POLICIES

PUBLISHING POLICY
• Acta Medica Nicomedia is the scientific publication of Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine.
• Our journal is published three times a year in February, June, and October.
• It is published open access and electronically within the framework of independent, unbiased and double-blind peer-review principles.
• Acta Medica Nicomedia publishes original researches, reviews, case reports, technical reports, short reports and letters to the editor in the field of basic and clinical medical sciences that comply with national and international standards.
• The publishing languages of Acta Medica Nicomedia are Turkish and English.
• We do not ask for any kind of fees during submission, review, acceptance, or publication, and we do not ask for any payments to read or download final published articles.
• Authors' identity information and e-mail addresses are not used for other purposes in any way.
• The publication and editorial processes of the journal are carried out in accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE, https://www.icmje.org/). The journal complies with the transparency and principles of scientific periodicals (doaj.org/bestpractice).
• Manuscripts submitted to our journal must not have been accepted or published in another journal before (including full-text poster papers exceeding 400 words). They should be prepared in accordance with scientific and ethical principles (http://www.icmje.org/about-icmje/faqs/conflict-of-interest-disclosure-forms/). All authors involved in the articles are requested to provide a conflict of interest declaration.
• The entire content of the Acta Medica Nicomedia is protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International Public License.

EDITORIAL POLICY
• Manuscripts sent to the journal first go through a preliminary evaluation process that will ensure that the article is prepared and presented in accordance with the journal's rules. The editorial board has the authority not to publish the articles that do not comply with the Instructions to Authors, to send them back to the author for correction and to rearrange them. Submitted articles are published with the decision of the editorial board after being evaluated by at least two reviewers. All peer reviews in the journal are performed blinded.
• Manuscripts submitted for publication in the journal must not have been previously published elsewhere or sent for publication. No royalties are paid to the authors for the articles published in the journal. The authors accept that all publishing rights of the article belong to the Acta Medica Nicomedia. The 'Copyright Transfer Form' (https://dergipark.org.tr/journal/1126/submission/start) and the 'Conflict of Interest Form' in which possible conflicts of interest are reported must be signed and sent by corresponding author. Scientific and legal responsibility of the published articles belong to the authors.
• The ICMJE Recommendations state that authorship credit requires: (1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data, (2) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content, (3) Final approval of the version published. (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. All four conditions must be met for authorship criteria in Acta Medica Nicomedia.
• Corrections and Retractions: All articles can be withdrawn by the corresponding author until the acceptance stage for publication. Corrections and withdrawal requests made after the acceptance stage for publication will not be accepted. In this case, the corresponding author reserves the right to publish an Erratum in the journal. Erratums sent to the journal are published with the knowledge and approval of the editorial board.
• Ethical committee approvals for original articles submitted for publication must be obtained and documented. The author(s) must state that the international guidelines accepted in this field (1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later updates) and the relevant provisions of the regulations issued by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Turkey have been complied with.

ETHICAL POLICY
• Ethical violations are not allowed in the journal under any circumstances. All articles suspected of scientific misconduct are reviewed by the editorial board and rejected.
• An ethical committee approval of research protocols following WMA Declaration of Helsinki is required for all studies. We need every research article submitted to include a statement that the study obtained ethics approval (or a statement that it was not needed and why), including the name of the ethics committee or institutional review board, the number/ID and date of the approval(s). It should be stated at the Methods section and at the end of the article under the heading ‘Compliance with ethical standards’.
• Ethical committee approval is required for articles based on retrospective (catalog) studies.
• Ethical committee approval should be obtained in accordance with the regulation for prospective clinical studies.
• In case reports, it is the responsibility of the authors to protect the confidentiality of patients. For photographs that may reveal the patient's identity, a patient consent form signed by the patient and/or their legal representatives should be obtained and written consent should be stated in the text.
• Publication ethics principles and recommendations developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) should be taken into consideration; Council of Science Editors (CSE), International Committee of Medical Journals (ICJME) guidelines should be followed.
• Journal Plagiarism Policy: In articles submitted to the journal, the author(s) are requested to upload the similarity report to the system. All articles submitted to our journal are evaluated with plagiarism detection programs (iThenticate, Turnitin) by editorial team.
• The journal's Editorial Board handles all objections within the framework of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) rules. In such cases, authors should directly contact the editorial board regarding their complaints. If necessary, an ombudsman may be appointed to resolve issues that cannot be resolved internally. The Editor-in-Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all complaints.
• When submitting an article to Acta Medica Nicomedia, authors are deemed to have accepted to transfer the copyright of their article to the journal. If the author's work is rejected for publication, the copyright of the article is returned to the authors.
• Each article sent to Acta Medica Nicomedia must be accompanied by a ‘Copyright Transfer Form’ (https://dergipark.org.tr/journal/1126/submission/start) signed by all the named authors.
• Authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder for figures, tables or other printed and electronic materials taken from other sources. The authors bear all legal and financial responsibilities in this regard.
• The authors are ultimately responsible for the content of the articles published in Acta Medica Nicomedia. The editors, editorial board and publisher do not accept any responsibility for these articles.