Publishing Policies

PUBLICATION ETHICS

.doc journals are committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics. The editorial and publication processes of the journal are shaped in accordance with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

All parties involved in the publishing process (Editors, Reviewers, Authors, and Publishers) are expected to agree on the following ethical principles:

  • The manuscripts should be prepared following ICMJE- Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, which was updated in December 2019. 
  • An approval of research protocols by the Ethics Committee in accordance with international agreements and the Declaration of Helsinki is required for experimental, clinical, and drug studies. Ethics committee approval and “informed consent form” should be stated in the “Materials and Methods” section. 
  • In experimental animal studies, authors should state that they protect animal rights in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and obtain an ethical committee approval report from their institution. 
  • Studies that require the approval of the Ethics Committee are as follows:
    • All kinds of research are conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require data collection from the participants by using survey, interview, focus group work, observation, experiment, and interview techniques.
    • The use of humans and animals (including material/data) for experimental or other scientific purposes,
    • Clinical studies on humans,
    • Research on animals,
    • Retrospective studies under the law on the protection of personal data,

Additionally;

  • Indicating that an “informed consent form” has been received in case reports,
  • Obtaining and specifying permission from the owners for the use of scales, questionnaires, photographs belonging to others,
  • A statement that copyright regulations are complied with for the intellectual and artistic works used.
  • The authors are required to declare whether there is any conflict of interest with individuals or institutions in terms of financial support. The conflict of interest statement should occur at the manuscript’s end. 
  • The journal will not accept or publish any manuscripts that are suspected of containing guest authorship, inappropriate acceptance, and references to influence the following unethical practices or the review process:

Plagiarism: Republishing all or part of another author’s work as if it was the owner, without reference.

Fabrication: Publishing data and results that do not exist.

Copying: The case of using data from another publication, including reproduction of a publication in other languages.

Slicing: Artificially dividing the result of a study into multiple publications.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

Authors submit their articles through the .doc journals online manuscript submission system. The submitted manuscripts are first checked in terms of technical aspects. The language, figures, tables, necessary documents related to the article (author contribution form, copyright approval form, patient consent for case reports, ethics committee approval), references are reviewed, and plagiarism is checked. The manuscript that passes this stage is forwarded to the editor-in-chief. The editor-in-chief evaluates whether the manuscript’s content is compatible with the journal’s publication policy, whether it is prepared following the journal’s publication rules, and the manuscript’s scientific contribution to the field. After this evaluation, if appropriate, the manuscript is directed to the editor to initiate the scientific content control process. The editor assigns at least two reviewers through the system to evaluate the manuscript’s scientific content and report their suggestions, criticisms, and contributions. They also direct it to the Statistics Editor when it deems necessary. The editor cares for selecting the reviewers among experts who do not have a conflict of interest with the authors. While the manuscript is sent to the reviewers, the information of the author and the institution where the study was conducted is hidden to prevent any bias. The editor evaluates the reviewers’ suggestions, criticisms, and contributions, and if they find them sufficient, forwards them to the author. When the editor deems it necessary, they direct the manuscript to other reviewers. The names of the reviewers are hidden while the suggestions, criticisms, and contributions are forwarded to the authors. Thus, it is ensured that the scientific content of the manuscripts is evaluated in a double-blind way, away from bias and objectively. After the authors make the necessary arrangements, the manuscript is sent back to the editor, and the editor sends it to the reviewers for re-evaluation. Manuscripts deemed sufficient in this evaluation are accepted for publication. Manuscripts deemed unsuitable for publication by the reviewers are rejected. Manuscripts for which they want new corrections and edits are sent back to the authors. After the manuscript accepted for publication is reviewed by the English and Turkish language editors, the As publisher, .doc prepares it for publication and sends it to the authors for final check and approval. The ready articles are published on the journal’s website.

The Editor-in-chief evaluates articles regardless of the authors’ age, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and political affiliation.

The reviewer evaluations should be objective. A reviewer is expected to evaluate by considering the following points:

  • Does the article contain new and essential information?
  • Does the abstract clearly describe the content of the article?
  • Is the hypothesis or aim of the study written clearly?
  • Is the research method clearly defined? Is the method appropriate to test the hypothesis?
  • Are the findings given clearly and briefly without adding any comment (for the “results” part)?
  • Are the comments made and conclusions supported by the findings (for the “discussion” part)?
  • Are adequate references given to national and international studies?
  • Is the language of the article appropriate and understandable?

The reviewers should ensure that all information regarding the submitted articles remains confidential until the article is published and report any copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s part to the editor.

If the reviewer is not competent on the article’s subject or if it does not seem possible to provide a timely response, they should inform the editor as soon as possible and ask them not to involve themselves in the referee process.

Articles are the private property of the authors. Reviewers and editorial board members may not discuss articles with other people.

OPEN ACCESS STATEMENT

.doc journals are open-access publications and the Journals’s publication model is based on Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) declaration.

All content published in the journals is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 International License, allowing third parties to use the content for non-commercial purposes as long as they credit the original work. This license allows for the content to be shared and adapted for non-commercial purposes, promoting the dissemination and use of the research published in the journal.

All published content is available online, free of charge.

Authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder when using previously published content, including figures, tables, or any other material in both print and electronic formats. Legal, financial, and criminal liabilities in this regard belong to the author(s).

COPYRIGHT

.doc journals require each submission to be accompanied by a Copyright License Agreement. By signing the Copyright License Agreement, the authors agree that the article, if accepted for publication by .doc journals, will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC 4.0).

CC BY-NC 4.0 license permits third parties to share and adapt the content for non-commercial purposes by giving the appropriate credit to the original work.

Authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder when using previously published content, including figures, tables, or any other material in both print and electronic formats. Legal, financial, and criminal liabilities in this regard belong to the author(s).

All opinions and reports within the articles that are published in .doc journals are the personal opinions of the author(s). Therefore, .doc does not accept any responsibility for these articles.

Authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights in .doc journals.

PUBLICATION FEES

As .doc journals are open-access publications, authors are not charged any submission or publication fees.

Publication expenses are covered through the financial resources of each journal’s home institution, with occasional support from the journal’s advertisement revenue.

CONFLICT(S) OF INTEREST

.doc journals require all individuals involved in the peer review process to disclose any existing or potential conflict(s) of interest, including financial, personal, ideological, and academic issues that may lead to any bias.

All authors and co-authors are required to submit the Copyright License Agreement Form. In this form, the authors declare that they do not have a conflict of interest with any company, institution, or person.

Editors and reviewers are also encouraged to disclose any conflict(s) of interest regarding the submissions assigned to them.

PLAGIARISM

Manuscripts submitted to .doc journals are screened for plagiarism. If it is detected that the submitting authors have plagiarized any portion of the manuscript, the journal’s editorial board will act in accordance with the relevant COPE guidelines.

ARCHIVING POLICY

The content published by .doc journals is electronically preserved using the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/) to ensure its availability to scientists and researchers.

ADVERTISING POLICY

Although each .doc journal is financially supported by the journal’s home institution, a limited number of drug/medical products and hardware/software advertisements may be presented.

Advertisement sales and editorial workflow processes are separated in order to secure editorial independency and mitigate any potential financial influence. Published advertisements are clearly marked and easily distinguishable from editorial content. It is the advertisers’ responsibility to ensure that their advertisements are in accordance with the governing laws regarding content and ethical issues.