Ethical Policy

For studies involving human or animal participants, the authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human and animal experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration). Application or approvasl number/year of the study should also be provided. The editorial board are entitled to question authors regarding ethical aspects when concerns are raised or further clarifications are necessary and will act in accordance with COPE guidelines if an ethical misconduct (e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication) is suspected.

It is the authors’ responsibility to carefully protect the patients’ anonymity and to verify that any experimental investigation with human subjects reported in the submission was performed with informed consent and following all the guidelines for experimental investigation with human subjects required by the institution(s) with which all the authors are affiliated with. For photographs that may reveal the identity of the patients, signed releases of the patient or of his/her legal representative should be enclosed.

Prospective human studies require both an ethics committee approval and informed consent by participants. Retrospective studies require an ethics committee approval with waiver of informed consent. Authors may be required to document such approval.

All submissions are screened by a similarity detection software (iThenticate by CrossCheck), and those with an overall similarity index of greater than 20%, or duplication rate at or higher than 5% with a single source are returned back to authors without further evaluation along with the similarity report.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

All sources of financial support should be disclosed. All authors should disclose if a meaningful conflict of interest exists in the process of forming their study. Any financial grants or other support received for a submitted study from individuals or institutions should be disclosed to the Editorial Board of the Turkish Journal of Dermatology. The ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form should be filled in and submitted by all contributing authors to disclose a potential conflict of interest. The journal's Editorial Board determines cases of a potential conflict of interest of the editors, authors, or reviewers within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.

Conditions that provide financial or personal benefit bring about a conflict of interest. The reliability of the scientific process and the published articles is directly related to the objective consideration of conflicts of interest during the planning, implementation, writing, evaluation, editing, and publication of scientific studies.

Financial relations are the most easily identified conflicts of interest, and it is inevitable that they will undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and the science. These conflicts can be caused by individual relations, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. The authors should refrain as much as possible from making agreements with sponsors in the opinion of gaining profit or any other advantage that restrict their ability to access all data of the study or analyze, interpret, prepare, and publish their articles. Editors should refrain from bringing together those who may have any relationship between them during the evaluation of the studies.

Authors should inform the editorial board concerning potential conflicts of interest to ensure that their articles will be evaluated within the framework of ethical principles through an independent assessment process. The declaration of the conflict of interest between authors, institutions, acknowledgement of any financial or material support, aid is mandatory for authors submitting a manuscript, and the statement should appear at the end of the manuscript.

Reviewers must disclose to editors any relationships or activities that may introduce bias in their evaluation of a manuscript. Additionally, reviewers are obligated to report any potential conflicts of interest between themselves and the authors or institutions involved.

The editors, who make the final decision about the articles, should not have any personal, professional, or financial ties with any of the issues they are going to decide. Engaging in multiple editorial boards with similar aims and scope, potentially competing for the same content, can create conflicts of interest. Therefore, editors and editorial staff are expected to adhere to COPE's recommendation by regularly disclosing relationships or activities relevant to editorial decisions. This disclosure should encompass additional commitments and roles, such as involvement in journals, books, and societies producing publications.

If one of the editors is an author in any manuscript, the editor is excluded from the manuscript evaluation process or a guest editor is assigned instead. In order to prevent any conflict of interest, the article evaluation process is carried out as double-blinded. Because of the double-blinded evaluation process, except for the Editor-in-Chief, none of the editorial board members, international advisory board members, or reviewers is informed about the authors of the manuscript or institutions of the authors.

The journal's publication team works devotedly to ensure that the evaluation process is conducted impartially, considering all these situations.

Appeals and Complaints

Turkish Journal of Dermatology treats appeals, complaints, and allegations of misconduct with utmost seriousness, regardless of the individuals' affiliation or the publication status. Appeal and complaint cases are handled within the scope of COPE guidelines by the Editorial Board of the journal.

The editor-in-chief will review appeals to editorial decisions, seeking additional input from the editorial board or external reviewers if the appeal is deemed valid.

If misconduct is reported, and either proven or strongly suspected, the journal is obligated to notify the relevant individual's institution, which may then initiate its own investigation.

If an individual has a complaint about an editorial decision, the editorial process, or actions by journal members, they should first contact the editor-in-chief. If the response is unsatisfactory or if the complaint is against the editor-in-chief, the matter should be raised with the publisher, who will investigate following COPE guidelines.

In instances involving allegations against a member of the publisher’s team, senior management will be apprised to oversee and supervise the investigation. In cases of potential conflicts of interest, independent individuals may lead the investigation, and when deemed necessary, the journal may contact other institutions to seek legal advice.

Editorial Duties

Editorial policies of the journal are conducted as stated in the rules recommended by the Council of Science Editors and reflected in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals. Accordingly, authors, reviewers, and editors are expected to adhere to the best practice guidelines on ethical behavior contained in this statement.

DUTIES OF PUBLISHER:

Handling of unethical publishing behaviour

The publisher will take all appropriate measures to modify the article in question, in close cooperation with the editors, in cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, disclosure, or retraction of the affected work in the most severe case. Together with the editors, the publisher will take reasonable steps to detect and prevent the publication of articles in which research misconduct occurs and will under no circumstances promote or knowingly allow such abuse to occur.

Editorial Autonomy

Turkish Journal of Dermatology is committed to ensuring the autonomy of editorial decisions without influence from commercial partners.

Intellectual Property and Copyright

Turkish Journal of Dermatology protects the property and copyright of the articles published in the journal and maintains each article's published version of the record. The journal provides the integrity and transparency of each published article.

Scientific Misconduct

Turkish Journal of Dermatology’s publisher takes all appropriate measures regarding fraudulent publication or plagiarism.

DUTIES OF REVIEWERS:

Evaluation

Reviewers evaluate manuscripts without regard for the origin, gender, sexual orientation, or political philosophy of the authors. Reviewers also ensure a fair, blind peer review of the submitted manuscripts for evaluation.

Confidentiality

All the information relative to submitted articles is kept confidential. The reviewers must not be discussed with others except if authorized by the editor.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest

The reviewers have no conflicts of interest among authors, funders, editors, etc.

Contribution to Editor

Reviewers help the editor make publishing decisions and may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.

Objectivity

Reviewers offer objective judgments and evaluations. The reviewers express their views clearly with appropriate supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of Sources

Reviewers ought to identify a relevant published study that the authors have not cited. Reviewers also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

DUTIES OF AUTHORS:

Reporting Standards

A submitted manuscript should be original, and the authors ensure that the manuscript has never been published previously. Research data should be represented literally in the article. A manuscript should include adequate detail and references to allow others to replicate the study.

Originality

Authors must ensure that their study is entirely original. References to the literature should be appropriately cited.

Multiple Publications

Authors should not submit the same study to multiple journals. Simultaneous submission of the same study to more than one journal is unacceptable and constitutes unethical behaviour.

Acknowledgement of Sources

Acknowledgement to the work of others must be given. Authors should cite publications of relevance to their own study.  All of the sources for the author’s study should be noted.

Authorship of a Paper

Each individual listed as an author should fulfill the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. To be listed as an author, an individual should have made substantial contributions to all four categories established by the ICMJE:

(a) conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data,

(b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content,

(c) final approval of the version to be published,

(d) 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 contributed to the preparation of the manuscript but do not fulfill the authorship criteria should be acknowledged in an acknowledgements section, which should be included in the title page of the manuscript. If the editorial board suspects a case of “gift authorship”, the submission will be rejected without further review.