ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
The Journal of Uludağ University Medical Faculty adopts and adheres to the ethical principles, frameworks, and standards established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The Journal of Uludağ University Medical Faculty requires the documentation of the Ethics Committee Decision in clinical studies involving humans, experimental studies using laboratory animals, and survey studies. These documents must also include a page with the signatures of the Committee Members (a cover letter alone is insufficient). In the article text, the Ethics Committee information (Committee name, decision date, decision number) should be included in the "Materials and Methods" section.
In case reports, an ethics committee decision is not required, but consent must be obtained from the cases included in the article, and this must be stated within the article.
Ethics committee approval is not required for reviews, but it is expected that the corresponding author uploads a signed statement indicating this to the system.
Article authors must adhere to universal publication ethics rules.
Ethical Responsibilities of Authors
Authors must state that their articles are their original work and that all data in the article are real and original. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the data presented in their articles is accurate and representative of the article. To ensure transparency, authors may be asked to submit their raw data or additional data along with the article. Authors are responsible for providing supplementary and auxiliary materials. The articles submitted to the journal must not have been published elsewhere or be under consideration for publication. However, authors can submit their articles to the Journal after receiving a rejection letter from another publisher. Theses and graduation theses that are not archived online are considered original and unpublished. However, authors who submit articles using the content and data of their theses should mention this in the Acknowledgments section.
Authors must comply with the authorship criteria listed in the "Authorship" section. The level of their contributions should be defined in the 'Authorship Contribution Form' section. Authors are responsible for retracting and correcting errors. Authors must disclose and declare any conflicts of interest to the Editors. If there is no conflict of interest, the authors should also declare this in their article. Authors should specify all sources used in the creation of the articles. Authors should cite relevant and verified literature to support their scientific work and should not use unrelated sources that could assist other research/journals.
The corresponding author is the main owner of the article, so they can withdraw their articles before entering the review process or when a revision is requested. Authors cannot make significant changes to the article or withdraw it without a serious reason after the paper has been accepted.
Authors are obliged to inform the journal editor or publisher of any errors or mistakes in a published, preprint, or review-stage article and to cooperate with the chief editor to correct or retract the article. Authors should avoid submitting a manuscript based on the same dataset, study, or experiment for publication. The journal reserves the right to withhold publication or reject articles identified as plagiarism, ethical violations, undisclosed prior publication, or conflicts of interest, even after an editorial acceptance decision.
Authors should maintain open and constructive communication with other editors and reviewers. (Inappropriate language or destructive behavior is unacceptable. The journal follows COPE guidelines when dealing with such situations.
Ethical Responsibilities of Referees
Reviewers must keep all information related to the articles confidential and treat it as privileged information. Evaluations should be conducted objectively without personal criticism of the author. The authors' self-identification should not influence their comments and decisions. Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Reviewers should not review articles that have conflicts of interest arising from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the articles.
Reviewers are obliged to complete the assigned tasks on time and to inform the journal in case of the need for an extension or withdrawal from the task.
The Ethical Responsibilities of Editors
Journal Editors (Chief Editor, Editor, or Editorial Board Members) have full responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article. Editors always consider the needs of authors and readers while striving to improve the publication. Editors take the necessary precautions to keep articles and editorial reports confidential. Articles, editorial reports, and obtained information are not shared or disclosed for any reason.
Editorial decisions in the journal are based solely on the significance, originality, clarity, and suitability of the articles for publication. Editors ensure that all research materials published in the Journal comply with internationally accepted ethical standards. Editors are obliged to take action and make all reasonable efforts to resolve the issue when they encounter any abuse, unethical behavior, or misconduct related to research and publication ethics, whether the article is published or unpublished.
In articles submitted by editors or members of the editorial board of the journal, the process is conducted in such a way that the editor or board member who is the author of the article does not participate in the evaluation and decision stages.
Editors, editorial staff, authors, reviewers, and committee members conduct the evaluation process in a manner that does not allow any conflicts of interest.
Editors are responsible for completing assigned tasks on time, facilitating the review process, remaining impartial, and ensuring that the review process progresses consistently and fairly.
PUBLISHING POLICY
The Journal of Uludağ University Medical Faculty is an open-access journal that publishes for scientific purposes and does not request any fees at any stage of the process. Articles submitted for evaluation to the journal are primarily subjected to a format review, and a similarity check is conducted at this stage. Subsequently, a priority assessment for publication in the journal is conducted by the chief editor, editor, and/or the relevant section editor. Due to the large number of articles submitted to our journal, in this evaluation, articles determined not to have priority are not considered for review and are returned to the author. A Section Editor from the Editorial Board is assigned to the articles that are accepted for review. The section editor obtains opinions from at least 2 scientific advisors and informs the editor of the decision. In the case of equal opinions from scientific advisors (1 rejection, 1 acceptance/revision), the article may be sent to a third reviewer by the section editor, or the section editor may provide her/his opinion based on her/his own evaluation. The final decision is made by the Chief Editor and/or the Editor and communicated to the author.
The review period in our journal is an average of 60 days. However, for various reasons, this period can vary between 15 days and 120 days.