I) GENERAL GUIDELINES

Turkish Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology is a scientific journal that publishes reviews, original case reports, clinical studies, clinical research, experimental and laboratory research, literature abstracts, letters to the editor and contemporary medical issues. The journal aims to reach every medical institution and personnel nationwide and internationally.

Manuscripts are considered for review only if they have not been published previously elsewhere or are not currently under consideration in other journals. The signed statement of scientific contributions and responsibilities of all authors is required. Only those abstracts presented at scientific meetings could be accepted provided that the information is written as a note. The submitted manuscript will be published after editorial and scientific board review and proper changes are made by the authors. After the submission of the manuscript, none of the authors can be deleted, no new author can be added, and the order of authors can be changed without the written approval of all authors.

The first author of the paper accepted for publication in Turkish Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology should consent to the editor can make corrections without changing the main text of the manuscript. The authors should acknowledge and provide information on grants, contracts or other financial support of the study provided by any foundations and institutions or firms. The referees board that will affect the editor’s choice is selected from the advisors mentioned in the journal and, if necessary, from the independent reviewers. The priority in acceptance of manuscripts for publication is given for their originality, high probability of citation and high academic quality. The publication language is English.

Articles must be submitted according to the procedure of the journal’s online manuscript submission system, and the publication rights release form accepted online during the submission.

Manuscript format should be in accordance with Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication (available at http://www.icmje.org).

Online article submission: articles should be sent via the “https://www.tjceo.com/submit/login.php” address (Online article submission guidelines are given in the “instruction to the authors” section). All manuscripts are reviewed by the editor, assistant editors and at least two experts/referees. After making the statistical evaluation and language correction, it is reported by the authors.

Copyrights of the accepted manuscripts belong to the journal. Authors have the scientific and legal responsibility for the papers. Rejected manuscripts and figures will be deleted from the system.

 

II) PUBLICATION RULES

Authorship

Authorship gives credit, assigns responsibility, and implies academic, social, and financial accountability for the published work. Those who substantially contribute to a paper are credited as authors, understand, and take on their roles and responsibilities, and are held accountable for published research.

The journal’s definition of authorship is based on the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• 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.

Those who met all four criteria are identified as authors. In addition, the responsibilities of co-authors for specific aspects of the work must be indicated. Please see the "Authorship information" section for details on how to indicate these responsibilities in the manuscript.

If the manuscript is authored by a large group or a consortium, all the members should meet all four authorship criteria. The corresponding author(s) must specify the group name and group members in line with the disclosure agreements.

For more information on how to acknowledge non-author contributors, equal contributors and corresponding author and other acknowledgements, please see the following sections and the “Instruction to the authors” section.

Non-Author Contributions

Those who do not meet all the above-mentioned criteria are not qualified as authors; however, those who met at least one of the criteria should be acknowledged as non-author contributors, and their contribution should be specified in the “Acknowledgements Section” section of the Title Page. For more information on non-author contributions, please see: https://www.icmje.org. Non-author contributions include but are not limited to administrative support, general supervision, acquisition of funding, technical editing, language editing and proofreading. Non-author contributions should be specified and indicated in the title page on submission.

Equal Contributions

Authorship status and authors who contributed to the work equally should be indicated when submitting multi-author articles. Accordingly, authorship status and equal contributions are defined as follows:

• Equal contribution: The authors contributed equally to the research.
• First authorship: The authors share first authorship.
• Equal contribution and first authorship: The authors contributed equally to the research and shared first authorship.

Corresponding Author

The corresponding author is the designated author handling all correspondence with the journal, from submission to publication processes, on behalf of the authors. The corresponding authors are responsible for complying with the journal's administrative requirements, providing the necessary information and documents, including authorship details, contact details, ethics committee approval, registration documents, and signing publication agreements.

