Gülhane Medical Journal (GMJ) is an international, multidisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal for researchers and healthcare providers. It is published four times a year and accepts submissions in English. It is the official journal of the Gülhane Faculty of Medicine, University of Health Sciences Türkiye.

GMJ follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. For authors submitting to GMJ, it is recommended that authors follow the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

All submissions are evaluated through the online submission system JournalAgent. Following submission, all correspondence is sent by e-mail.

Accepted manuscripts are assigned a DOI number, and the content is freely available.

GMJ publishes in categories listed below;

1. Original article

2. Review article

3. Case report

4. Letter to the editor (and their responses)

Authors submitting their manuscripts should follow this guide for the authors. The editorial office may send the manuscript back in order to complete the standard requirements before proceeding for review.

Original articles should be designated as either basic research or clinical research.

Review articles should include a summary and subheadings in the text to highlight the content of different sections. Authors are recommended to contact the journal before submitting a review article in order to get a provision for review.

Case reports should present an actual patient case with a specific disease or condition.

Letters to the editor should be related to the articles published in the last four issues.

The authors must declare that their submitted article has neither been published in any journal nor been simultaneously submitted to another journal. Presentations as an abstract at a scientific meeting is an exception but this should be declared in the cover letter.

The Methods section should include a statement indicating that the research was approved by an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board). If the study includes human subjects, the author should declare openly that the work described has been carried out in accordance with The World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans, and Uniform Requirements for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals. The name of the institution and the code of approval (i.e., approval number) must be provided. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript about informed consent obtained from their participants. According to the most recent regulations by the Turkish Academic Network and Information Center (ULAKBIM), the authors (s) of a case report must include a statement in their manuscript that written, informed consent was obtained from the patient.

The presentation of the article types must be designed following study reporting guidelines (for more information visit https://www.equator-network.org/):

CONSORT for Randomised trials

STROBE for Observational studies

PRISMA for Systematic reviews

SPIRIT or PRISMA-P for Study protocols

STARD or TRIPOD for Diagnostic/prognostic studies

CARE for Case reports

AGREE or RIGHT for Clinical practice guidelines

SRQR or COREQ for Qualitative research

ARRIVE and Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals for Animal pre-clinical studies

SQUIRE for Quality improvement studies

CHEERS for Economic evaluations

Plagiarism

All manuscripts submitted are screened for plagiarism using Similarity Check powered by “iThenticate” software. Results indicating plagiarism may cause manuscripts to be returned or rejected.

Use of Large Language Models and Generative AI Tools

AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.” COPE Position Statement on Authorship and AI tools. Detailed information about the statement can be accessed at https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author

After reviewing the COPE statement, the editors of the Gülhane Medical Journal have decided that papers should include a statement in a section called “Declaration Regarding the Use of AI and AI-Assisted Technologies” to let readers know if AI or AI-assisted tools were used in the writing process. It's important to remember that all authors are responsible for the content of their work. This declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, or references (such as Mendeley, EndNote, Zotero, and others). If there is nothing to declare, there is no need to add a statement.

It is suggested that authors follow this format when preparing their statement:

During the preparation of this work, the author(s) utilized [NAME OF TOOL(S) USED] to [DESCRIPTION OF HOW THE TOOL(S) WERE UTILIZED AND HOW THE VALIDITY OF THE OUTPUTS WAS EVALUATED]. After carefully reviewing and editing the content as necessary, full responsibility for the publication's content is taken by the author(s). This incorporation of AI tool usage primarily impacted [SPECIFY WHICH ASPECTS OF THE STUDY, ARTICLE CONTENTS, DATA, OR SUPPORTING FILES WERE AFFECTED/GENERATED].

Example:

During the preparation of this work, the author(s) utilized OpenAI's ChatGPT to generate summaries of research articles related to the topic. These summaries were evaluated by comparing them to manually written summaries by experts in the field. Upon confirming the accuracy and relevance of the generated summaries, they were integrated into the literature review section of the manuscript. After carefully reviewing and editing the content as necessary, full responsibility for the publication's content is taken by the author(s). This incorporation of AI tool usage primarily impacted the efficiency of literature review process and the comprehensiveness of the gathered research insights.

