Instructions to Authors

Turkish Journal of Surgery (Turk J Surg) is the official, peer reviewed, open access publication of the Turkish Surgical Society and Turkish surgical community. The journal is published quarterly on March, June, September and December and its publication language is English. 

The aim of the Turkish Journal of Surgery is to publish high quality research articles, review articles on current topics and rare case reports in the field of general surgery. Additionally, expert opinions, letters to the editor, scientific letters and manuscripts on surgical techniques are accepted for publication, and various manuscripts on medicine and surgery history and ethics, surgical education and the field of forensic medicine are included in the journal. 

The editorial and publication processes of the journal are shaped in accordance with the guidelines of the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), and National Information Standards Organization (NISO). The journal conforms to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (https://doaj.org/apply/transparency). 

Originality, high scientific quality, and citation potential are the most important criteria for a manuscript to be accepted for publication. Manuscripts submitted for evaluation should not have been previously presented or already published in an electronic or printed medium. The journal should be informed of manuscripts submitted to another journal for evaluation but rejected for publication. The submission of previous reviewer reports will expedite the evaluation process. Manuscripts presented in a meeting should be submitted with detailed information on the organization, including the name, date, and location of the organization. 

Manuscripts submitted to the Turkish Journal of Surgery will go through a double-blind peer-review process. Each submission will be reviewed by at least two external, independent peer reviewers who are experts in their fields in order to ensure an unbiased evaluation process. The editorial board will invite an external and independent editor to manage the evaluation processes of the manuscripts submitted by the editors or the editorial board members of the journal. The Editor-in-Chief is the final authority in the decision-making process for all submissions. 

Ethics committee approval is mandatory for all human (including retrospective studies) and animal research.

An approval of research protocols by the Ethics Committee in accordance with international agreements (World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects,” amended in October 2013, www.wma.net) is required for experimental, clinical, and drug studies and for some case reports. 

The ethics committee approvals or an equivalent official document will be requested from the authors. For manuscripts concerning experimental research on humans, a statement verifying that written informed consent of the patients and volunteers was obtained following a detailed explanation of the procedures should be included. For studies carried out on animals, the measures taken to prevent pain and suffering of the animals should be stated clearly. Information on patient consent, name of the ethics committee, and the ethics committee approval number should also be stated in the Material and Methods section of the manuscript. It is the authors’ responsibility to carefully protect patients’ anonymity. For photographs that may reveal the identity of the patient, releases signed by the patient or his/herlegal representative should be enclosed. 

Registration in an internationally recognized registration system is strongly recommended for randomized prospective studies. See ICMJE/Clinical Trial Register for more information: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html

All submissions are screened by a similarity detection software (iThenticate by CrossCheck). 

In the event of alleged or suspected research misconduct, e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, the Editorial Board will follow and act in accordance with COPE guidelines. 

Each individual listed as an author should fulfill the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE - www.icmje.org). The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria: 

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

4.  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, and ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he/she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for other specific parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors. 

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged in the title page of the manuscript. 

Turkish Journal of Surgery requires corresponding authors to submit a signed and scanned version of the authorship contribution form (available for download through www.turkjsurg.com) during the initial submission process in order to act appropriately on authorship rights and to prevent ghost or honorary authorship. If the editorial board suspects a case of “gift authorship,” the submission will be rejected without further review. As part of the submission of the manuscript, the corresponding author should also send a short statement declaring that he/she accepts to undertake all responsibility for authorship during the submission and review stages of the manuscript. 

The Turkish Journal of Surgery requires and encourages the authors and the individuals involved in the evaluation process of the submitted manuscripts to disclose any existing or potential conflicts of interests, including financial, consultant, and institutional. Any financial grants or other support received for a submitted study from individuals or institutions should be disclosed to the Editorial Board. To disclose a potential conflict of interest, the ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form 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. 

The Editorial Board of the journal handles all appeal and complaint cases within the scope of COPE guidelines. In such cases, authors should get in direct contact with the editorial office regarding their appeals and complaints. When needed, an ombudsperson may be assigned to cases that cannot be resolved internally. The Editor-in-Chief is the final authority in the decision- making process for all appeals and complaints. 

