Instruction for Authors

Instruction for Authors

General Information:

The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics publishes the following peer-reviewed material oriented in the field of clinical pediatrics: original articles, case reports, review of the literature, short communications, clinicopathological exercises and letter to the editor. The Journal does not publish animal studies. The official language of the journal is English.

All papers are subject to editorial revision for the purpose of conformity to the style adopted by The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics, and authors may be requested to shorten or revise their papers. Statements and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Editor or publisher; the Editor and publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such material. Neither the Editor nor the publisher guarantees, warrants, or endorses any product or service advertised in this publication; neither do they guarantee any claim made by the manufacturer of such product or service.

Preparation of Manuscript: Contributors are requested to pay particular attention to the following rules governing the preparation of manuscripts. Failure to follow these rules is a frequent cause of delay in the publication of articles and may result in rejection of otherwise acceptable manuscripts. Manuscript should be uploaded in a blinded manner; any affiliation must be covered.

Format: Manuscripts should be typed in 12pt (Times New Roman), double-spaced, with margins of 2.5 cm or 1 inch all round, and pages must be numbered on the right upper corner. Line numbers should be added to each page on the left margin.

Covering Letter: The covering letter is important to help the Editor in his/her preliminary evaluation, please indicate why you think the paper is suitable for publication. A statement that each author listed on the manuscript has seen and approved the submission of this version of the manuscript and takes full responsibility for the manuscript must be provided. The covering letter will be uploaded as a separate file.

Title Page: A separate title page should include authors' names and academic degrees; departmental and institutional affiliations of each author, and sources of financial assistance, if any. Designate one author as the correspondent, and provide an address as well as business and home telephone numbers. Galley proofs and order forms for reprints will be sent to the corresponding author, at a later date. On the title page please add a short running title, word count (excluding abstract and references), number of tables and figures, ethical approval, funding, conflict of interest, authors contribution.

Types of Articles:

Original Article: Original articles should report scientific findings within the pediatric field of interest. They must include a structured abstract of less than 300 words, with the following headings: background, methods, results and conclusions to appear after the title page. The manuscript should be structured with the following headings: introduction, materials and methods, results, and conclusions. The introduction should put the study in context with the current literature and reflect the purpose of the study. The materials and methods should include the study methodology, the setting for the study (although affiliation must be covered), the subjects (number and type), the treatment or intervention, principal outcomes measured, and the type of statistical analysis. The results section should include the outcome of the study and statistical significance, if appropriate. The conclusion(s) states the significance of the results and limitations of the study. The manuscript should be no longer than 3,500 words.

Case Reports: Case reports should contain accounts of rare syndromes, new diagnostic tools and methods, new kinds of treatment and laboratory research with foreseeable practical application. Case reports should consist of a structured abstract with the following headings: background, case and conclusions that summarizes the case(s), a brief introduction, a section that details patient presentation, initial diagnosis and outcome, as well as a discussion that includes a brief review of the relevant literature and describes how this case brings new understanding to the disease process. The number of authors is limited to 6 for case reports. If more than 6 authors have had a significant contribution defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) then the authors may contact the editorial office to request an increase.

Review Articles: Review articles should contain an objective account of different points of view and an internationally representative bibliography. Authors considering submission of review articles of medical progress are encouraged to consult with the Editor before submission.

Structured manuscript for systematic reviews are recommended. Headings should include: Structured abstract with the following headings: background and objectives, material and methods results and conclusions, Introduction, Data Sources, Study Selection, Data Extraction, Results, Limitations, and Conclusions. The general instructions regarding submission (including cover letter, title page requirements, journal style guidance, and conflict of interest statements) also apply to Review Articles.

Short communication: Short communications are opinion pieces consisting of a main point and supporting discussion. They may address general issues or controversies in the field of pediatrics. No abstract is needed but the general submission instructions (including cover letter, title page, journal style guidance, and conflict of interest statements) also apply to short communications.

Clinicopathological exercises: Authors can submit for consideration an clinicopathological exercises that is interesting, instructive, and visually attractive, along with a few lines of explanatory text and references. No abstract, discussion or conclusion are required but the general submission instructions (including cover letter, title page, journal style guidance, and conflict of interest statements) also apply to clinicopathological exercises.

Image of the month: Authors can submit for consideration a striking image that is interesting, instructive, and visually attractive, along with a few lines of explanatory text and references. Images can be either clinical, pathologic (gross or microscopic), endoscopic, or radiographic. They must be of high quality (300 PPI resolution) and illustrate the diagnosis well. No abstract, discussion or conclusion are required but the general submission instructions (including cover letter, title page, journal style guidance, and conflict of interest statements) also apply to the Image of the month.

