Information for Authors

General Information

Turkish Journal of Bioethics (TJOB) is an international peer-reviewed electronic journal which publishes empirical and theoretical research, reviews, critical narrative reading, legislation assessments, letter to the editor, case reports / discussions that are related to bioethics. TJOB publishes original scientific papers conforming to scientific standards that can be used as references. They reflect the terms of the national and regional perspective. Article submission and spelling standards are prepared in accordance with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals.

Manuscripts submitted to TJOB should be original. They should not be previously published and / or currently being evaluated by another source.

Open Access Policy

Turkish Journal of Bioethics is an open-access journal. Users can access all content freely available.

Open Access Policy is based on the rules of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) .When applying to the journal, the copyright transfer form is signed by the responsible author for the articles. To access the transfer form, please click here: Copyright Transfer Form

Creative Commons License:  Turkish Journal of Bioethics articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 2.0  Generic (CC BY-NC-ND)

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or formatThe licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

CC BY-NC-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.

CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:

CC BY – Attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

NC – NonCommercial – You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

ND – NoDerivatives - If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

User license	Read, print and download	Attribution	Reuse portions or extracts from the article in other works	Sell or re-use for commercial purposes
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0	Yes	Yes	No	No

Please note: Authors transfer their copyrights, they are allowed to use and reuse the articles under the same license CC-BY-NC-ND as third parties. For more information please click here Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 2.0  Generic (CC BY-NC-ND)

Writers

Articles submitted to Turkish Journal of Bioethics must be original studies on bioethics.
All sources used in articles (authors, online pages, personal interviews, etc.) should be cited accurately and appropriately.
It should be stated that the articles sent to the journal were not sent to another journal and the Copyright Transfer Form should be filled.
Persons who do not contribute intellectually to the article should not be listed as authors.
Conflicts of interest regarding the submitted article should be stated and the reason should be explained.
Authors may be required to submit raw data regarding their work to the editorial board while in the peer review process, in which case the authors are expected to share their raw data with the editorial board. Authors are obliged to keep the data/sources used for a published article for submission when requested by the editor.
When authors detect an error in their work, they should inform the editor and the editorial board and cooperate for the correction or withdrawal process.

Publishing Interval

TJOB is published four times in a year; Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. It can publish supplements for Congress and Symposium presentations, held by Turkish Bioethics Association.

How to Send a Manuscript?

Manuscripts should be submitted to the following website; e-mail submissions are not accepted. Please click here to submit your article. Please click here to send your questions about online articles.

Manuscript Evaluation Process

All manuscripts (except ones for The Voice of Students section) are subject to the following process:

• After the formal control for the compliance with the TJOB rules manuscripts are directed to the editor.
• All applications are evaluated by the editor with regard to the scope, objective and the target audience of TJOB.
• Manuscripts considered as eligible are directed to two independent reviewers.
• This journal uses double-blind review, which means that reviewers does not know the identity of the author/s, and vice-versa, throughout the review process.
• The reviewers can convey one of the following decisions: Accepted; Minor Revision; Major Revision; Rewriting needed; Rejected. The objective of this process is to assist the author(s) in conforming to the scientific publishing standards and that of TJOB.
• The recommendations and requests of the reviewers, and the proposed changes (if any) will be directed to the author(s) and the requested changes are expected to be made.
• Following the changes, the editor can send the manuscript to reviewers for re-evaluation or proceed to final decision.
• The editor will notify the author(s) about the final decision (accepted / rejected).
• The editor is responsible for the decision and date of publishing.
• Accepted manuscript is directed to the corresponding author for proof-reading before publishing and it should be responded to within 48 hours.

Text Layout

In order to initiate the evaluation process immediately, all the manuscripts submitted to TJOB should be prepared according to the following rules of writing. Manuscripts not fulfilling the formal requirements will not be processed.

Font

Manuscripts should be written with Times New Roman, 12 pt, 1.5 lines spacing, 2.5 cm space should be left-right, top and bottom, the text should be justified, and pages should not be numbered.

Numbering

Sentences should not begin with a number. Use words for numbers from 1-10 and figures for 11 and above.

End Notes

Endnotes can be used only when extremely necessary and indicated with roman numerals

Quotations

Direct quotation from another article and its display "in quotes" should be made only if it is necessary. Any changes in the main text [It should be noted in brackets]. Quotes should not exceed 50 words.

References

Vancouver style is used in referencing. Automatic referencing should not be used. References should be numbered in the order they appear in the text. In the text, tables and illustrations, references should be displayed in parentheses and by Arabic numerals.

