Issue release date: 12.11.2024

 
Instruction to the Authors

http://turkishneurosurgery.org.tr/uploads/author_info.pdf Instruction to the Authors

Journal Description

Turkish Neurosurgery is a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary, open access journal directed at an audience of neurosurgery physicians and scientists. The official language of the journal is English. The journal publishes original articles in the form of clinical and basic research. Turkish Neurosurgery will only publish studies that have institutional review board (IRB) approval and have strictly observed an acceptable follow-up period. With the exception of reference presentation, Turkish Neurosurgery requires that all manuscripts be prepared in accordance with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

Turkish Neurosurgery periodically publishes the following papers: Research (Original Investigation, Clinical and Experimental Studies), Review Article, Case Report, Letter to Editor, Technical Note and Turkish Neuro-Excursion.

Our mission is providing a scientific forum relevant to neurosurgeons and health care providers.

Open Access Policy

As the Turkish Neurosurgery Journal, we believe science is a common denominator of the humanity which should be publicly available and free. Since its establishment in 1989, all our effort and workforce were based on volunteers and their efforts.

Definition of Open Access Publication1

An Open Access Publication [A] is one that meets the following two conditions:

  1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship [B], as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

  2. complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).

Notes:

A. Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers.

B. Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.

1   https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4725199/Suber_bethesda.htm#note1

Manuscript Submission

Authors are to submit their manuscripts through the web based tracking system at http://www.turkishneurosurgery. org.tr. The site contains instructions and advice on how to submit manuscripts, guidance on the creation / scanning and saving of electronic art and supporting documentation. ORCID identifier (ID) is required for ALL authors during the submission process. ORCID ID can be obtained free of charge at http://orcid.org. E-mail address of all authors should also be provided during the submission process. In addition to allowing authors to submit manuscripts on the web, the site allows authors to follow the progression of their manuscript through the peer review process. Authors who submit their manuscripts through the web-based tracking system are asked not to send hard copies of the manuscript to the editorial office. Please address all inquiries regarding manuscripts not yet accepted or published to the Journal’s editorial office. The editorial office will acknowledge receipt of your manuscript and will send you a manuscript number for reference.

Before submission please ensure that:

One author has been designated as the correspondent with full contact details including e-mail address, postal address and phone number. In any case of editorial board could not contact with the corresponding author, Turkish Neurosurgery journal have the right to decide what is appropriate.

Submission Checklist;

  1. Your title page is in .doc or .docx format, includes title of your manuscript, author names, affiliations and ORCID numbers; name and full contact information of corresponding author, running title, keywords, and authorship contribution statements - the latter can be found on the Copyright transfer and authorship contribution statement Form. Please be sure that authorship contribution statements are presented in the form as well as in the title page. Of note, authors should indicate conflicts of interest relating to their research - if any. The Journal is not responsible for published misspelled names due to author error and the title page must be uploaded as a separate file. Running Head in the title page should be no more than three to five words from the title, and should NOT include the authors’ names.
  2. Your main document is in .doc or .docx format includes structured abstract, key words, abbreviation list, structured main text, disclosure and conflicts of interest, references and figure legends sections in this order. Structured main text should be organized as Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Do not add any information about institution names. Also do not add figures and tables in the main document. Be sure your main document is written in Calibri or Times New Roman, line gap set to double spaced and justified on both sides. Journal’s official language is English. Refer to drugs and therapeutic agents by their accepted generic or chemical names, and do not abbreviate them. Use code numbers only when a generic name is not yet available. In that case, supply the chemical name and a figure giving the chemical structure of the drug. Capitalize the trade names of drugs and place them in parentheses after the generic names. To comply with trademark law, include the name and location (city and country) of the manufacturer of any drug, supply, or equipment mentioned in the manuscript. Use the metric system to express the units of measure and degrees Celsius to express temperatures, and SI units rather than conventional units. Define abbreviations at first mention in text and in each table and figure. If a brand name is cited, supply the manufacturer’s name and address (city and state/country).

All your figures are in TIFF format. Color figures should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi, black and white figures should have a resolution of at least 600 dpi. Turkish Neurosurgery does not demand any color figure fee.

