Author Guidelines
Gazi Medical Journal (GMJ), as a journal with double-blind reviewing process, publishes experimental, basic and original researches conducted in the field of medical sciences; post-graduate training reports, case reports, and articles on history of medicine, and publication and research ethics. Reviewers whom opinions are of priority in the decision of approval are selected among independent local and international individuals that have specialized on their respective fields by the editors. The journal is published four times per year; in January, April, July, and October.
GMJ needs an approval of research protocols by an ethical committee in accordance with international agreements. (Helsinki Declaration of 1975, revised 2008-http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html, “Guide for the care and use of laboratory animals - www.nap.edu/catalog/5140.html).
GMJ policy is to prohibit plagiarism, falsification of data, misuse of third party material, fabrication of results and fraudulent authorship. The submitted manuscripts may be subject to checks using the iThenticate service, in order to detect instances of overlapping and similar text.
All submissions must be accompanied by a signed statement of scientific contributions and responsibilities of all authors and a statement declaring the absence of conflict of interests. Any institution, organization, pharmaceutical or medical company providing any financial or material support, in whole or in part, must be disclosed in a footnote (ICMJE Disclosure Form for Potential Conflict of Interests).
Manuscript format must comply with the “Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication” (http://www.icmje.org/).
The presentation of Original Researches and Reviews must be designed in accordance with trial reporting guidelines: CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, STARD for diagnostic studies, PRISMA systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
An approval of ethic committee or an equivalent acceptance letter prepared by the officials of the institution in accordance with general ethics is mandatory for Original Research and even for some of the Case Reports. The concept and suggestions presented in the manuscript are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of Editor and his/her associates.
Manuscripts sent for publication must not have been previously published elsewhere. Abstracts that have been previously presented in scientific congresses and not exceeding 200 words can be accepted providing the explanation of the condition.
Withdrawal requests without a reasonable cause for papers approaching decision process are “rejected”. First author of the manuscripts accepted for publication agrees that corrections both in English and Turkish versions are to be made by the Editors on condition that this will not cause a major change in the document.
Citation potential, being original and having high scientific and academic value are prerequisite for the acceptance of manuscripts for publication.
There is not any charge netiher for article submission nor processing
Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note. When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
General Terms
Manuscripts can only be submitted through online manuscript submission system at http://medicaljournal.gazi.edu.tr/. Rejected manuscripts are not returned to authors except artistic pictures. All papers are reviewed by Editor being in the first place, Editor Consultant and associates, statistical consultants and by at least two reviewers. It is particularly important for the journal that first author suggests three individuals as reviewers who are reputable on the subject and who are not related to and unaware of the authors and their institutions.
Editor decides whether the paper conforms to the style stated below before sending the manuscript to the reviewers. Corrections must not be made on original text and must be restricted with the sections requested for revision. Any spelling or drawing errors must be corrected before sending the manuscript to the reviewers.
- Manuscripts have to be submitted as title page, main document, table(s), figure(s), etc, copyright transfer form, Authorship Contributions form and ethical approval statement (if needed).
- The text has to be checked for Plagiarism and English prrofreading. The percentage of plagiarism below 15-20% (excluding the references section) and english proofreading results have to be included in the submission.
- On the title page; the full names, institutional affiliations, ORCID IDs are need to be clearly mentioned. The corresponding author including his/her detailed institutional affiliation with postal and e-mail address should also be provided.
- If the study involves human subjects and/or animals, the authors must provide the name of the ethical approval committee/Institutional Review Board they have obtained consent from along with approval number/ID. Also, the authors must state that written informed consent was obtained from the participants of the study. (If verbal informed consent was obtained, the reason(s) for the absence of written consent must also be provided).
- Regarding case reports involving children/infants, authors should confirm that the statements of written informed consent from legally authorized representatives/parents/guardians are available. (If verbal informed consent was obtained, reasons for this must be mentioned).
- The patients’ images, names, initials, or hospital numbers should not be included in recordings, written descriptions, or photographs, unless the information is essential for scientific purposes. In any case, written informed consent from the patient must be obtained for publication of these graphics in electronic form. If such consent has not been obtained, personal details of patients in any part of the paper and in any supplementary materials must be removed before submission.
Articles not conforming to the instructions will not be taken into consideration.
