Instruction to Authors - The Journal of Turkish Society of Algology
Instruction to Authors
Scope and Purpose AGRI is a double blind peer reviewed journal published by the Turkish Society of Algology. This journal, which is published quarterly, is the official publicalion of Turkish Society of Algology, Reviews, details of interentional techniques, original researehes and case reports on the nature, mechanisms and treatment of pain are published. The journal provides a forum for the dissemination of research in the basic and clinical sciences of multidisciplinary interest.Opinions presented in published articles by no means represent the official endorsement of the Turkish Society of Algology. Articles and illustrations become the property of the Journal after publication.
Instructions for Authors
The journal is published in Turkish and in English.
Manuscripts which are accepted by Editorial Board can be published. The Editorial Board have the right ro reject or to send the manuscript for review and revise. All manuscripts are subject to editing and, if necessary, will be returned to the authors for responses to outstanding questions or for addition of any missing information. For accuracy and clarity, a detailed manuscript editing is undertaken for all manuscripts accepted for publication. Final galley proofs are sent to the authors for approval.
Articles not written according ro the 3rd editian (1983) of “common properties which are wanted in the articles that will be submitted to the Biomedical Journals” which was deternıined by the International Medical Journal Editorial Board, will not be accepted. Before submission it is adviced to look for these guidelines whieh are published in British Medical Journal 1988;296:401-5 or in Annals of Internal Medicine 1988;108:258-65.
All paper types are accepted via internet based manuscript processing system (www.journalagent.com/agri).
A paper which has not previously been published or being considered for publication elsewhere are accepted for publication. Papers which were published elsewhere previously as an abstract form may be published.
No payment for copyright of the article will be done. Therefore the letter accompanying the manuseript should include a statement that copyright of the article is transferred to the Turkish Society of Algology. The final manuscript should have been read and approved by the responsible authors.
If illustrations or other small parts of articles or books aIready published elsewhere are used in papers submitted to journal, the written permission of author and publisher corcerned must be included with the manuscript.
Authors should keep a copy of their manuscripts.
If a part or whole of a submitted manuscript will be published elsewhere, editor of the journal should be informed.
For researches, approvement of the institutional local ethics committee or its equivalent should be submitted.
All the responsibilities belong to authors.
No reprints will be sent to the author.
Required Filetypes and Minimum Submission Requirements
Before submission via electronic submission system, a number of separate MS Word (.doc) and Adobe (.pdf) files should be prepared with the following formatting properties. No submissions will be accepted without a Cover Letter and a Title Page.
Cover Letter: A cover letter file should be included in all types of manuscript submissions. On the cover letter, the author(s) should present the title, manuscript type and manuscript category of the submission, and whether the submitted work had previously been presented in a scientific meeting. The cover letter should contain a statement that the manuscript will not be published or evaluated for publication elsewhere while under consideration by The Journal of The Turkish Society of Algology. In addition, the full name of the corresponding author and his/her contact information including the address, phone number and e-mail address should be provided at the bottom of the cover letter. The cover letter should be signed by corresponding author, scanned and submitted in .jpg or .pdf format with other manuscript files. The order of a cover letter should be as follows:
Title, manuscript type.
Statement that the manuscript will not be published or evaluated for publication elsewhere while under consideration.
Corresponding author(s) full name, contact information including address, phone, and e-mail address.
Signature of the corresponding author.
Title Page: A title page file should be included in all types of manuscript submissions. Please prepare your title page as a separate electronic file, including the following elements:
Title of the manuscript
Author(s) list, please list their full names and up to 2 academic degrees per author; do not include honorary affiliations, such as fellow status in an organization.
Affiliation(s) of each author, including department or division, institution, city, country.
Corresponding author(s) full name, contact information including address, phone, and e-mail address.
Funding or other financial support should be acknowledged.
Conflict of interest statement: A conflict of interest statement should be provided in bottom of the title page. Please list of all potential conflicts of interest for each author, in accordance with ICMJE recommendations. In case of no conflicts of interests, please provide a statement such as: “Conflicts of Interest: None declared”.
Abstracts: On the abstracts page, the author(s) should present abstract and keywords (at least three) in this order. Turkish and English keywords should be chosen from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html) and Türkiye Bilimler Terimleri (http://www.bilimterimleri.com).
Main Text: A main text file should be included in all types of manuscript submissions. This file should include title, abstracts page, main text of your manuscript, and the references section combined into a single electronic file. Tables can be included in this file as separate pages after References section, or may be uploaded separately as you prefer. Structure of the main text differs between manuscripts types
This combined file with the sections of abstracts, keywords, main text, references with/without tables should be a blinded version of the original manuscript. The names of the authors’, and any identifying information including the academic titles, institutions and addresses must be omitted. Apart from the stage of the manuscript evaluation process, manuscripts submitted with any information pertaining to the author(s) will be rejected as soon as it is noticed.
Tables: Tables summarizing the data should be clearly formatted without using any templates. Data presented in the tables should not be included in its entirety in the text.
Tables must be numbered consecutively.
Each table must be referred to in the text.
Number and title of each table should be written at the top of each page before the table.
Tables can be included in main text file as separate pages after references section, or may be uploaded separately as you prefer. If you prefer a separate file, tables should be uploaded in MS Word (.doc) format and the electronic file should be named accordingly (Tables_xxx_vx.doc). Tables should not be uploaded as pdf, jpeg or else.
Figures: If the manuscript includes figures then each figure should be uploaded as a separate file in all types of manuscript submissions. The information contained in the figure/image should not be repeated in its entirety, however reference to the figure/image must be referred in the text.
Technical requirements
Figure legends should appear on a separate page after the references section.