  1. All your video files are in .mpeg and .mp4 format, not longer than 10 minutes, and not bigger than 40 MB. Video files should include an embedded audio narration and subtitles in English.
  2. All your tables are in .doc or .docx format, created using the table creating and editing feature of the word processing software. Do not use Excel or comparable software. Upload a single text file which includes ALL the tables in separate pages. Cite tables consecutively in the text, and number them in that order. Key each on a separate sheet, include the table title, appropriate column heads, and explanatory legends (including definitions of any abbreviations used). Do not embed tables within the main text.

If your manuscript does not meet these requirements, manuscript WILL BE RETURNED to the corresponding author for technical revision before undergoing peer review.

Submission Steps

  1. Upload signed copyright and authorship contribution statement forms by the corresponding author which is available at  Copyright transfer and authorship contribution statement Form. Choose your manuscript type and click continue.
  2. Add names of institutions of all authors. If one or more author has affiliation with more institutions, specify it in the title page. Then click continue.
  3. Write last name and first name of all authors. Add their institution numbers, e-mails and ORCID numbers. Standard page appears with spaces enough for 8 author names. If your paper has more authors, please fill all the first 8 authors names and affiliations then click add author. Without filling all required fields, you cannot add more authors. Do not use abbreviations in the author names. Then click continue.
  4. Write the title of the manuscript. If the title contains special characters use the left below table. You can copy-paste the title from your title page. Then click continue.
  5. Write the abstract of your manuscript to the field. Abstracts should be structured including Aim, Material and Methods, Results and Conclusion. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words. There is no need of Turkish abstract. Then click continue.
  6. Write the keywords separated by commas. Please use keywords from https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov/search. Then click continue.
  7. Click the appropriate answer stating if your manuscript has not been published and / or is not being considered for publication elsewhere or your manuscript was presented in the congress indicated below and was published in abstract form in the proceedings of the congress. Then write your cover letter to the editor to the field. Then click continue.
  8. Upload your manuscript files. Be sure your files are main document (manuscript), figure(s), video(s), title page, and table(s). For every file, write the description of your file and click upload button. The names of the files you have submitted should not resemble the names or institutions of the authors. Be sure all your text files are in .doc or .docx format. When you are sure you uploaded all your files click continue.
  9. When you complete all the submission process click approve for all the files you want to submit and click Submit your Manuscript button.

Revised Submission

Author’s comments to the reviewers are required for revised submissions. Authors must address all the reviewer’s concerns/suggestions and whether the change was made or not. Authors must also highlight the changes made within the text. Do not track the additions or deletions to the manuscript. If the authors do not want to revise the manuscript within a period of two months, the manuscript will be declined.

Ethics, patient anonymity and informed consent:

This journal adheres to the ethical standards described by the Committee on Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (https://www.icmje.org/). Authors are expected to adhere to these standards.

It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that a patient’s anonymity is carefully protected and to verify that any experimental investigation with human subjects reported in the manuscript was performed with informed consent and followed all the guidelines for experimental studies with human subjects required by the institution(s) with which all the authors are affiliated. Authors should mask patients’ eyes, private parts and remove patients’ names from all figures. Editorial board of the Turkish Neurosurgery have the right to demand ethical committee forms or informed consent forms at any stage of the submission and publication. All animal experiments should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines. Also, Editorial board of the Turkish Neurosurgery have the right to withdraw any paper, even it is accepted, if there is any ethical issue.

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. Editorial board of the Turkish Neurosurgery have the right to withdraw any paper if there is any plagiarism. All submissions must include disclosure of all relationships that could be viewed as presenting a potential conflict of interest. All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential competing interests include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Authors must disclose any interests in the disclosure and conflicts of interest section of the main document.

Authorship Change

Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission.

Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list after submitting the paper is inappropriate and prohibited. Authors should withdraw their paper if there is a need for authorship change.

Types of Manuscripts

Turkish Neuro-Excursion: The editor will invite experts for these special types of papers which may cover a broad spectrum in various fields of medicine, science, art, history, law as well as any important theme on actuality other than core neurosurgery. The number of words, figures, tables and references are not restricted.

Research (Original Investigation, Clinical and Experimental Studies): The main text should not exceed 4500 words excluding the references, tables, and figure legends for original articles, including randomized controlled trials, observational (cohort, case-control or cross-sectional) studies, diagnostic accuracy studies, nonrandomized behavioral and public health intervention trials, experimental animal trials and any other retrospective or prospective clinical or experimental studies. The number of figures, tables, videos and references are not restricted. The specifications for figures and video files are given.