Ethical Responsibility

The journal searches for conformity to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki (http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm) in all clinical studies. For these types of studies, authors must state in the “Materials and Methods” section of the manuscript that the protocol for the research project has been approved by an Ethics Committee of the institution within which the work was undertaken. In “Case Reports” and manuscripts any documents concerning patient identification should not be used. An “informed consent” must be obtained for the information and documents of patients that are to be used and this must be stated in the “Materials and Methods” section. If there is animal experiment involved, the study must be in compliance withthe ethical regulations “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals” (www.nap.edu/catalog/5140.html) and authors must state in the “Materials and Methods” section of the manuscript that the protocol for the research project has been approved by an Ethics Committee. All manuscripts must have a sentence indicating whether any authors have a proprietary interest (direct or indirect, a product or a company, consultation or other terms). It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that the manuscript is in compliance with ethical rules.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors should declare any potential conflict of interest in the title page. There may be a conflict of interest when authors (or their employer, sponsor, or family/friends) have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional connection with other organizations or those working with them that could impact the research or the way the results are interpreted. Therefore, authors have to declare financial, commercial, legal or professional competing interests in their title page. If there is no conflict of interest, authors also must declare it in their title page using the standard wording below:

“The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest to disclose.”

Funding

Authors are required to disclose all the funding and financial support received during the development of the study. Authors should indicate this in the title page using the standard wording below:

• The authors declare that the study received no funding.
• The authors declare that the study is supported/funded by [e.g. Science Institute], grant number: [ABC-12345].

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Turkish Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology complies with the current ICMJE and COPE guidelines and acknowledges the guidance of the Turkish Council of Higher Education in the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technology.

At submission, the authors must disclose whether they used AI-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots [eg. ChatGPT], machine learning, image creators or similar technologies) in any part of the production of the submitted work. If they did, they must confirm that they take responsibility for the integrity of the generated content. Disclosure of AI use must include the name and manufacturer of the AI tool, the date(s) of use, and how it was used in relation to the manuscript. Authors who use these tools should describe how and where they used them, and to what extent.

If AI was used for writing assistance, this should be stated on the Title Page as a separate declaration. The authors should fill in the designated parts on our title page template.

If AI was used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation, this should be described in detail in the Materials and Methods section. It is appropriate to use AI in the collection or analysis of data only if this methodology has already been approved by an ethics board (for studies requiring ethical approval).

In either case, the use of AI should also be declared in the cover letter.

AI-assisted tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, cannot determine the presence of conflicts of interest, and these responsibilities are required for authorship (see above, Authorship Criteria). Similarly, AI should not be cited as an author.

Before using any AI-assisted technology, authors should understand how it works, and its potential risks. Authors should carefully review and edit any AI output because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that may be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. AI can use a wide variety of data as input and produce output that may be hard to trace back to its original source. Mere declaration of the use of AI is not enough to avoid legal or ethical violations, including plagiarism. Authors must be able to assert that AI has been used within the extent of applicable laws, and that there is no plagiarism in their paper, including in the text and images completely or partly produced by the AI tool. Authors are responsible for all aspects of any submitted material that includes the use of AI-assisted technologies.

Turkish Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology runs plagiarism and AI-use checks on all accepted manuscripts prior to publication. We discourage large-scale use of AI-assisted technology to the extent that the original human contribution to the work is brought to question (eg. large portions of text written almost completely by AI). Failure to properly disclose the use of AI-assisted technology at submission, both in the cover letter and in the appropriate part of either the title page (for writing assistance) or the main document (for methodology) as described above may result in the reversal of the acceptance decision, or in the retraction of a published manuscript.

This does not include basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references etc.

Epidemiologic and Statistical Assessment

All original research articles should be assessed statistically and should be reported by a proper plan and analysis. Research articles should be evaluated by a biostatistics specialist before being submitted to the journal. Abstracts should be evaluated by a language expert and the approval of the expert should be mentioned in the cover letter before submitting to the journal. Literary changes can be made in submitted manuscripts without changing the main text by the publication board.

 

III) ARTICLE CATEGORIES

A) Clinical Studies: The prospective-retrospective and every type of experimental studies are suitable for publication. The manuscript should not exceed 7000 words and should be accompanied by a necessary number of tables and graphics.

Parts of the manuscript: Title page, Abstract (structured: objective, materials and methods, results and conclusion), Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, References

B) Case reports: Interesting from a diagnostic and educational point of view, case reports are seldom those that are usually diagnosed and managed difficulties are published. Case reports should be supported with an appropriate number of photographs and diagrams.

Parts of the manuscript: Abstract (unstructured), Keywords, Introduction, Case Report, Conclusion, References.