When submitting a manuscript to the Turkish Journal of Surgery, authors accept to assign the copyright of their manuscript to the Turkish Surgical Society. If rejected for publication, the copyright of the manuscript will be assigned back to the authors. Turkish Journal of Surgery requires each submission to be accompanied by a Copyright Transfer Form (available for download at www.turkjsurg.com). When using previously published content, including figures, tables, or any other material in both print and electronic formats, authors must obtain permission from the copyright holder. Legal, financial and criminal liabilities in this regard belong to the author(s). 

Statements or opinions expressed in the manuscripts published in the Turkish Journal of Surgery reflect the views of the author(s) and not the opinions of the editors, the editorial board, or the publisher; thus, the editors, the editorial board, and the Publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such materials. The final responsibility in regard to the published content rests with the authors. 

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION 

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (updated in December 2017 - http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf). Authors are required to prepare manuscripts in accordance with CONSORT guidelines for randomized research studies, STROBE guidelines for observational original research studies, STARD guidelines for studies on diagnostic accuracy, PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analysis, ARRIVE guidelines for experimental animal studies, and TREND guidelines for non-randomized public behavior. 

Manuscripts can only be submitted through the journal’s online manuscript submission and evaluation system, available at www.turkjsurg.com. Manuscripts submitted via any other medium will not be evaluated. 

Manuscripts submitted to the journal will first go through a technical evaluation process by the editorial office staff to ensure that the manuscript has been prepared and submitted in accordance with the journal’s guidelines. Submissions that do not conform to the journal’s guidelines will be returned to the submitting author with technical correction requests. 

Authors are required to submit the following: 

• Copyright Transfer Form,
• Author Contributions Form and
• ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form (should be filled in by all contributing authors)

during the initial submission. These forms are available for download at www. turkjsurg.com.

Preparation of the Manuscript

Title page: A separate title page should be submitted with all submissions, which should include:

• The full title of the manuscript as well as a short title (running head) of no more than 50 characters, 
• Name(s), affiliations, and highest academic degree(s) of the author(s), 
• Grant information and detailed information on the other sources of support, 
• Name, address, telephone (including the mobile phone number) and fax numbers, and email address of the corresponding author, 
• Acknowledgment of the individuals who contributed to the preparation of the manuscript but who do not fulfill the authorship criteria. 

Abstract: English abstract should be submitted with all submissions except for Letters to the Editor. The abstract of Original Articles should be structured with subheadings (Objective, Material and Methods, Results, and Conclusion). Please check Table 1 below for word count specifications. 

Keywords: Each submission must be accompanied by a minimum of three to a maximum of six keywords for subject indexing at the end of the abstract. The keywords should be listed in full without abbreviations. The keywords should be selected from the National Library of Medicine, Medical Subject Headings database (https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search).

Manuscript Types 

Original Articles: This is the most important type of article since it provides new information based on original research. The main text of original articles should be structured with Introduction, Material and Methods (with subheadings), Results, Discussion, Conclusion subheadings. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Original Articles. 

Statistical analysis to support conclusions is usually necessary. Statistical analyses must be conducted in accordance with international statistical reporting standards (Altman DG, Gore SM, Gardner MJ, Pocock SJ. Statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals. Br Med J 1983; 7: 1489-93). Information on statistical analyses should be provided with a separate subheading under the Material and Methods section and the statistical software that was used during the process must be specified. 

Units should be prepared in accordance with the International System of Units (SI). 

Expert Opinions: Editorial comments aim to provide a brief critical commentary by reviewers with expertise or with high reputation in the topic of the research article published in the journal. Authors are selected and invited by the journal to provide such comments. Abstract, Keywords, Tables, Figures, Images, and other media are not included. 

Review Articles: Reviews with high citation potential prepared by authors with extensive knowledge on a particular field and whose scientific background has already been proven by a high number of publications in the related field are welcomed. These authors may even be invited by the journal. Reviews should describe, discuss, and evaluate the current level of knowledge of a topic in clinical practice and should guide future studies. The main text should contain Introduction, Clinical and Research Consequences, and Conclusion sections. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Review Articles. 