Review Article: All review articles should be systematic reviews and meta-analyses. A systematic review protocol describes the rationale, hypothesis, and planned methods of the review. It should be prepared before a review is started and used as a guide to carry out the review. Turkish Neurosurgery no more accept papers as “Case Report and Review of the Literature”. All systematic reviews and meta-analyses SHOULD COMPLY with PRISMA guidelines http://www.prisma-statement.org/. Systematic reviews and meta analyses SHOULD INCLUDE a CONSORT Flow Diagram http://www.consort-statement. org/consort-statement/flow-diagram. Any systematic review and meta-analysis without a CONSORT Flow Diagram will be rejected.

Case Report: Turkish Neurosurgery values demonstrative and unique case reports with high quality figures. A case report should be so clear and easy to understand that the reader could replicate the case in his/her daily practice. Word count must not exceed 1500 (excluding references, tables, and figure legends). Case reports cannot have more than 15 references, and 6 figures or tables. Turkish Neurosurgery does not accept papers as “Case Report and Review of the Literature” anymore.

Technical Note: Turkish Neurosurgery values demonstrative technical notes with high quality figures. Technical notes reinforced with high-quality anatomical studies are welcome. A technical note should be so clear and easy to understand that the reader could replicate the technique in the operating room or on cadaveric specimen. The number of words must not exceed 2000, and there should not be more than 20 references. The number of figures and tables are not restricted.

Letter to the Editor: Letters should refer to the title and authors of a recent Turkish Neurosurgery article. The letter should be no longer than 300 words with no more than 3 references. Unpublished data should not be used Letters to the Editor are sent to the article authors for response. The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision on whether letters to the editor and the responses are published.

References

The authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. Key the references (double-spaced) at the end of the manuscript. Cite references in the text in alphabetical order within parentheses. Do not link the references to the text. Cite unpublished data, such as papers submitted but not yet accepted for publication or personal communications, in parentheses in the text (please be sure that such have a DOI number to be presented). Do not use “et al.” in the references. List all the authors of the reference. Refer to the List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus for abbreviations of journal names, or access the list at “http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lji.html. The DOI numbers are mandatory in accordance with the library indexes; please be sure to present the DOI numbers for each reference at the end of its sentence.  The reference styles for Zotero and EndNote are available on the journal’s home page.

Sample references are given below:

A. Journal Article

Umeoka K, Mizunari T, Murai Y, Kobayashi S, Morita A: Occlusion of the ascending pharyngeal artery during carotid artery surgery: importance and technique. Turk Neurosurg 24: 546-548, 2014. https://doi.org/10.5137/1019-5149.JTN.9527-13.0

B. Book Chapter

Martin A: Literacies for the digital age. In: Martin A, Madigan D (eds), Digital literacies for learning. Facet, 2006:3-25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29085/9781856049870.003

C. Entire Book

Smith T, Williams BM, Streefkerk R: The citation manual for students: A quick guide (2nd ed). Wiley, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1000/182

D. Software

Epi Info [computer program]. Version 6. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1994

E. Online journals

Friedman SA. Preeclampsia: A review of the role of prostaglandins. Obstet Gynecol [serial online]. January 1988;71:22-37. Available from: BRS Information Technologies, McLean, VA. Accessed December 15, 1990

F. Database

CANCERNET-PDQ [database online]. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute, 1996. Updated March 29, 1996

G. World Wide Web

Gostin LO. Drug use and HIV/AIDS [JAMA HIV/AIDS web site]. June 1, 1996. Available at: http://www.ama-assn.org/ special/ hiv/ethics. Accessed June 26, 1997

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

This journal uses double-blind review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.

1.  Manuscript Submission

The corresponding or submitting author submits the paper to the journal through http://turkishneurosurgery.org.tr/.

2.  Assessment of the Paper for Journal Requirements

The editorial office checks the paper’s composition and arrangement against the journal’s Author Guidelines - Instruction to the Authors (http://turkishneurosurgery.org.tr/static.php?id=7) - to make sure it includes the required sections and stylizations.