Preparation of the Manuscript

Authors should remember that a good layout is helpful throughout the review and publication process. Information on the word counts and limits is provided in each section.

The text and references should be double-spaced throughout, in single-column format, preferably 12-point Times New Roman font.

Starting from the title page, continuous line numbering should be placed on the left side of the page.

All pages should be numbered (below, centred) consecutively.

Abbreviations should be defined when first used in the text. Once an abbreviation is defined, it should be used throughout the rest of the manuscript, although it may be re-defined or not used in the figures and tables.

Units must be expressed following the international system of units (SI).

Uploading the Manuscript Submission Form (MSF) (found in the online submission system) is mandatory for all submissions. MSF must be filled in English (typewriting is encouraged), signed by the corresponding author, and scanned clearly.

Cover Letter

All submissions should include a cover letter and complete contact information for the corresponding author. The authors must declare in this letter that their submitted article has neither been published in any journal nor been simultaneously submitted to another journal. Whether the authors have published or submitted any related papers from the same study should be stated. Authors may also use this letter for confidential contact with the editor.

The cover letter must be uploaded as a separate file.

Title Page

All submissions should include a title page. Essential title page information is given below.

Title should be concise and informative. Abbreviations and formulae should be avoided in the title.

Author names and affiliations should be clearly indicated by the given name (s) and family name (s) of each author. Authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) should be placed below the names, along with the e-mail address of each author.

Corresponding author should be clearly indicated for future correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, as well as post-publication. This responsibility includes answering any future queries. The e-mail address should be given, and contact details should be kept up to date by the corresponding author.

If an author has moved since the work in the article was done, the latest address/affiliation may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the authors actually did the work must be retained as the main affiliation address.

Manuscript word count (not including the title, abstract, acknowledgments, references, tables, figures, and captions), ''Acknowledgments'', ''Conflict of interest'' statement and information about the previous publications(s) in the form of an abstract should also be provided in the title page.

The title page must be uploaded as a separate file.

Abstract

For an original article, a structured abstract should be uploaded with four subheadings; ''Aims'', ''Methods'', ''Results'', and ''Conclusions''. The maximum word count of an abstract is 250.

For a review article or case report, an unstructured abstract of 100 or fewer words should be uploaded.

There is no need to upload an abstract for a letter to the editor.

Keywords

Up to six keywords should follow the abstract in separate line.

Main Document

For original articles, the main text body should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion. The word count in an original article should be between 2000 and 4000 words between the introduction and discussion. The maximum number of references in an original article is 40. Please see other limits specific to manuscript types as shown in the table below.

Introduction should identify the topic, provide essential context, and indicate the particular focus of the work. The study aims should be clearly indicated.

Methods should be written using subsections. It should include the study type and design, setting and dates, patients or participants with inclusion and exclusion criteria and/or participation or response rates, or data sources, and how these were selected for the study; the essential features of any interventions or exposures; and the main outcome measures.

Manuscripts reporting data from research conducted on humans must include a statement of assurance in the methods section of the manuscript reading that: (1) written informed consent was obtained from each patient included in the study, (2) the study protocol conforms to the ethical guidelines of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki (Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013) and (3) the study protocol has been priorly approved by an identifiable ethics committee on research on humans.

Experiments on live vertebrates or higher invertebrates must be performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations. The methods section must include a statement identifying the committee approving the experiments and confirming that all experiments conform to the relevant regulatory standards. Researchers carrying out experiments with animals are encouraged to refer to the ARRIVE guidelines and recommendations developed by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to improve experimental design and reporting of animal research.

At the end of the methods section, the statistical tests used for the analysis should be detailed to enable a knowledgeable reader to reproduce the reported results. Priori levels of significance and whether hypothesis tests were 1- or 2-sided should be stated. The statistical software used to perform the analysis, including the version and manufacturer, and any extension packages should be described. Some descriptions may include appropriate references to the original literature, particularly for uncommon statistical methods.

