics committee approval number should also be stated in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript. It is the authors’ responsibility to carefully protect the patients’ anonymity. For photographs that may reveal the identity of the patients, signed releases of the patient or of their legal representative should be enclosed.

All submissions are screened by a similarity detection software (iThenticate by CrossCheck).

In the event of alleged or suspected research misconduct, e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, the Editorial Board will follow and act in accordance with COPE guidelines.

Each individual listed as an author should fulfill the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

(ICMJE - www.icmje.org). The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

1          Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2          Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

3          Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4          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.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he/she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged in the title page of the manuscript.

Journal of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine requires corresponding authors to submit a signed and scanned version of the authorship contribution form during the initial submission process in order to act appropriately on authorship rights and to prevent ghost or honorary authorship. If the editorial board suspects a case of “gift authorship,” the submission will be rejected without further review. As part of the submission of the manuscript, the corresponding author should also send a short statement declaring that he/she accepts to undertake all the responsibility for authorship during the submission and review stages of the manuscript.

Journal of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine requires and encourages the authors and the individuals involved in the evaluation process of submitted manuscripts to disclose any existing or potential conflicts of interests, including financial, consultant, and institutional, that might lead to potential bias or a conflict of interest. Any financial grants or other support received for a submitted study from individuals or institutions should be disclosed to the Editorial Board. To disclose a potential conflict of interest, the ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form should be filled in and submitted by all contributing authors. Cases of a potential conflict of interest of the editors, authors, or reviewers are resolved by the journal’s Editorial Board within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.

The Editorial Board of the journal handles all appeal and complaint cases within the scope of COPE guidelines. In such cases, authors should get in direct contact with the editorial office regarding their appeals and complaints. When needed, an ombudsperson may be assigned to resolve cases that cannot be resolved internally. The Editor in Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all appeals and complaints.

Journal of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine requires each submission to be accompanied by a Copyright Agremeent Form when using previously published content, including figures, tables, or any other material in both print and electronic formats, authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder. Legal, financial and criminal liabilities in this regard belong to the author(s).

Statements or opinions expressed in the manuscripts published in Journal of İstanbul Faculty of Medicine reflect the views of the author(s) and not the opinions of the editors, the editorial board, or the publisher; the editors, the editorial board, and the publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such materials. The final responsibility in regard to the published content rests with the authors.

Only those manuscripts approved by its every individual author and that were not published before in or sent to another journal, are accepted for evaluation.

Submitted manuscripts that pass preliminary control are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. After plagiarism check, the eligible ones are evaluated by editor-in-chief for their originality, methodology, the importance of the subject covered and compliance with the journal scope.

The editor hands over the papers matching the formal rules to at least two national/international referees for double-blind peer review evaluation and gives green light for publication upon modification by the authors in accordance with the referees’ claims.

Editor-in-Chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to ethnic origin, gender, citizenship, religious belief or political philosophy of the authors. Editor-in-Chief provides a fair double-blind peer review of the submitted articles for publication and ensures that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential before publishing.

Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication. He/She must publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.

Editor-in-Chief does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors and reviewers. Only he has the full authority to assign a reviewer and is responsible for final decision for publication of the manuscripts in the Journal.

Reviewers must have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders. Their judgments must be objective.

Reviewers must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.

A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential information and that this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the manuscripts with other persons. The anonymity of the referees must be ensured. In particular situations, the editor may share the review of one reviewer with other reviewers to clarify a particular point.

Only those manuscripts approved by its every individual author and that were not published before in or sent to another journal, are accepted for evaluation.

Submitted manuscripts that pass preliminary control are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. After plagiarism check, the eligible ones are evaluated by Editor-in-Chief for their originality, methodology, the importance of the subject covered and compliance with the journal scope.

Editor-in-Chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to ethnic origin, gender, citizenship, religious belief or political philosophy of the authors and ensures a fair double-blind peer review of the selected manuscripts.​
The selected manuscripts are sent to at least two national/international external referees for evaluation and publication decision is given by Editor-in-Chief upon modification by the authors in accordance with the referees’ claims.

Editor-in-Chief does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors and reviewers and is responsible for final decision for publication of the manuscripts in the Journal.

Reviewers’ judgments must be objective. Reviewers’ comments on the following aspects are expected while conducting the review.

- Does the manuscript contain new and significant information?

- Does the abstract clearly and accurately describe the content of the manuscript?

- Is the problem significant and concisely stated?

- Are the methods described comprehensively?

- Are the interpretations and consclusions justified by the results?

- Is adequate references made to other Works in the field?

- Is the language acceptable?

Reviewers must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.

A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential information and that this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the manuscripts with other persons. The anonymity of the referees is important.