PUBLICATION POLICY
Hitit Medical Journal seeks the highest ethical and scientific standards as well as the absence of commercial concerns in scientific articles submitted to the journal. Submitted articles must not have been previously published elsewhere or sent for publication. If the article was previously published; quotations, tables, pictures, etc. If available, the article author must obtain written permission from the copyright holder and authors and state this in the article. Studies previously presented at scientific meetings are accepted, provided that they are stated in the article. After the scientific article is processed, the names and order of the authors specified in the copyright notice text are taken as basis. After this stage, the name of the author cannot be added to the article at any stage, except for the authors who have signed the Copyright notice text, and the order of the authors cannot be changed.

The thoughts and suggestions in the article are entirely the responsibility of the authors. Article authors are not paid any fees for their articles. The article submission and review process is free of charge. HMJ does not charge any fee for the publication of an article. All articles are open access free of charge. Hitit Medical Journal does not accept sponsorship and advertisement in accordance with its publication policies. All expenses of Hitit Medical Journal are covered by Hitit University.

The copyrights of the works published in our journal belong to the authors and are published as Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. The works published in our journal are digitally archived in LOCKSS.

All articles published in our journal are subject to double blind peer review process. At least two referees must make an acceptance decision for the articles to be published. 

SCIENTIFIC RESPONSIBILITY
All authors in the article must have direct academic and scientific contributions. Authors should accept the final version of the article. Compliance of the articles with scientific rules is the responsibility of the authors.

BIOSTATISTICAL RESPONSIBILITY
All required research articles should be biostatistically analyzed and evaluated by a biostatistician before submission to the journal. In articles, p values should be given clearly (such as p= 0.025; p= 0.524). Additional information can be obtained from https://www.icmje.org/ for checking the biostatistical conformity of the articles. Compliance of the articles with biostatistical rules is the responsibility of the authors. Each article using statistics will be checked by the 'Statistics Editor' of the journal and inappropriate statistics will be requested to be changed accordingly.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The publication languages of the journal are Turkish and English. Turkish articles should be based on the Turkish dictionary of the Turkish Language Association or https://tdk.gov.tr/ English articles and English abstracts should be evaluated by a language expert before being submitted to the journal. The compliance of the articles with the spelling and grammar rules is the responsibility of the authors. Each article will be checked by the journal's 'Foreign Language Editor' and it will be requested that unsuitable articles be corrected.

Special Issue Publication Policy
Special issues may be published once a year upon the request of the Editorial Board. Our principles and policies in the regular issues of our journal are applied in the same way in our special issues.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY and ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
Our journal has adopted the International Ethical Publishing Principles published by the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Principles of the Referee Process for the Work of the Editorial Staff
In the evaluation process of manuscripts received as new submissions in which any of the editorial board members is an author, the relevant board member is removed from the board membership by the editor-in-chief and reappointed to the board membership only after the process is completed. This ensures that the relevant board member does not have any influence on the process.

Protection of Participants' Personal Data
Our journal requires that all research involving personal or sensitive data or materials relating to human participants that are not legally publicly available be subject to formal ethical review.

Ethical Violation Notifications
Readers can send an e-mail to hmj@hitit.edu.tr if they notice a significant error or inaccuracy in an article published in our journal or if they have any complaints about the editorial content (plagiarism, duplicate articles, etc.). We welcome submissions as they will provide an opportunity for improvement and we will respond quickly and constructively.

Complaint Procedure
This procedure applies to complaints about content, procedures or policies that are the responsibility of our magazine or editorial staff. Complaints can provide an opportunity and incentive for improvement and we aim to respond quickly, courteously and constructively.
The complaint must relate to content, procedures or policies that are the responsibility of our magazine or editorial team. Complaints should be emailed directly to hmj@hitit.edu.tr and will be treated confidentially. The editor responds to complaints immediately. The editor follows the procedure outlined in the COPE flowchart regarding complaints.
Complaints are reviewed by the relevant member of the editorial team and if not resolved, the following processes are followed:
• If this initial response is deemed inadequate, the complainant may request that the complaint be escalated to a more senior member of the journal.
• If the complainant is not satisfied, the complaint may be forwarded to the editor-in-chief.
• A full response will be provided within two weeks, if possible.
COPE publishes a code of practice for editors of scientific journals. This will facilitate the resolution of disputes with editors, journals and publishers, but only after the journal's own grievance procedures have been exhausted.

Appeal Process
We welcome serious objections to the evaluations made by editors and reviewers. If you feel that we have rejected your paper because we misunderstood its scientific content, please send an appeal message to our editorial team at hmj@hitit.edu.tr. Do not attempt to submit a revised version of your article at this stage. If, after reading your appeal letter, we realize that your appeal is justified, we may invite you to submit a revised version of your manuscript. Your paper will then be resubmitted to the external reviewer process. Please include as much detail as possible in the appeal letter. Finally, we can only consider one appeal per article, so please take the time and effort to write a detailed letter to make your appeal clear - you have one chance, so use it well. We have found that prolonged deliberation over rejected manuscripts is often unsatisfactory for both authors and editors, so we do not process multiple appeals for the same paper.