Results should be written using subsections. When possible numerical results (eg, absolute numbers and/or rates) with appropriate indicators of uncertainty, such as confidence intervals, should be presented. Means and standard deviations (SDs) for normally distributed data and medians and ranges or interquartile ranges (IQRs) for data that are not normally distributed should be chosen. Solely reporting the results of statistical hypothesis testing, such as P values, should be avoided. For most studies, P values should follow the reporting of comparisons of absolute numbers or rates and measures of uncertainty (eg, 0.6%, 95% CI −0.2% to 1.8%; P = 0.430). P values should never be presented alone without the data that are being compared. Standard conventions for decimal places should be followed.

Secondary and subgroup analyses should generally be described and interpreted as exploratory, as should all post hoc analyses.

Discussion should place the results in context with the published literature and address study limitations and the conclusions and relevant implications for clinical practice or health policy. Key findings should be summarized in the first paragraph. All statements made should be supported by evidence. A discussion of controversial or unresolved issues and topics in need of future research also should be included. Numerical results of the study should not be repeated unless the numbers are compared with the previous findings.

A review article should be written using appropriate subsections. A systematic review should follow EQUATOR Reporting Guidelines, typically including the following subsections: Introduction, Methods (Literature search), Results, and Discussion. A meta-analysis of clinical trials should submit the PRISMA flow diagram and checklist. A meta-analysis of observational studies should submit the MOOSE checklist. The word count in a review article should be between 2000 and 5000 words between the introduction and discussion. The maximum number of references in a review article is 50. Other limits specific to manuscript types are shown in the table below

A case report should be structured as follows: Introduction, Presentation of Case, and Discussion. The uniqueness of the case findings should be clearly indicated. A case report should not exceed 1000 words between the introduction and discussion. The maximum number of references in an original article is 15. Other limits specific to manuscript types are shown in the table below.

A letter to the editor should be related to the articles published in the last four issues. It should not exceed 500 words 5 references. Other limits specific to manuscript types are shown in the table below.

Limits specific to manuscript types:

*Excludes abstract, references and tables

Acknowledgments (mandatory) must include a list of author contributions, credits, and other information. Author contributions must be listed in accordance with ICMJE authorship criteria. Funding must be described in detail including valid codes. Authors are responsible for the completeness of the information that should exist in the acknowledgment.

Conflict of Interest (mandatory) must include any financial, personal, or other relationships within three years of beginning the submitted work. When there is no such relationship, the authors must type "The authors declared they do not have anything to disclose regarding conflict of interest concerning this manuscript."

References should be the most relevant ones. The authors are responsible for maintaining the accuracy, content, completeness, and correct citation of references in the text. Unrelated self-citations should be avoided.

In-text citation should be an Arabic number in parentheses placed before the period. The number must point the reader to the relevant entry on the references page.

References should be numbered in the order they were first cited in the text. Each source should included only once on the reference page. If a source is needed to be repeated in the text, the same number should be used each time.

On the reference page at the end of the main document, the references should be listed, containing full information about each of the sources used. References should be numbered in the order they were first cited in the text. Each source is included only once on the reference page.

A reference typically includes the author’s last name and initials, the source title, information about the publisher or larger publication in which it was included, and the publication date. The exact information and format vary by source type, as shown below.

GMJ recommends the use of The American Medical Association (AMA) reference list format. Briefly, for a source with six or fewer authors, the first three authors should be listed. For a source with seven or more authors, the first three authors' names should be displayed followed by ‘’et al.’’. The source title, information about the publisher and the publication date should be identified.

Examples of reference style:

Galant SP, Komarow HD, Shin HW, Siddiqui S, Lipworth BJ. The case for impulse oscillometry in the management of asthma in children and adults. Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol. 2017;118:664-671.

Willeit K, Pechlaner R, Willeit P, et al. Association between vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 and atrial fibrillation. JAMA Cardiol. 2017;2:516-523.

Taichman DB, Sahni P, Pinborg A, et al. Data sharing statements for clinical trials: a requirement of the international committee of medical journal editors [published online June 6, 2017]. Ann Intern Med. doi: 10.7326/M17-1028.