Case Reports: There is limited space for case reports in the journal, and reports on rare cases or conditions constituting challenges in diagnosis and treatment, those offering new therapies or revealing insight not included in the literature, and interesting and educative case reports are accepted for publication. The text should include Introduction, Case Presentation, Discussion, and Conclusion subheadings. Please check Table 1 for the limitations for Case Reports. 

Video Articles: We do encourage the submission of the video articles which report interesting cases and technical methods.

The details of the review process are below.

• All videos will be peer reviewed.
• All videos will be published on the journals official Web site.
• Article length: It should not exceed 500 words.
• Reference Number: Not to exceed 5 references

Diagnosis, surgical technique and outcome should be summarized. All important steps and aspects of the surgery should be mentioned in the video. If it is a new surgical technique, appropriately labeled and cited video materials may be used. Authors can use a rare case they have encountered, a surgical technique, or videos using modern technological devices.

The following items must be provided:

• The file of the video written in Word format.
• A completed copy of the online broadcast consent form (form will be prepared and linked), together with completed copies of patient consent forms, if appropriate.
• All videos must contain an English narration.
• All videos should also be in the highest resolution possible, more details on accepted file types and resolution are available at this link (authors' video article submission guidelines; https://turkjsurg.com/video-article-guidelines ).
• The duration of the videos should not exceed five minutes and the maximum file size should be 300Mb.

Letters to the Editor: This type of manuscript discusses important parts, overlooked aspects, or lacking parts of a previously published article. Articles on subjects within the scope of the journal that might attract the readers’ attention, particularly educative cases, may also be submitted in the form of a “Letter to the Editor.” Readers can also present their comments on the published manuscripts in the form of a “Letter to the Editor.” Abstract, Keywords, Tables, Figures, Images, and other media should not be included. The text should be unstructured. The article being commented on must be properly cited within this manuscript. 

Human Subjects Research 

All research involving human participants must have been approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board (IRB) or by equivalent ethics committee(s) and must have been conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors should be able to submit, upon request, a statement from the IRB or ethics committee indicating approval of the research. The Journal reserves the right to reject work believed to have not been conducted in a high ethical standard, even when formal approval has been obtained. 

Subjects must have been properly instructed and have indicated that they consent to participate by signing the appropriate informed consent paperwork. Authors may be asked to submit a blank, sample copy of a subject consent form. If consent was verbal instead of written, or if consent could not be obtained, the authors must explain the reason in the manuscript, and the use of verbal consent or the lack of consent must have been approved by the IRB or ethics committee. 

Animal Research 

All animal research must have approval from the authors’ Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) or equivalent ethics committee(s), and the research must have been conducted according to applicable national and international guidelines. Approval must be received prior to beginning the research. 

Manuscripts reporting animal research must state in the Methods section: The full name of the relevant ethics committee that approved the work, and the associated permit number(s). Where ethical approval is not required, the manuscript should include a clear statement of this and the reason why. The author should provide any relevant regulations under which the study is exempt from the requirement of approval. 

Tables 

Tables should be included in the main document, presented after the reference list, and numbered consecutively in the order they are referred to within the main text. A descriptive title must be placed above the tables. Abbreviations used in the tables should be defined below the tables by footnotes (even if they are defined within the main text). Tables should be created using the “insert table” command of the word processing software and they should be arranged clearly to provide easy reading. Data presented in the tables should not be a repetition of the data presented within the main text but should be supporting the main text. 

Figures and Figure Legends 

Figures, graphics, and photographs should be submitted as separate files (in TIFF or JPEG format) through the submission system. The files should not be embedded in a Word document or the main document. When there are figure subunits, the subunits should not be merged to form a single image. Each subunit should be submitted separately through the submission system. Images should not be labeled (a, b, c, etc.) to indicate figure subunits. Thick and thin arrows, arrowheads, stars, asterisks, and similar marks can be used on the images to support figure legends. Like the rest of the submission, the figures too should be blind. Any information within the images that may indicate an individual or institution should be blinded. The minimum resolution of each submitted figure should be 300 DPI. To prevent delays in the evaluation process, all submitted figures should be clear in resolution and large in size (minimum dimensions: 100 × 100 mm). Figure legends should be listed at the end of the main document. 

