Ethical Policy

For studies involving human or animal participants, the authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human and animal experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration). Application or approvasl number/year of the study should also be provided. The editorial board are entitled to question authors regarding ethical aspects when concerns are raised or further clarifications are necessary and will act in accordance with COPE guidelines if an ethical misconduct (e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication) is suspected.

It is the authors’ responsibility to carefully protect the patients’ anonymity and to verify that any experimental investigation with human subjects reported in the submission was performed with informed consent and following all the guidelines for experimental investigation with human subjects required by the institution(s) with which all the authors are affiliated with. For photographs that may reveal the identity of the patients, signed releases of the patient or of his/her legal representative should be enclosed.

Prospective human studies require both an ethics committee approval and informed consent by participants. Retrospective studies require an ethics committee approval with waiver of informed consent. Authors may be required to document such approval.

All submissions are screened by a similarity detection software (iThenticate by CrossCheck), and those with an overall similarity index of greater than 20%, or duplication rate at or higher than 5% with a single source are returned back to authors without further evaluation along with the similarity report.

Appeals and Complaints

Gazi Medical Journal treats appeals, complaints, and allegations of misconduct with utmost seriousness, regardless of the individuals' affiliation or the publication status. Appeal and complaint cases are handled within the scope of COPE guidelines by the Editorial Board of the journal.

The editor-in-chief will review appeals to editorial decisions, seeking additional input from the editorial board or external reviewers if the appeal is deemed valid.

If misconduct is reported, and either proven or strongly suspected, the journal is obligated to notify the relevant individual's institution, which may then initiate its own investigation.

If an individual has a complaint about an editorial decision, the editorial process, or actions by journal members, they should first contact the editor-in-chief. If the response is unsatisfactory or if the complaint is against the editor-in-chief, the matter should be raised with the publisher, who will investigate following COPE guidelines.

In instances involving allegations against a member of the publisher’s team, senior management will be apprised to oversee and supervise the investigation. In cases of potential conflicts of interest, independent individuals may lead the investigation, and when deemed necessary, the journal may contact other institutions to seek legal advice.

Editorial Duties

Editorial policies of the journal are conducted as stated in the rules recommended by the Council of Science Editors and reflected in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals. Accordingly, authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to adhere to the best practice guidelines on ethical behavior contained in this statement.

DUTIES OF PUBLISHER:

Due to our editorial policy, the publisher assumes various responsibilities related to unethical behavior, editorial autonomy, intellectual property, and copyright. In case of potential abuses in this regard, our journal may take actions such as publishing a correction, disclosing the situation, or retracting the affected work.

Our journal evaluates unethical behavior within the framework of the following principles.

Plagiarism:  Presenting someone else's work, whether it be data, words, or theories, as if it were one's own, without giving due credit or acknowledgment.

Data Falsification: Engaging in the manipulation of research data with the aim of creating a deceptive perception. This manipulation encompasses actions such as altering images (e.g., micrographs, gels, radiological images), excluding outliers or undesirable results, modifying, adding, or omitting data points, and similar practices.

Data Fabrication: Creating false data or results involves intentionally inventing information to deceive, misrepresent the scientific process, and compromise research integrity.

Citation Manipulation: Inflating citation counts for personal gain involves behaviors such as excessively citing one's own work, overemphasizing citations to the journal publishing the citing article, and coordinating excessive citations between journals.

Peer Review Manipulation: Manipulating the scholarly evaluation process entails deceptive practices like submitting fake reviews or colluding to bias assessments, compromising the integrity of the review system.

Authorship Misconduct: Unethical actions related to attributing authorship involve unauthorized inclusion or exclusion, misrepresentation of contributions, and improper credit assignment, undermining transparency and fairness in scholarly collaboration.

The publisher also has certain responsibilities in terms of "editorial autonomy" and "intellectual property and copyright”. The publisher is committed to ensuring the autonomy of editorial decisions without influence from commercial partners.

The publisher protects the property and copyright of the articles published in the journal and maintains each article's published version of the record. The journal provides the integrity and transparency of each published article.

DUTIES OF REVIEWERS:

The journal expects its experts serving as referees to take on specific responsibilities within our structure. The relevant duties are as follows:

- All information pertaining to submitted articles is held in strict confidence. Reviewers should not be disclosed to others unless authorized by the editor.

- Reviewers aid the editor in making publication decisions and may also support the author in enhancing the manuscript.

- Reviewers should not limit their reports to simple yes-no questions but should create them with comments that provide scientific contributions to the authors.

- Reviewers provide impartial judgments and assessments, articulating their perspectives clearly with relevant supporting arguments.

- Reviewers are expected to pinpoint pertinent published studies that the authors have overlooked.

- Additionally, reviewers should bring to the editor's notice any significant similarities or overlaps between the manuscript and other published papers within their personal knowledge.

DUTIES OF AUTHORS:

- The submitted manuscript should be original, and the authors ensure that the manuscript has never been published previously in any journal.

- Data of the research ought to be represented literally in the article. A manuscript ought to include adequate detail and references to allow others to replicate the study.

- The words and sentences getting from the literature should be appropriately cited. All of the sources that used the process of the study should be remarked.

- Convenient acknowledgement of the study of others has to be given. Authors ought to cite publications that have been efficient in determining the study.

- Authors should not submit the same study for publishing in any other journals. Simultaneous submission of the same study to more than one journal is unacceptable and constitutes unethical behaviour.

-Authorship of a paper ought to be limited to those who have made a noteworthy contribution to the study. If others have participated in the research, they should be listed as contributors. Authorship also includes a corresponding author who is in communication with the editor of a journal. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors are included in a paper.

All sources of financial support should be disclosed. All authors ought to disclose a meaningful conflict of interest in the process of forming their study. Any financial grants or other support received for a submitted study from individuals or institutions should be disclosed to the Editorial Board of Gazi Medical Journal. The ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form should be filled in and submitted by all contributing authors to disclose a potential conflict of interest. The journal’s Editorial Board determines cases of a potential conflict of interest of the editors, authors, or reviewers within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.

Conditions that provide financial or personal benefit bring about a conflict of interest. The reliability of the scientific process and the published articles is directly related to the objective consideration of conflicts of interest during the planning, implementation, writing, evaluation, editing, and publication of scientific studies.

Financial relations are the most easily identified conflicts of interest, and it is inevitable that they will undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and the science. These conflicts can be caused by individual relations, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. The authors should refrain as much as possible from making agreements with sponsors in the opinion of gaining profit or any other advantage that restrict their ability to access all data of the study or analyze, interpret, prepare, and publish their articles In order to prevent conflicts of interest, editors should refrain from bringing together those who may have any relationship between them during the evaluation of the studies. The editors, who make the final decision about the articles, should not have any personal, professional or financial ties with any of the issues they are going to decide. Authors should inform the editorial board concerning potential conflicts of interest to ensure that their articles will be evaluated within the framework of ethical principles through an independent assessment process.

If one of the editors is an author in any manuscript, the editor is excluded from the manuscript evaluation process. In order to prevent any conflict of interest, the article evaluation process is carried out as double-blinded. Because of the double-blinded evaluation process, except for the Editor-in-Chief, none of the editorial board members, international advisory board members, or reviewers is informed about the authors of the manuscript or institutions of the authors.

Our publication team works devotedly to ensuring that the evaluation process is conducted impartially, considering all these situations.