Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

Publication and Authorship

Acta Medica Ruha is an online, international, double-blind peer review, scientific, academic, open to public access journal. Journal's publishing language is Turkish and English. Published in four issues (March, June, September, December) online and open to public access. It may publish special or additional issues.

Author/authors are solely responsible for ethical and biostatistical aspects of each study. Acta Medica Ruha journal cannot be held responsible for any of these.

For any sorts of writing sent to our journal, they accept and declare that they will follow all the "Writing Rules" of Acta Medica Ruha journal and all conditions stated in the journal, and they transfer all kinds of publishing rights indefinitely to Acta Medica Ruha journal.

Acta Medica Ruha journal has all copyrights of the articles accepted to publish.

Authorship and Changes in Authorship

All authors are expected to contribute significantly to each of the following aspects:

• Conceptualisation and design of the study, acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data.
• Drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content.
• Giving final approval to the version to be submitted. Before submitting their manuscripts, authors should carefully review the list and order of authors to ensure accuracy and completeness.

Changes to the author list, such as additions, deletions, or rearrangements, should only be made prior to acceptance of the manuscript and with the approval of the journal Editor. To initiate such changes, the corresponding author must submit to the Editor: (1) justification for the changes to the author list and (2) written confirmation (by e-mail or letter) that all authors agree to the proposed addition. The approval of the corresponding author is also required in the case of adding authors, changing the author ranking, or deleting authors. The editor will only consider changes in authorship after the manuscript has been accepted. Publication of the manuscript will be suspended during the editor's review of the request. In addition, after an article has been accepted for publication, authors will not be allowed to leave the article, authors will not be allowed to be added, and reordering will not be allowed.

Editors, Reviewers and Other Parties

Considering the conflicts of interest between our editors, referees, other parties and the publisher, all parties in the journal Acta Medica Ruha accept and declare that they have transferred all their rights to Acta Medica Ruha indefinitely and gratuitously in order to ensure that the publication process of the studies is completed independently and impartially. All rights of Acta Medica Ruha journal belong to its publisher (Principal owner/concessionaire). Our editors, referees and other parties cannot claim any material and moral rights from the publisher (Principal owner/concessionaire). They accept and declare all duties gratuitously on a voluntary basis.

Otherwise, they can resign from editorial, refereeing and other duties after notifying the publisher (Principal owner/concessionaire) in writing. They cannot make any claims for the period prior to the notice of resignation.

Our editors, referees and other parties accept and declare that they comply with all the conditions in Acta Medica Ruha journal and transfer all kinds of copyright/material/moral rights to Acta Medica Ruha indefinitely and gratuitously.

Open Access Policy

Acta Medica Ruha is an e-journal that is open to public access. Open access policy is based on the rules of Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) . By open access, it is implied that all users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print and search whole texts and give link to them, and that the journal is free for public use on the Internet.

Plagiarism

Acta Medica Ruha journal accepts all terms and conditions of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) regarding plagiarism policy. Flowcharts and workflows determined by COPE regarding plagiarism are embraced.

All articles sent to Acta Medica Ruha journal to be published are checked by using Turnitin / iThenticate software. Acta Medica Ruha journal studiously demands and reviews all plagiarism reports from authors for their articles sent. The similarity rate of the articles sent to our journal should be below 20%. Articles that are determined having plagiarism in the first stage of evaluation are denied and not considered for publishing.

Ethical Principles

Acta Medica Ruha journal editorial committee embraces the criteria of (ICMJE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in terms of ethical principles.

All authors must contribute significantly to the research. Authors are responsible for subjects such as plagiarism, forgery, falsification and false authorship. In case of detecting any of those, the article is rejected. An article that is in the evaluation process cannot be sent to another journal or published. The author is responsible for uploading the document and information on the system that are asked for the studies that require ethical committee permission. Our journal makes authors obliged to identify the ethical committee that approves the research.

Scientific studies must comply with International Declaration of Helsinki, US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects and European Medicines Agency Guidelines for Good Clinical Practice  and our journal expects authors to comply with these standards.

Studies Requiring Ethical Committee Approval:

• Clinical studies conducted on humans,
• All sorts of researches conducted with qualitative or quantitative approaches that require collecting data from participants by using surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, experiment and interview methods,
• Retrospective studies in accordance with the law on the protection of personal data,
• Researches on animals,
• Using humans and animals (including material/data) for experimental or scientific purposes.

Additionally;

• Stating that "Informed Consent Form" is received for case reports,
• Getting permission from the owners and stating while using scales, surveys and photos of others,
• Stating that copyright regulations are applied for the use of intellectual and artistic works.

Article Withdrawal Policy

Preliminary Evaluation Stage: The articles at this stage can be withdrawn by the author(s).

Referee Evaluation Stage: Authors who want to withdraw the article and publish it elsewhere for reasons such as a delay in the evaluation process of the sent article, etc. may withdraw from the journal with a written application and the approval of the journal editor board of this application.

After Article Acceptance: After the article's acceptance, the requests of the authors to withdraw the article are rejected. In addition, after an article is accepted for publication, authors will not be allowed to leave the article.