C) Review: Review is prepared by authors or by invited authors. The author should be an expert on these topics or have references on these issues. This manuscript should contain the newest and final information on knowledge or topics that are used in the clinic, discussing and evaluating them. The word count is limited to 7000, and the number of references is limited to 50.

Parts of the manuscript: Abstract (unstructured), Titles about the subject, References

IV) PUBLICATION FORMATS

The submitted manuscripts should be in the appropriate format below.

• Manuscripts, tables, figures, and images must be installed on the online system.
• A summary statement of 50 words or less summarizing the main finding/outcome of the study should be written during online submission. The summary statement should be written in complete, unbulleted sentences and not merely duplicate the abstract conclusion.
• Including the main article file, the author’s name, address and corporate information must not written the any files. This information should be written in the fields specified in the system.
• The manuscript should be written using Microsoft Office Word program and installed on the system with 3 cm margins on each side of the page, double space between lines.
• Figures, tables, pictures and graphics must be installed on the system as separate files
• Abstract should explain the study as a whole. Abstracts should be written on different pages and should not exceed 250 words each. The abstract should be designed to have Purpose, Materials and Methods, Results, and Conclusion subtitles.
• Keywords should be 2-5 key words in accordance with NLM MESH terms (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ mesh/ Mowser.html).
• Introduction should be written without a caption, according to the latest literature information, to explain the purpose of the study.
• Materials and Methods should be short and explanatory; for classic methods, only references should be mentioned.
• Results should be written without too many details but in compliance with statistical regulations.
• Conclusion should be discussed, the results compared with other articles, and a conclusion should be reached.
• Acknowledgements should be extended to those individuals or institutions whose contributions to the study were limited or minimal.
• References should be numbered in accordance with the sequence in the text. In the text, the reference numbers should be after the period as superscript. If more than one reference is pointing to the same opinion, the consecutive references should be separated with “-” and only the first and the last references should be written. If the references are not consecutive each one should be separated with “,”. References should be on a separate page and written with double space between lines. While writing the references the first three authors should be written. If there are more than three authors, the authors other than the first three should be referred to as “et al..” The journal names should be abbreviated as in “Index Medicus”. Presentations in scientific meetings, personal experience, unpublished papers and abstracts cannot be referenced but they can be cited in reviews.
• Examples for reference writing an article:
  • Article from a journal: Atmaca LS, Idil A: Excimer laser. T Oft Gaz 1992;22:293-300
  • Chapter from a book: Schatz H: Fluorescein angiography: basic principles and interpretation. In Ryan SJ: Retina The CV Mosby Co. St. Louis, 1989, Vol 2 P:14-41.
• Tables/ Figures/ Diagrams: All figures and diagrams should be on different files with titles and numbered in accordance with the sequence in the text. The abbreviations should be explained in legends. If a previously published table/ figure/ diagram is chosen, written permission should be included. Legends should be written.
• Photographs: The photographs must be recorded to high resolution quality in separate files. They should have enough contrast so that the details should be seen clearly. The captions of the photographs should be written at the end of the main text file.
• Abbreviations: In the first appearance of the term, the abbreviation is written in parenthesis and can be used throughout the text.

 

V) AUTHOR CHECKLIST

• Category of the manuscript
• The manuscript is not submitted elsewhere
• The authors’ financial or proprietary interest in any material or method mentioned
• Statistical methods check is done (for research articles)
• English language check is done
• Title page
• The title of the manuscript
• Authors and institutions (this information is only written to the specified fields in the system, article files should not be included.)
• Summary Statement
• Abstracts (maximum 250 words)
• Key words: 2-5 words
• Main Manuscript
• References
• Tables and figures

 

 Online Process Center: https://www.tjceo.com/submit/login.php

Versions of the file system to be installed Main text files: Microsoft Office Word (1997-2003 versions)

Tables: Microsoft Office Word (1997-2003 versions)

Photographs and Graphics: jpeg, tiff

 

All correspondence should be done by one of the following addresses:

Turkish Journal of Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology

Cinnah Cad. No: 67-69/12 Çankaya / Ankara / Türkiye

Phone: +90 507 875 06 64

E-mail: editor@glokomkatarakt.com

Web: https://www.tjceo.com