Research Articles
1. Original Researches: Full text of the paper should not exceed 5000 words and should include tables and graphs in sufficient number and content to allow understanding. Number of references being less than 50 is sufficient for plausibility
1.1 Title page: It is the first page of the manuscript and prepared separately as MS Word document. It must include full names of the authors; highest academic degrees and the title of the article not exceeding 50 characters. Affiliations of the authors, departments and city names must be stated in order. Studies conducted in more than one centre must be marked with symbols. Full name, postal and e-mail addresses, phone and fax numbers of the author responsible for correspondence and corrections must be stated at the bottom of this page. It must be also explained if the study was previously presented in a scientific congress in accordance with aforementioned terms or if the abstract was published.
1.2 Structured abstract for original research article: Must be less than 250 words. Abstract should contain Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusion subheadings. 6 keywords compatible with NLM MESH terms (http://www.nlm.nih.gov./mesh/MBrowser.html) should be included following abstract.
1.3 Text: The text must include; Title, Introduction, Methods (with subheadings), Results, Discussion, Limitations of the study, and References. It may be useful to divide methods, results and discussion sections into subheadings. The text must not exceed 5000 words and should be written in Times New Roman, 12 point font. If acknowledgements will be included at the end of the manuscript, those contributed to the conduction of the study or assisted in finalizing the document are mentioned apart from those having substantial scientific contribution. This information must be sent by e-mail or uploaded to the system in a separate MS Word document with the name of “Acknowledgements”.
1.4 Statistical Analysis: Analysis must be performed in accordance with statistical data reporting rules in medical journals (Altman DG, Gore SM, Gardner MJ, Pocock SJ. Statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals. Br Med J 1983: 7; 1489-93). Software used in statistical analysis must be stated. If parametric tests are used for the comparison of continuous variables, data must be presented as mean±standard deviation. For non-parametric tests, Median (Minimum-Maximum) or Median (25th and 75th percentile) values must be indicated. In advanced and complicated statistical analyses, relative risk (RR), odds ratio (OR) and hazard ratio (HR) must be supplemented with confidence intervals (CI) and p values.
1.5 References: References should be indicated in the article text, within or at the end of sentences, in brackets and using arabic numbers (example: “(35).”). References can also be indicated following ”et al.”. A list of references should be included at the end of the article respecting the reference sequence. Inaccessible references such as personal information, unpublished data, “in press” are not typed in the references section but cited in parenthesis within the text. Abstracts published two years ago are not included in references; if included, they must be written as (abstr.) in parenthesis. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references.
Journals
Journal names must be abbreviated according to the list of Index Medicus/Medline/PubMed (the list of MEDLINE journals and their abbreviations published annually by NLM can be accessed at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html). All author names are listed for articles having 6 or less authors. If the article contains 7 or more authors, names of the first 6 authors are written and followed by “et al.”. Names of the authors are followed by the title of the manuscript, year, volume and page numbers.
Example: Müller C, Büttner HJ, Petersen J, Roskomun H. A randomized comparison of clopidogrel and aspirin versus ticlopidine and aspirin after the placement of coronary-artery stents. Circulation 2000; 101: 590-3.
Books
Chapter in a book: Sherry S. Detection of thrombi. In: Strauss HE, Pitt B, James AE, editors. Cardiovascular Medicine. 2nd ed. St Louis: Mosby; 1974. p.273-85.
Book with single author: Cohn PF. Silent myocardial ischemia and infarction. 3rd ed. New York: Marcel Dekker; 1993.
Editor(s) as author: Norman IJ, Redfern SJ, editors. Mental health care for elderly people. New York: Churchill Livingstone; 1996.
Article presented at a meeting: Bengisson S. Sothemin BG. Enforcement of data protection, privacy and security in medical informatics. In: Lun KC, Degoulet P, Piemme TE, Rienhoff O, editors. MEDINFO 92. Proceedings of the 7th World Congress on Medical Informatics; 1992 Sept 6-10; Geneva, Switzerland. Amsterdam: North-Holland; 1992. P. 1561-5.
Scientific or technical report: Smith P. Golladay K. Payment for durable medical equipment billed during skilled nursing facility stays. Final report. Dallas (TX) Dept. of Health and Human Services (US). Office of Evaluation and Inspections: 1994 Oct. Report No: HHSIGOE 169200860.
Thesis: Kaplan SI. Post-hospital home health care: the elderly access and utilization (dissertation). St. Louis (MO): Washington Univ. 1995.
Manuscript in electronic format
Morse SS. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg Infect Dis (serial online) l995 Jan-Mar (cited 1996 June 5): 1(1): (24 screens). Available from: URL: http:/ www.cdc.gov/ncidodlElD/cid.htm.