Letters to the Editor: Letters to the Editor should pertain to papers published in The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics within the past year. Provide a unique title for the Letter on the title page with complete contact information for the author(s). References, including reference to the pertinent article(s) in The Journal, should conform to style for manuscripts. No abstract is needed for a letter to editor. Letters to the Editor may be sent to the authors of the original article to which the Letter was written for review and/or Reply. If the Editors choose to publish the Reply, it will be published in the same issue as the Letter to the Editor.

Abstract and key words:  An informative structured abstract not exceeding 300 words must accompany each manuscript, Unexplained abbreviations and references should not be given.  The abstract should state the objective (the purpose of the study and hypothesis) and summarize the rationale for the study. It is critically important that all significant findings should be presented in the abstract. The abstracts should be structured with the following headings for an original article: Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions and Background, Case Report, Conclusion for a case report.

The authors should list three to five key words or phrases taken from Index Medicus

Medical Subject Headings (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).

Tables: Tables should be numbered with Roman numerals according to the order of mention in the text, each table must be typed double-spaced. A title for each table must be given. Tables should be self-explanatory and supplement, not duplicate the text. If a table or any data therein have been previously published, a footnote must give full credit to the original source. Tables should be added to the end of the main manuscript following the references.

Figures: Figures and illustrations should be of direct interest to the subject of the paper and numbered with Arabic numerals according to order of reference in the text. Art should be created/scanned and saved as either TIFF or JPEG format, submitted as a separate file, and not embedded in the text file. All lettering must be professional and in proportion to the drawing, graph, or photograph. A list of legends for the figures and illustrations must added to the end of the manuscript after the tables.

Abbreviations: Abbreviations must conform to accepted standards. Laboratory slang, clinical jargon and colloquialisms must be avoided. The full term for an abbreviation should precede its first use in the text. Generally, abbreviations should be limited to those defined in the AMA Manual of Style, current edition.

Publication Ethics and Informed Consent:

The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics takes issues of publication ethics very seriously and subscribes to its principles on how to deal with acts of misconduct thereby committing to investigate allegations of misconduct in order to ensure the integrity of research. Scientific articles sent to journals should take into account the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the International Standards for Editors and Authors of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics).

The Materials and Methods section and the Title Page should include a statement that the research was reviewed and approved by an institutional review board, and that participation involved informed consent. Please give information concerning where and when the study was approved, with the report number.

Written consent from the family is required before a case report can be published. On submission, authors must attest that they have written consent from the family. Instances where there are extenuating circumstances in which family consent may be problematic will be handled on a case-by-case basis. A sentence stating that informed consent was received from the family should be added to the case section of the main document.

Conflicts of Interest and Funding: A conflict of interest is defined as any financial, personal, academically competitive or intellectual relationship between the author, referee or editor that involves article submission, referee evaluation, editorial decision and author-referee-editor correspondence and that could lead to a prejudiced and unfair action during the evaluation stage.

The authors must declare any financial relationship or conflict of interest areas that need to be known regarding the study. All financial contributions and sponsorships for the study and all financial relationships and conflict of interest areas should be included in the copyright transfer form that accompanies the article. The authors must explain the study sponsor’s role in collecting, evaluating and analyzing the data, writing the article and submitting it for publication. Declaration of conflict of interest should be added to the title page. If there is no conflict of interest, this section must include a “The authors declare no conflict of interest” statement. All sources of funding should also be mentioned in the title page.

The evaluation process for the article is not started if a conflict of interest statement is not present at the time the article is sent. If a conflict of interest becomes apparent after the article is published, the journal may make an official correction or withdraw the entire article.

The referees also need to declare all their interests that they feel may represent a potential conflict of interest. The referees must declare to the editor any conflicts of interest that may prejudice their evaluation of the article and must avoid such evaluation of certain articles if a potential prejudice is present.

The editors who will make the final decision on the articles cannot have any personal, professional or financial relationship with any of the authors of the articles they will decide on. The editors will also try to avoid any referees who have a possible conflict of interest, for example those working in the same department or facility as any of the authors.

Acknowledgement: An “acknowledgement(s)” section may be added to thank those who helped the study or preparation of the article, if any. The acknowledgements should be added to the title page. This section contains statements of gratitude for personal, technical or material help, etc.