Tables and illustrations

Tables and illustrations should be numbered according to the order in the text, depending on where in the text, table / figure number and name should be written, they should be listed at the end of the text with their descriptions and each on a separate page. Information provided in the table should not be repeated in the text. Permission should be received and documented for the tables taken from other sources. Figures should be either professionally drawn, photographed or should be submitted in digital printing with photo quality. The printable part of photos and images must be at least 9x13 cm in size and of 300 dpi in resolution.

Cover Letter

Written by the corresponding the author to the editor, the cover letter explains the objective(s) and method(s) of the submitted manuscript, summarizes the importance of the results for the audience of TJOB. In addition, it should indicate that whether the manuscript was presented in other scientific meetings or submitted to another place for publication.

Title Page

Should consist of the title of the article, short title, type of article, author(s)’s names, author(s)s' academic titles, institutional affiliations and positions, address of the corresponding author, e-mail address and phone number, an Acknowledgments section where financial support(s) and conflict of interest(s) should be announced as well; notification of previous presentations at scientific meetings and / or publication in the book of proceedings. (Template of the title page)

Abstract

In the original research (objective / methods / results/conclusion) an abstract not exceeding 400 words should be prepared in English.

Key Words

At least three key words in English should be given. All of the words should be written in small letters, with semicolon (;) as separator. Keywords should be written according to MESH.

Titles

Original articles consist of an INTRODUCTION where the relevant literature is reviewed and the rationale and objective of the research is presented; METHODS offering the information about the methods used in the study; RESEARCH LIMITATIONS where the limitations relating to the implementation of the method is declared; RESULTS where the data obtained is submitted; DISCUSSION where the findings is being discussed in the light of available references. The results and recommendations based on these results should be summarized in the last paragraph of the DISCUSSION section.

In manuscripts other than original articles, authors can divide their text into sub-sections and name these sections as they find necessary. But the title(s) should not be more than three lines and placed according to the following order; the first line of the section should come right after the title line, no extra space should be left.

FIRST UPPER CASE and BOLD
Second only the first Letters Upper Case and Bold

Third, only the first letter capitalized italics

Types of Manuscripts
Original Articles

Should not exceed 5000 words except references. For the human research, an Ethical Issues title should be mentioned under the METHODS section and the place and date of Ethics Committee Approval should be noted there. Otherwise, the author(s) should explain why such an approval is not obtained and how the ethical requirements such as informed consent of the subjects, confidentiality etc. are fulfilled.

Review Articles

Should not exceed 5000 words except references.

Cases and Commentaries

Research cases or clinical cases can be presented for review and discussion. The presented case must identify an ethical dilemma or issue on which the related professionals can make comments. Informed consent of patients or persons related to the presented case must be obtained, or the case should be written in a way that prevents identification. This rule shall not be implemented in publicly known cases. Case reports should not exceed 1500 words.

Voice of Student

Undergraduate and graduate students can submit articles with the title of their choice, in all the fields of bioethics. Articles submitted to this section should not exceed 2,000 words. Student’s articles are reviewed by the Editorial Board.

Critical Narrative Reading

Book reviews to send for the critical narrative reading section are limited to 2,000 words. At the beginning of the article, the identification tag of the book must be mentioned as follows; Book title
Author
Place of publication: publisher, edition, year of publication, number of pages.
e.g.
Principles of Biomedical Ethics
Tom L .Beauchamp, James F. Childress
USA: Oxford University Press, 7th edition, 2013, 480 pages

Legislation/Regulation Review

Articles submitted for this section are limited to 2000 words. The current national / international regulations related to bioethics should be evaluated and/or discussed.

Commentary/Letter to the Editor

Manuscripts reviewing the articles published in the last two issues of TJOB and letters to the editor are accepted for this section. The author of the responded article, article title, volume of TJOB and page numbers must be stated in the introduction of the manuscript. The commentaries on the published articles will also be sent to the author(s) of the original article for reply, prior to publication of the manuscript. Letters are limited to 750 words, including references.

Peer-review Process

Manuscripts, evaluated to be appropriate for the spelling rules and scope of the journal, are sent to reviewers. Reviewers evaluate your article according to the following basic criteria and fill up Reviewer Report Form.

• Quality of writing and content
• originality and contribution to the field
• academic standards.

Plagiarism Policy

TJOB does not start manuscript evaluation process if plagiarism/self-plagiarism detected during editorial assessment. During manuscript submission process the authors must upload the similarity report by using an appropriate plagiarism software. Universities in Turkey are subscribers of a 'plagiarism software', please contact your librarian. Non-Turkish and non-university submissions please contact for information.