ETHICAL PRINCIPLES AND PUBLICATION POLICY
The publication processes of the ERU Faculty of Health Sciences Journal are carried out on the basis of impartial evaluation, development and sharing of qualified scientific articles in various branches of the health field, such as clinical and experimental research articles, original case reports and literature reviews. In this context, the ethical rules that authors, journal editors, referees and publishers must comply with are carried out in accordance with the guidelines and policies published by the “Committe on Publication Ethics - COPE (https://publicationethics.org)”.
The studies sent to the ERU Faculty of Health Sciences Journal must comply with ethical and scientific standards. The scientific, ethical and legal responsibilities of the published articles belong to the author(s) and do not reflect the views of the editor, editorial board and publication board members.
The journal observes the condition that the articles it publishes comply with high ethical and scientific standards. No commercial product advertisements are included in the articles. The ERU Faculty of Health Sciences Journal accepts no responsibility for the characteristics and descriptions of the commercial products mentioned in the articles.
The articles sent to the ERÜ Journal of Health Sciences Faculty must not have been published elsewhere or sent for publication. If there is a previously published text, table, picture, etc. in the study, the responsible author of the study must obtain written permission from the copyright holder and authors and state this in the study. If the study submitted to the journal complies with the formal principles and the spelling rules of the language it is submitted to, it is published after the review of the editor/field editor and at least three referees and, if deemed necessary, the requested changes are made by the authors.

In order for all prospective and retrospective studies conducted with humans or animals and other studies requiring ethics committee approval according to the current legislation to be published; Ethics Committee Approval must be obtained and the institution from which the Ethics Committee Approval was obtained, the approval number and the date (day-month-year) must be stated in the “Materials and Methods” section of the article.

The journal accepts the principle of compliance with the Helsinki Declaration Principles (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects) in all studies involving the human element. In the presence of such studies, the authors must state in the “Materials and Methods” section of the study that they conducted the study in accordance with these principles, that they received ethics committee approval and “Informed Consent” from the people who participated in the study.

If an animal element is used in the study, the authors must state in the “Materials and Methods” section of the study that they protect animal rights in their studies in accordance with the principles of the “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (https://www.nap.edu/catalog/5140/guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals)” and that they received approval from the ethics committee for animal experiments.

In case reports, “Informed Consent” must be obtained from patients and this must be stated in the study. It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain consent within the framework of the Law on the Protection of Personal Data and to submit it if requested by the competent authorities.

If there is a direct or indirect commercial connection or an institution from which financial support is received for the study, the authors; They must state on the presentation page to the editor that they have no commercial relationship with the commercial product, drug or company used, or if they do, what kind of relationship they have (consultant, other agreements, etc.). The authors are responsible for ensuring that the studies comply with ethical rules.

PUBLISHER'S ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES
ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal is published by Erciyes University Health Sciences Faculty. Publisher's ethical responsibilities;

• The publisher accepts that the decision-making authority and the refereeing process are the responsibility of the editor in the ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal.

• The publisher provides open, electronic and free access to the journal on the journal's website.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS, ASSISTANT EDITORS AND FIELD EDITORS
• The Editorial Board is responsible for the publication of articles sent to the ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal and subsequent processes. The Editor and Editorial Board should act impartially and in the public interest when making decisions regarding the journal and published articles.
• The Editorial Board of the ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal should strive to continuously improve the journal and increase the quality of publication.
• The Editor and Editorial Board should ensure that the articles are evaluated by experts in the field. The referee list should be constantly renewed and developed according to the referees' areas of expertise.
• Care should be taken to ensure that there is no conflict of interest or common interest between the referees sent to evaluate the article and the authors.
• The Editor and Editorial Board should determine and ensure the implementation of journal policies such as blind refereeing, evaluation process, ethical principles, and publication process. Information about the authors and referees should not be disclosed to either party.
• The Editor and Editorial Board should make updates regarding the publication and writing rules, present them to the authors in an understandable manner, and update sample templates.