3.  Evaluation by the Editor-in-Chief (EIC)

The EIC checks the paper’s scientifical appropriateness for the journal, its originality and actuality. If not, the paper may be rejected without being reviewed any further.

4.  EIC Assigns a Section Editor (SE)

Section Editors handle the peer review process. All manuscripts that reach this step will go through a double-blind peer-review process. In order to ensure an unbiased evaluation process, each submission will be reviewed by at least two external, independent peer reviewers who are experts in the field.

5.  Invitation to Reviewers

The SE sends invitations to individuals he or she believes would be appropriate reviewers. As responses are received, further invitations are issued, if necessary, until the required number of acceptances is obtained.

6.  Response to Invitations

Potential reviewers consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest and availability. They then accept or decline.

7.  Review is Conducted

The reviewer sets time aside to read the paper several times. The first read is used to form an initial impression of the work. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work. Otherwise they will read the paper several more times, taking notes so as to build a detailed point-by-point review. The review is then submitted to the journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else with a request for revision (either major or minor) before it is reconsidered.

8.  Journal Evaluates the Reviews

The SE considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer so as to get an extra opinion before making a decision.

9.  The Decision is Communicated

The EIC is the final authority in the decision-making process for all submissions. He or She sends a decision e-mail to the author including any relevant reviewer comments.

AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Online proof correction

Corresponding authors will receive an e-mail including final PDF version of their manuscript. Authors are obligated to proofreading their manuscript in 72 hours.

Turkish Neurosurgery workflow processes to get your article published quickly and accurately. Please use this proof only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. It is important to ensure that all corrections are sent back to us in one communication. Please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed. Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Authorship change is not accepted during proofreading and is prohibited.

Rapid Publication Option

In accordance with the Turkish Neurosurgical Society’s Board Decision on August 5, 2023, “Turkish Neurosurgery” journal is starting to publish articles with a rapid publication option (RPO). This type of publication choice will have no effect on the peer review process or acceptance of the submission since it will be requested by the authors after acceptance of the article.

What is RPO?: The RPO ensures the accepted article will be immediately prepared in electronic format (e-pdf), and it will be printed in one of the upcoming issues of the journal. This service has a publication fee that needs to be met by the authors, their institutions, or the research funders for each article that is published in a timely manner. The decision for RPO will be made by the authors, and they will only be charged upon their requests and if their paper is accepted. As there is a limited space for such option in each publishable issue, this process will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis, and the Turkish Neurosurgical Society is responsible for organizing the demands and informing the Editorial Board as well as the Publisher.

Why RPO?: There is a waiting list, and the number of articles per issue is constant and limited. It generally takes 6–14 months for a research paper to be published in a printed journal. This service allows immediate publication of the article in both electronic and printed formats. Of note, the printed article will be published in one of the upcoming issues of the journal.

Please be sure to use the RPO service and contact the society, even if you are in early need of an e-pdf manuscript.

Benefits of RPO: Here, it’s important to make sure that articles are published as soon as possible, are subject to the proper quality controls, and are extensively read. By using RPO, the authors are able to publish their ideas faster, receive credit for the idea and the manuscript, get ready to strengthen their enrollment for future applications and grants, and last but not least, have increased visibility in a quick-paced setting.1

1 https://www.editage.com/insights/publish-faster-progress-faster-the-basics-of-rapid-publication

RPO Price and Communication Details: The RPO charge for the journal is EUR 1000/article, including taxes.

This service is carried out by Turkish Neurosurgical Society. Please contact with: Turkish Neurosurgical Society, Taskent Caddesi 13/4 06500 Bahcelievler, Ankara/TURKEY

E-mail:  info@turknorosirurji.org.tr

Reprints: Reprint requests should be faxed or e-mailed with the corrected proofs by the corresponding author, if needed. Reprints are normally shipped 6 to 8 weeks after publication of the issue in which the item appears. Contact with the Publisher: Bulus Tasarim, Bahriye Üçok Caddesi 9/1, Besevler, Ankara, TURKEY.

Phone: +90 312 222 44 06 Fax: +90 312 222 44 07 e-mail: bulus@bulustasarim.com.tr.

The price for 2 sets of hardcopy journal:
Within Turkey 500 TL (shipping costs not included);
Outside Turkey 50 € (shipping costs not included)

*Depend on shipping cost. Please contact Bulus Tasarim