1.6 Figures, Tables and Pictures: Figures and images must be prepared as not to include names of the patient, doctor and the institution. They must be provided separately from the document and numbered according to their sequence within the text. Legends and footnotes are typed in a separate page. The drawings in the graphs must be in sufficient thickness. Therefore, loss of detail will be minimal while zooming out. The width should be maximum 9 or 18 cm. It may be useful if the drawings are made by professionals. Grey colour should not be used. Abbreviations must be defined below in alphabetical order. Roman numbers should not be used in Tables and Figure Captions and in the citation of the tables within the text. Decimal numbers in the text, Tables and Figures must be given with a point. The tables should be prepared to make the text more explanatory and understandable and should not repeat the text.
Video Images
In addition to images in the Case Reports and Original Images; video images/motion pictures, extra images/static images will be published at our website if they comply with the following technical requirements.
1. Presentations in image/static image format: JPG, GIF, TIFF, BMP
2. Video images/motion pictures: MPEG, VMF.
3. File size must be maximum 2 MB.
4. Names of doctor, institution, city, and patient and descriptions in the images and particularly in video images must be deleted before sending.
Originality of the tables, figures and images in your manuscript must be stated. If a material is used from another source, either the original source or a source citing the original one, the source must be cited; hardcopy or electronic versions must be obtained from Copyright owner (publication house, journal or author) and presented to the Editor in Chief with the permissions. Terms relevant to the references, figures and tables are applicable to all types of articles.
Special Sections
2. Reviews: Can be prepared by the invited authors upon decision of the Editorial Office. An information or a subject must explain, discuss, and evaluate the latest level that has been reached and must be at a particular degree directing the future studies in order to be used in clinic. The author must have a high reputation in his/her field and must have published manuscripts that have been cited.
Unstructured abstract: Should not exceed 250 words. 6 keywords compatible with NLM MESH terms (available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov./mesh/MBrowser.html) should be included following abstract. They are limited to 5000 words and 50 references.
3. Editorial Note: The purpose of editorial note is to make brief evaluation of the published research by reputable authors on that particular field or by reputable reviewers. Clinical significance and short summary is included at the end of the text.
4. Case Reports: Intriguing and informative case reports including very rare conditions even for other authors or those representing challenges in the diagnosis and treatment or overlooked conditions in practice or those offering new therapies, involving information that are not even present in the textbooks can be published in the journal. Such case reports are published in limited numbers. Those containing video images have higher chance of publication. Number of references is limited to 10 and the text is limited to 700 words and includes an English title. Case report contains the subheadings of Introduction, Case Report, Discussion and Conclusion.
5. Scientific Letter: Manuscripts that aim to announce scientific discoveries and data or preliminary reports that are of clinical significance are accepted for publication as scientific letter. Scientific letters do not contain subheadings and should not exceed 900 words. Number of references should be limited to 10 and the number of tables and figures should be limited to 2.
6. Letters to the Editor: Are one of the major aims of publication of the journal. The significance of a published manuscript or overlooked or missed aspects are discussed. Apart from letters commenting on the published manuscripts, authors can present their comments on subjects attracting the readers’ interest or on educational cases in the form of Letters to the Editor. Number of references should not exceed 5 and the text should be limited to 500 words; the text does not contain subheadings.
7. Education: Scientific knowledge that has been proved with the results latest research, that set out in academic training, and that taken a place in clinical practice is presented in details.
Unstructured abstract: Should not exceed 250 words. 6 keywords compatible with NLM MESH terms (available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov./mesh/MBrowser.html) should be included following abstract. The text should be limited to 5000 words and number of references is limited to 50.
8. Original Images: Striking and rare images reflecting important findings in clinical sciences, shedding light on basic mechanisms of the diseases, emphasizing the abnormalities or revealing new treatment methods are accepted for publication. Those containing video images have higher chance of publication. Figure caption, legends, and footnotes (without reference) should not exceed 250 words.
9. Historical Notes: Historical notes are the articles that enlighten important events in the history of medicine and elucidate new information on the historical progress of the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. New historical discoveries must be the results of appropriate researches conducted on the subject. The content of historical notes should not contain subheadings and be limited to 900 words and 10 references.
10. Publication Ethics: Articles providing contemporary information and comments on publication ethics and cases of violation of ethics are published in this section of the journal. The text is limited to 900 words and the number of references is limited to 10.