All acronyms and abbreviations used in the manuscript should be defined at first use, both in the abstract and in the main text. The abbreviation should be provided in parentheses following the definition. 

When a drug, product, hardware, or software program is mentioned within the main text, product information, including the name of the product, the producer of the product, and city and the country of the company (including the state if in the USA) should be provided in parentheses in the following format: “Discovery St PET/CT scanner (General Electric, Milwaukee, WI, USA)” 

All references, tables, and figures should be referred to within the main text and numbered consecutively in the order they are referred to within the main text. 

Limitations, drawbacks, and the shortcomings of original articles should be mentioned in the Discussion section before the conclusion paragraph. 

References 

While citing publications, preference should be given to the latest, most up- to-date publications. If an ahead-of-print publication is cited, the DOI number should be provided. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references. Only references cited in the text should be included in the reference list. The reference list must be numbered according to the order of mention of the references in the text. In the main text of the manuscript, references should be cited using Arabic numbers in parentheses. Journal titles should be abbreviated in accordance with the journal abbreviations in Index Medicus/ MEDLINE/PubMed. When there are six or fewer authors, all authors should be listed. If there are seven or more authors, the first six authors should be listed followed by “et al.” The reference styles for different types of publications are presented in the following examples. 

Journal Article: Akopov AL,Artioukh DY. Good surgeon: A search for meaning. Turk J Surg 2017;33:49-50.

Book Section: Suh KN, Keystone JS. Malaria and babesiosis. Gorbach SL, Barlett JG, Blacklow NR, editors. Infectious Diseases. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams; 2004. pp. 2290-308. 

Books with a Single Author: Sweetman SC. Martindale the Complete Drug Reference. 34th ed. London: Pharmaceutical Press; 2005. 

Editor(s) as Author: Huizing EH, de Groot JAM, editors. Functional reconstructive nasal surgery. Stuttgart-New York: Thieme; 2003. 

Conference Proceedings: 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. pp. 1561-5. 

Scientific or Technical Report: Cusick M, Chew EY, Hoogwerf B, Agrón E, Wu L, Lindley A, et al. Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study Research Group. Risk factors for renal replacement therapy in the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS), Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study Kidney Int: 2004. Report No: 26. 

Thesis: Yılmaz B. Ankara Üniversitesindeki Öğrencilerin Beslenme Durumları, Fiziksel Aktiviteleri ve Beden Kitle İndeksleri Kan Lipidleri Arasındaki Ilişkiler. H.Ü. Sağlık Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Doktora Tezi. 2007. 

Manuscripts Accepted for Publication, Not Published Yet: Slots J. The microflora of black stain on human primary teeth. Scand J Dent Res. 1974. 

Epub Ahead of Print Articles: Cai L, Yeh BM, Westphalen AC, Roberts JP, Wang ZJ. Adult living donor liver imaging. Diagn Interv Radiol 2016 Feb 24. doi: 10.5152/dir.2016.15323. [Epub ahead of print]. 

Manuscripts Published in Electronic Format: Fugh-Berman A. PharmedOUT [Internet]. Washington: Georgetown University, Department of Physiology and Biophysics; c2006 [cited 2007 Mar 23]. Available from: http://www.pharmedout.org/.

REVISIONS

When submitting a revised version of a paper, the author must submit a detailed “Response to the reviewers” that states point by point how each issue raised by the reviewers has been covered and where it can be found (each reviewer’s comment, followed by the author’s reply and line numbers where the changes have been made) as well as an annotated copy of the main document. Revised manuscripts must be submitted within 30 days from the date of the decision letter. If the revised version of the manuscript is not submitted within the allocated time, the revision option may be canceled. If the submitting author(s) believe that additional time is required, they should request this extension before the initial 30-day period is over. 

Accepted manuscripts are copy-edited for grammar, punctuation, and format. Once the publication process of a manuscript is completed, it is published online on the journal’s webpage as an ahead-of-print publication before it is included in its scheduled issue. A PDF proof of the accepted manuscript is sent to the corresponding author and their publication approval is requested within 2 days of their receipt of the proof.