Overview
Authorship
Peer Review
The Role of Editor
Confidentiality
Conflict of Interest
Ethical Publishing
Disclosure of Funding Sources
Human Subjects and Animal Research
Informed Consent and Ethics Committee Approval
Advertising Policy
Corrections, Retractions and Expression of Concern

Overview
Yerkure adopts core editorial policies outlined below to ensure the accurate, timely, fair and ethical publication of scientific papers. Yerkure is a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and adheres to COPE guidelines. Besides COPE guidelines, recommendations and guidelines of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and Council of Science Editors (CSE) are taken into consideration in shaping the publication process of our journals. All submitted manuscripts go through a double blind, non-biased peer review process before publication. Yerkure aims to contribute to the dissemination of ever growing scientific knowledge through publication of high quality scientific papers in accordance with the international publishing standards.

COPE – Committee on Publication Ethics

ICMJE- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

WAME- World Association of Medical Editors

CSE – Council of Science Editors

Authorship
Individuals named as authors in a manuscript should meet all of the following criteria recommended by ICMJE.

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;

2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

3. Final approval of the version to be 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. Individuals who do not meet all the criteria above or who make contributions in some other aspects, must be listed in the “Acknowledgement” section. No one, other than the ones listed as authors should have contributed to manuscript; ghost writing is not acceptable.

In case of a need to make changes in the authorship of a manuscript or a published article, the changes are implemented according to COPE guidelines.

Resources:

ICMJE - Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors

COPE - Flowcharts on Authorship Issues

Peer Review
Yerkure journals are peer reviewed, scientific journals. All submitted manuscripts go through a double blind peer review process before publication. The editor-in-chief is responsible of the editorial and scientific content of the journal and makes the final decision.

Review process includes following stages:

1. Yerkure makes the preliminary control of the submitted manuscripts to ensure that the manuscript has no incompetence in terms of the following requirements:

-Title, affiliations, abstract, keywords, main text, and a reference list
-Compliance with guidelines of the journal
-Clear and complete figures, tables, images
-Author contribution form
- ICJME Form for Disclosure of Conflict of Interest
-Ethics committee approval
-Informed consent disclosure
-Funding disclosure
-Accurate and current literature in the references section
-Quality of English language

2. Submitted manuscripts that pass the preliminary control proceed to the second stage where editor-in-chief evaluates the submissions to identify whether they comply with the journal scope, match with article classifications of the journal, are of interest to targetted audience. Plagiarism check is made over manuscript management system. As a result of these evaluations, editor-in-chief assigns associate editor for the manuscripts considered for publication.

3. Associate editor checks the manuscript in detail and initiates peer review process selecting two external reviewers who are experts in the subject area of the manuscript and who have no connections or conflicting interest with journal’s owner organization or author’s affiliation. All identity information is removed before initiating the peer review process to ensure double blind peer review process. If the two reviewers’ comment have significantly different/or contradictory opinions about the same manuscripts, the manuscript is re-sent to a third reviewer.

4. Research articles are reviewed by biostatistics editor as well.

5. All reviewers’ comments are sent to the author. Author makes corrections taking into consideration all the reviewers’ comments and submits a revised manuscript.

6. Associate editor sends the original manuscript, the revised manuscript and all the reviewers’ comments together with his recommendation to the editor-in-chief of the journal.

7. Editor-in-chief reviews the manuscript and makes final decision. He might accept the manuscript, reject the manuscript or request further revisions.

8. The decision letter is sent to the author.

Following the final decision of editor-in-chief, publication process is managed and finalized by Yerkure in coordination with editorial team of the journals. Each accepted manuscript is edited by Turkish and English language editors of Yerkure. Then, graphics and web department is involved in the process. DOIs are assigned, pdf files are produced and articles are uploaded to the web page of the journal finally.

Role of Editors
Yerkure journals’ editors are responsible for the quality of content and they make final decision of the publication of the manuscripts. They make their decisions taking into consideration the importance, originality and clarity of the manuscript and its relevance. Editors implement a fair double-blind peer review process of the submitted articles for publication. They ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential before publishing.

Authors, editors and reviewers are required to disclose existing or potential conflicts of interest. As stated by WAME, conflict of interest exists when a participant in the publication process (author, peer reviewer or editor) has a competing interest that could unduly influence (or be reasonably seen to do so) his or her responsibilities in the publication process (submission of manuscripts, peer review, editorial decisions, and communication between authors, reviewers and editors). The types of competing interests that should be declared include financial ties, academic commitments, personal relationships, political or religious believes, institutional affiliations.