World Health Organization. WHO Criteria for Diagnosis of Osteoporosis. Last Accessed Date: 15.06.2017. Available from: http://www.4bonehealth.org/education/world-health-organization-criteria-diagnosis-osteoporosis/

Venables WN, Ripley BD. Modern Applied Statistics with S. 4th ed. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Co; 2003

Purnell L. Transcultural Diversity and Health Care. In: Transcultural Health Care: A Culturally Competent Approach. 4th ed. Philadelphia: FA Davis Company; 2012:7.

Tables should be numbered in the order of their citation in the text. Each table should have a brief title. Captions should briefly explain the displayed findings and the expansion of abbreviations, symbols, etc. Captions can be placed underneath or uploaded as a separate Word file. Each table should be uploaded separately as a Word file.

Figures should be numbered in the order of their citation in the text. Each figure should have a brief title. Captions should briefly explain the displayed findings and the expansion of abbreviations, symbols, etc. Captions can be placed underneath or uploaded as a separate Word file. Each figure should be uploaded separately in a JPEG or TIFF format of a maximum of 1 MB.

Submitting a revised manuscript

Submission of revised files follows the same steps as the initial submission. Files that do not require revision should also be submitted in the manuscript file set, excluding the copyright transfer form and cover letter if there are no updates. Care must be given to keep the double-blind review (see our peer review notification). The following files must be uploaded at each revision:

1) Manuscript, revised, with marked changes

2) Manuscript, revised, clear (changes not marked)

3) Revision letter explaining the details of updates from original lines to revised lines (more guidance are found below)

4) Responses to editors’ comments (if any)

5) Tables and figures, even if no revision is made

Response to reviewers

A separate letter named ''response to reviewers'' should be submitted along with a revised manuscript. Comments should be replied to one by one by the authors. Authors should distinguish their responses from the reviewers’ comments. Each response should clearly explain the change made and where that change can be found in the revised manuscript, indicating the page and line numbers like ''P6L14-26''. If the authors take no action for a suggested revision, they should explain its rationale.

While preparing a ‘’response to reviewers’’ file:

-First, line numbers should be added to the text on each file.

-For each reviewer, each comment should be copied/pasted.

-Then, each comment should be replied to in turn, citing the corresponding change in the manuscript by referring to page, paragraph, and line number (or just line number, continuous line numbering is used) (e.g., P6L14-26).

-The comments should numbered and the authors should make sure they replied to each point if a comment contains several points.

-Simple responses like ‘done’, ‘OK’, or ‘required changes were made’ should be avoided.

Revised manuscript

The revised sections on each file should be marked and submitted as a ''revised manuscript file''. Former versions should be kept in the corresponding author's account.

Peer Review

Gülhane Medical Journal operates a double-blind review process, meaning that the identities of both reviewers and authors are concealed from each other throughout the review. Therefore, any identifying information should be removed from the manuscript before submission. Other steps to be taken to ensure the manuscript is correctly prepared for double anonymized peer review the third person should be used to refer to work the authors have previously published. For example, it is correct to write “Becker et al. have demonstrated” rather than “we/the authors have demonstrated that”; figures and tables should not contain any reference to author affiliations; acknowledgments and any references to funding sources should be excluded from the main text and supplementary material, conflict of interest should be provided on the title page; file names should be chosen with care and document properties should not include author information as they will be open to the authors for download.

All submissions are initially assessed by the editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed suitable are typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The section editors or Editor-in-Chief may request further revisions before making a decision. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor-in-Chief’s decision is final. Any submission is subject to all of the journal's usual procedures, with peer review handled independently of the relevant editor.

Other Information

GMJ offers entirely free publication. No page charges, article processing charges, or other fees are applied. The journal does not accept donations.

Publisher Info

Galenos Publishing House

Address: Molla Gürani Mahallesi Kaçamak Sokak No: 21 34093 Fındıkzade - İstanbul/Türkiye

Phone: +90 (212) 621 99 25

E-mail: info@galenos.com.tr