Authors contribution:

We require that all authors take responsibility for the content of the work submitted for review. An author contribution section should be added to the title page

The contributions of all authors must be described in the following manner: The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: X. Author, Y. Author; data collection: Y. Author; analysis and interpretation of results: X. Author, Y. Author. Z. Author; draft manuscript preparation: Y. Author. Z. Author. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

References: References to the literature should be limited to those cited by the author, arranged and numbered according to order they appear in the text; do not alphabetize. In text, tables, and legends, identify references with superscript Arabic numerals at the end of the sentence (after the full stop). List all authors up to 6; if more than 6, list the first 3 followed by “et al.”

If reference to an author is made in the text the reference must be given after the name of the author rather than at the end of a sentence.

Example: In a study by Bier DM et al.23 the prevalence of…….

Names of journals are to be abbreviated in accordance with the style of Index Medicus.

References to journal articles:

Example: Oral R, Coohey C, Zarei K, et al. Nationwide efforts for trauma-informed care implementation and workforce development in healthcare and related fields: a systematic review. Turk J Pediatr 2020; 62: 906-920.

References to books:

Example: Strasburger VC, Brown RT, Braverman PK, Rogers PD, Holland-Hall C, Coupey SM. Adolescent Medicine: A Handbook for Primary Care. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006: 13-21.

References to chapters in books:

Example: Macumber IR, Flynn JT. Systemic hypertension. In: Kliegman RM, St Geme III JW, Blum NJ, Tasker RC, Shah SS, Wilson KM (eds). Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics (21st ed) Vol 2. Philadelphia: Elsevier, 2020: 2490-2499.

Submission of article: All manuscripts must be submitted on-line through the web site http://www.turkishjournalpediatrics.org. The corresponding author should upload the “Turkish Journal of Pediatrics Author Responsibility and Copyright Transfer Form” with the main manuscript. The copyright transfer form can be downloaded during the online submission process. The Copyright Transfer Form should be signed by each author individually. More than one copyright form can be uploaded.

Footnote: If the study has been presented at a scientific meeting or is part of a thesis this can be added to the end of the manuscript as a footnote.

Copyright: All rights reserved. Apart from any relaxations permitted under national copyright laws, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. Permission is not required to copy summaries of papers or of articles on the condition that a full reference to the source is given. Multiple copying of the contents without permission is always illegal.

No manuscript will be considered for review until all authors have completed an uploaded the copyright form.

Announcements: Announcements of scheduled meetings, symposia, or postgraduate courses may be sent to the publisher for consideration at least 5 months in advance of the meeting date.

Checklist

Please check your article as described below before sending it to the Editor.

  • Covering letter
  • Turkish Journal of Pediatrics Author Responsibility and Copyright Transfer Form.
  • Title page
    • Title of article
    • Short running title
    • Name(s), academic degrees, and affiliations of author(s)
    • Name, address, and business and home telephone numbers of corresponding author
    • Word count and number of tables and figures
    • Ethical approval
    • Funding
    • Conflict of interest
    • Acknowledgement
    • Authors contribution
  • Main document
    • Original articles: Title, Structured abstract, Key words, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, References, Tables, Figure legends
    • Case Reports: Title, Structured abstract, Key words, Introduction, Case Report, Discussion, References, Tables, Figure legends,
  • Manuscript should be uploaded in a blinded manner; any affiliation must be covered.
  • Declaration of informed consent and ethical approval should be given in the material methods section and on the title page
  • Tables should be added to the bottom of the main manuscript document
  • Figures should be uploaded separately
  • Figure legends should be added to the bottom of the main manuscript following the tables.

Publication Process After Acceptance

Accepted papers will be passed on to the journal's English language editor for language editing. After this, the manuscript will be evaluated by the section editor/ associate editor before publication. If major changes have been made by the language editor the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper will receive an email asking them to evaluate the last edition and approve all changes.

The accepted paper will then be passed on to the Akdema Informatics and Publishing company for correct formatting. At this point, the manuscript is also checked for plagiarism.  

Plagiarism Detection
The journal employs a plagiarism detection system. By submitting your manuscript to our journal, you accept that your manuscript will be screened for plagiarism against previously published works after acceptance. If plagiarism is detected at this point the manuscript can be declined for publication even after previously being accepted.

Proofing
Authors will receive an e-mail notification with their final pdf. Page proofs should be carefully proofread for any copyediting or typesetting errors. No special software is required, all common browsers are supported.  The only acceptable changes at this stage are corrections to grammatical errors or data accuracy, or to provide higher resolution figure files. Any changes to scientific content will require editorial review and approval. Changes in authors including addition, removal, or change in the order of authors is not permitted at this point. Proofs must be returned within 72 hours of receipt of the email. 

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