Confidentiality
Manuscripts submitted to Yerkure journals are privileged communications that are authors’ private, confidential property. Editors and reviewers are required to treat manuscripts confidentially.

Ethical Publishing
Yerkure is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and is a member of COPE. Yerkure follows recommendations and guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Council of Science Editors (CSE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Manuscripts submitted to Yerkure journals must be original, unpublished (including as full text in conference proceedings), and not under the review of any other publication synchronously. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two reviewers under double-blind peer review process. Plagiarism detecting software (ithenticate) is used to screen submitted papers at all times. We check for plagiary and fraudulent data; falsification (fabrication or manipulation of research data, tables, or images) and improper use of humans or animals in research. All manuscripts not in accordance with these standards will be removed from the publication. This also contains any possible malpractice discovered after the publication. In accordance with the code of conduct we will report any cases of suspected plagiarism or duplicate publishing.

For dealing with cases of possible scientific misconduct and breach of publication ethics, COPE Ethics Flowcharts are taken into consideration

Conflict of Interest
To disclose potential conflicts of interest, the ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form (http://www.icmje.org/) should be filled in and submitted by all contributing authors. Cases of a potential conflict of interest of the editors, authors, or reviewers are resolved by the journal’s Editorial Board within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.

Resources:

WAME - Conflict of Interest in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals

ICJME - Conflict of Interest

COPE - Conflict of Interest Flowcharts

Disclosure of Funding Sources
All financial support received to carry out research must be declared while submitting the paper. The role of the funder in the research must also be declared.

Human Subjects and Animal Research
Yerkure journals take as principle to comply with the ethical standards of World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles For Medical Research Involving Human Subjects–revised in 2003 and WMA Statement on Animal Use in Biomedical Research-revised in 2016

For this reason, regarding the subjects of clinical experiments, it must be indicated in the submitted manuscripts definitely that the above mentioned codes of conduct were applied.

Informed Consent and Ethics Committee Approval
Approval of research protocols from national or local ethics committees must be submitted together with the manuscripts. Manuscripts that report the results of experimental investigation with human subjects must include a statement that informed consent was obtained after the procedure(s) had been fully explained. In the case of children and those under wardship or with confirmed insanity, authors are asked to include information about whether the legal custodian’s assent was obtained.

Advertising Policy
Journals published by Yerkure have institutional owners and financial expenses of the journals are covered from resources of these organizations. Yerkure adheres to COPE’s recommendations about advertising Medical journals published by Yerkure might include drug and medical equipment advertisements in a limited coverage in print issues.

Aside from exceptional cases, online advertisements are not accepted to be published on journal web sites. Advertisements must be accurate and should not be misleading or offensive; and they must meet the legal requirements. Advertisements must be distinguishable from manuscripts in design and appearance.

Corrections, Retractions and Expression of Concern
Yerkure follows ICJME and COPE Guidelines for corrections, retractions and expression of concern.

In cases of minor errors (such as honest errors, incorrect author list, errors related with editing or production process) that do not lead to any change in the results, interpretations and conclusions of the article, journal editors should consider publishing correction. In cases of major errors (such as unintentional miscalculation, experimental error, data fabrication, reduntant or duplicate publication, usage of plagiarized material, unethical research) that invalidate results and conclusions of an article, journal editors should consider retraction.

In case that there is evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors; there is evidence that the findings are not reliable and institutions of the authors do not investigate the case or the possible investigation seems to be unfair or nonconclusive, journal editors should consider issuing an expression of concern. Best practice in scholarly publishing as stated by COPE guidelines requires that: Notices of retraction should be linked to the retracted article wherever possible (i.e. in all electronic versions); clearly identify the retracted article (e.g. by including the title and authors in the retraction heading); be clearly identified as a retraction (i.e. distinct from other types of correction or comment); be published promptly to minimize harmful effects from misleading publications; be freely available to all readers (i.e. not behind access barriers or available only to subscribers); state who is retracting the article; state the reason(s) for retraction (to distinguish misconduct from honest error); avoid statements that are potentially defamatory or libelous.

Resources:

ICJME: Corrections, Retractions, Republications and Version Control

ICJME: Scientific Misconduct, Expressions of Concern, and Retraction

COPE: Retraction Guidelines Flowcharts