Correction, Retraction, Expression of Concern
Editors may consider publishing a correction if minor errors are identified in the published article that do not affect the findings, interpretations and conclusions. Editors should consider retracting the manuscript if there are major errors/violations that invalidate the findings and conclusions. Editors should consider issuing a statement of concern if there is a possibility of research or publication misconduct by the authors; there is evidence that the findings are unreliable and that the authors' institutions have not investigated the incident; or the potential investigation seems unfair or inconclusive. COPE guidelines for corrections, retractions and expressions of concern are taken into account.

Publication of Studies Based on Surveys and Interviews
In studies requiring ethics committee approval, information about the permission (name of the committee, date and number) should be included in the method section and on one of the first/last pages of the article; in case reports, information on the signature of the informed consent form should be included in the article.

A- Ethical rules for authors
The compliance of the articles with the ethical rules is the responsibility of the authors. If the required documents are not submitted in full, the article has the right to be rejected by the journal without being evaluated.

Research Ethics and Legal/Special Permit Documents
The journal adopts and accepts the principles of the 'Principles of the Declaration of Helsinki' in all studies involving the 'Human' element. In all scientific research articles, authors are obliged to state in the materials and methods section of the article that they have conducted the study in accordance with these principles, that they have obtained a 'Study is Ethically Compliant' certificate from the ethics committees of their institutions, and that they have obtained “informed consent” from the people who participated in the study, and it should be clearly presented from which institution, on which date and with which decision or number number the ethical permission documents were obtained. The compliance of the articles with ethical rules is the responsibility of the authors. If the documents required by the journal are not submitted in full, the article will be rejected without evaluation.
In case presentations, it is necessary to include information that the informed consent form has been signed in the article.
If “Animal” element is used in the study, the authors must state in the materials and methods section of the article that they protect animal rights in their studies in accordance with the “ARRIVE and ICLAS” principles and that they have received approval from the ethics committees of their institutions.

Conflict of interest
If there is a commercial link in the manuscript or an institution that provides financial support for the study, the authors must inform the editor on the presentation page that they have no commercial relationship with the commercial product, drug, device or company used and what kind of relationship (consultant, other agreements), if any. Authors should clearly indicate whether there is a conflict of interest in their submitted manuscripts. Our journal will act in accordance with the COPE principles regarding conflicts of interest.

Issues related to plagiarism
All submitted articles are screened for plagiarism. In cases where plagiarism is detected, the editors reserve the right to reject the article and/or request corrections from the authors depending on the similarity rate. Submitted and pre-checked manuscripts are scanned for plagiarism using Ithenticate and intihal.net software. The similarity rate must be less than 20%. If the similarity rate is 1%, but the citation and quotation are not done properly, plagiarism may still be in question. If plagiarism is detected in the manuscripts submitted to our journal, our journal will act in accordance with COPE principles. Relevant COPE Policy for submitted manuscripts, COPE Policy for published manuscripts.

Republication
Republishing is the publication of the same article or substantially similar articles in more than one journal. The editor sends back such an article without reviewing it. Thereafter, the editor may impose an embargo for a certain period of time on the author who attempts to republish.

Simultaneous submission of the same work to more than one journal
Authors may not submit the same article to more than one journal at the same time. If the editor learns of possible simultaneous submission, he/she reserves the right to consult with the other editor(s) receiving the manuscript. In addition, the editor can return the article without reviewing it or reject it without considering the reviews.

Forgery
Producing data that is not based on research, editing or modifying a submitted or published work on the basis of untrue data, reporting or publishing them, and presenting a research that has not been conducted as if it has been conducted.

B- Ethical rules for reviewers
Reviewers should be aware that the evaluation process is confidential and should not be shared with third parties. It should submit an objective, impartial, scientific, comprehensible and constructive evaluation report about the study within the specified time. Referee reports will also include an assessment of the scientific nature of the article (the topic it covers, the method used, or the appropriate use of the relevant literature). This evaluation must be made about the content, whether positive or negative. While making these evaluations, the 'Online referee evaluation form' must be used. When it is understood that the work is plagiarized or has been previously published elsewhere, the referees should notify the editor.

C- Ethical rules for field editors
Journal field editors send the article for evaluation to at least 2 referees who are impartial, independent, unbiased and working in different institutions. Authors may object to the referee's report within a reasonable framework and with convincing data. Objections are reviewed by the journal management and, if deemed appropriate, a different referee (or referees) can be consulted on the subject. Field editors meticulously follow the corrections given by the referees. Accordingly, the editors may decide to publish or not publish an article. Editors and assistant editors, articles that do not comply with the publication principles; has the authority to send it back to the author for correction, to edit the format of the article or to reject the article without sending it to the referees. The field editor should evaluate the following situations for each article.

Plagiarism: Republishing the content of another author's publication, in whole or in part, as one's own publication, without giving a reference.
Fabrication: Publish data and findings/results that are not available.
Duplication/Duplication: Duplicating data from any other publication, changing the publication language and publishing articles that are not cited.
Salamization/Deception: Creating multiple publications by dividing the results of an unnatural study.