• When authors request information about the status of the articles, information about the status of the articles should be provided without harming the blind review process.

It should be checked that the submission and acceptance dates are published in the articles.

The Editor and Editorial Board should take care to protect human and animal rights in the articles and should reject the article if there is no ethics committee approval.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF REFEREES
ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal applies the principle of double-blind review in the article evaluation process. Referees cannot communicate directly with the authors, and requests for corrections on the article evaluation forms and text are conveyed to the author(s) via the Dergipark management system through the editor and/or editorial board. Ethical responsibilities of referees:
• Referees should only accept the evaluation of articles related to their areas of expertise.
• Referees should evaluate the scientific aspects of the article without considering the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnicity, citizenship or political philosophy of the authors and should give importance to confidentiality while evaluating.

• Referees should refuse to evaluate the article in case of a conflict of interest or common interest with the authors and should inform the editor.

• Referees should use an academic and constructive language while evaluating the articles and should avoid personal comments that contain insults.

Referees should convey their opinions about the articles they accept to evaluate to the editor and the editorial board within the given time.

AUTHOR RESPONSIBILITIES
• The articles submitted by the author(s) to the ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal for publication should not have been published in another journal or sent to another journal for publication at the same time.
• Only the names of the authors who contributed to the articles should be written (individuals who made significant contributions to the design, conduct, implementation, data collection or analysis/interpretation of the study; individuals who contributed to the hypothesis and draft of the study and made critical revisions for intellectual content; individuals who viewed, approved and accepted the final version of the article for publication).

In articles submitted for publication, no changes in the order of authors, additions or removals of authors should be requested later.

• Authors should cite the sources they used during the writing of the article in accordance with ethical principles.

• Authors should obtain the necessary ethics committee documents in their research articles and indicate the ethics committee name, decision date and number in the method section of the article. They should also document similarity reports using the program. Ethics committee approval documents are not requested from compilations.

• Information and raw data regarding the articles evaluated should be forwarded to the editor and editorial board when requested.

• Authors should inform the editor and editorial board when they notice an error regarding their article during the evaluation and early appearance phase or electronically, and should contact them to correct or withdraw.

COPYRIGHT (CREATIVE COMMONS)
Articles published in the ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) International License and are allowed to be shared in accordance with the license terms. All publishing rights of the works accepted for publication belong to the institution that publishes the journal. However, the works published in the journal can be used, copied, reproduced and adapted provided that they are not commercial, are properly cited and comply with the licensing terms stated above. The thoughts and suggestions included in the published works are entirely the responsibility of the authors. No copyright is paid for the articles published in the journal.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.tr
Authors must fill out the "Publication Rights Transfer Form" on the journal website and upload it to the system together with the work. Works sent without the Publication Rights Transfer Form will not be evaluated. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/journal-file/32960

PLAGIARISM AND UNETHICAL BEHAVIORS
All studies sent to the ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal must be scanned by the authors using a licensed application and the similarity report must be uploaded to the system together with the article files. The acceptable similarity rate is below 20%. Articles with similarity above the specified rate are rejected without being evaluated.

Some unethical behaviors are listed below:
• Stating individuals who did not contribute to the study as authors.

• Not stating if the article was produced from the author's master's/doctoral thesis or a project, or if it was presented anywhere.

• Slicing, i.e. publishing more than one article from a single study.

• Not declaring conflicts of interest regarding submitted articles.

• Deciphering the double-blind peer-review process.

OPEN ACCESS
ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal is an open access journal. The journal provides free access to the issues published online electronically and the full texts of the articles included in the issue as soon as they are published. The journal allows all users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to, scan for indexing, transfer as data to software or use for any other lawful purpose the full texts of the articles. No fee is charged to the author(s) for the publication of their articles. Readers can download the journal content free of charge for academic or educational use. The journal is free to everyone, at all times. To achieve this, the ERÜ Health Sciences Faculty Journal benefits from the free article evaluation/online publication system of the Dergi Park platform and the ongoing volunteer efforts of editors/reviewers.