During submission, all figures must be uploaded in a separate file from the text file and should be named accordingly (Figure1_xxx; Figure2_xxx).
No legends or titles should be included in the figures.
Pictures should be saved in JPEG, EPS or TIFF format.
Please submit photographs and figures with a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch. Figures are easiest for us to process if submitted in TIFF or EPS format.
Ethical requirements
The owner and/or subject of the photograph must sign the patient consent form.
Figures should not be reproduced from other sources without permission
Statements, permissions, and signatures:
Conflict of Interest Form: A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Financial relationships are easily identifiable, but conflicts can also occur because of personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, or intellectual beliefs. A conflict can be actual or potential, and full disclosure to The Editor is the safest course. Failure to disclose conflicts might lead to publication of an Erratum or even to retraction. All submissions to AGRI must include disclosure of all relationships that could be viewed as presenting a potential or actual conflict of interest. All authors are required to provide a conflict of interest statement and should complete a standard form.
Patient Consent Form: Publication of any personal information about an identifiable living patient requires the explicit consent of the patient or guardian. We expect authors to use a standard patient consent form.
Copyright Transfer Form: All authors are required to provide a copyright transfer from with complete a standard form.
Important Notice Before the corresponding author submits the manuscript, all of the authors must obtain an ORCİD ID number and provide it to the corresponding author. The corresponding author must then submit all of the ORCID ID numbers through the online manuscript system.
Manuscript Formatting
Manuscript format must be in accordance with the ICMJE-Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals(updated in August 2013). Papers that do not comply with the format of the Journal will be returned to the author for correction without further review. Therefore, to avoid loss of time and work, authors must carefully review the submission rules.
Manuscript structure should be complient with the guidelines of WAME.
General Format
General Style:
The manuscript should be typed in a Microsoft Word™ file, single-column format, Every effort should be made to avoid medical jargon.
For the Blind Initial Review: The names of the authors’, and any identifying information including the academic titles, institutions and addresses must be omitted. Manuscripts submitted with any information pertaining to the author(s) will be rejected.
Drugs: Generic names for drugs should be used. Doses and routes for the drugs should be stated. When a drug, product, hardware, or software mentioned within the main text product information, including the name of the product, producer of the product, city of the company and the country of the company should be provided in parenthesis in the following format: “Discovery St PET/CT scanner (General Electric, Milwaukee, WI, USA)”
Abbreviations: We discourage the use of any but the most necessary of abbreviations. They may be a convenience for an author but are generally an impediment to easy comprehension for the reader. All abbreviations in the text must be defined the first time they are used (both in the abstract and the main text), and the abbreviations should be displayed in parentheses after the definition. Authors should avoid abbreviations in the title and abstract and limit their use in the main text.
Decimal points or commas: Decimal numbers should be separated from the integers with points. Commas should not be used in decimals throughout the manuscript.
References: References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text (6 authors then “et al”). Avoid referencing abstracts, or citing a “personal communication” unless it provides essential information not available from a public source. Examples of Referencing are as follows:
Article: Süleyman Ozyalçin N, Talu GK, Camlica H, Erdine S. Efficacy of coeliac plexus and splanchnic nerve blockades in body and tail located pancreatic cancer pain. Eur J Pain 2004;8:539-45.
Book: Newton ML. Current practice of pain. 1st ed. St. Luis, MO: Mosby; 1990.
Book Chapter: Turner JA. Coping and chronic pain. In: Bond MR, Charlton JE, Woolf CJ, editors. Pain research and clinical management. Proceedings of the VIth world congress on pain. Amsterdam: Elsevier; 1991. p. 219-27.
Courses and Lectures (unpublished): Erdine S. Pain. Course lecture presented at: International Pain Congress, June 7, 2008, İstanbul.
Manuscript Types and Specific Formatting Guidelines
Identification of article type is the first step of manuscript submission because article type dictates the guidelines that should be used, including formatting and word limits of the manuscript. The main categories are outlined below:
Research Article: Original studies of basic or clinical investigations in algology. These articles can include randomized controlled trials, observational (cohort, case-control or cross-sectional) studies, destructive studies, diagnostic accuracy studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, nonrandomized behavioral and public health intervention trials, experimental animal trials, or any other clinical or experimental studies. Submission of research articles should include below mentioned pages, sections and files as defined above in required filetypes section:
Abstracts Page: Both English and Turkish (if relevant) abstracts are required. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words and should be structured with the following subheadings: Objectives, Material and Methods (with design), Results, and Conclusion (case control study, cross sectional study, cohort study, randomized controlled trial, diagnostic accuracy study, meta-analysis and systemic review, animal experimentation, non-randomized study in behavioral sciences and public health, etc.). In your results emphasize the magnitude of findings over test statistics, ideally including the size of effect and its confidence intervals for the principal outcomes.
Main Text: The main text should be structured with the following subheadings: Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgments, References, Tables, and Figure Legends.
Introduction: A three-paragraph structure should be used. Background information on study subject (1st paragraph), context and the implications of the study (2nd paragraph) and the hypotheses and the goals of the study (3rd paragraph). Background: Describe the circumstances or historical context that set the stage and led you to investigate the issue. Context: Describe why your investigation is consequential. What are its potential implications? How does it relate to issues raised in the first paragraph? Why is this specific investigation the next logical step? Goals of the study: Clearly state the specific research objective or hypothesis and your primary outcome measure.
Material and Methods: The method section, is one of the most important sections in original research articles, and should contain sufficient detail. The investigation method, study sample, analyses performed, commercial statistical programs used, details of measurement and evaluation (e.g.: make and model of biochemical test devices and kits) should all be clearly stated. The names of local ethics committee or other approving bodies should be provided in Methods section for prospective studies. The Methods section should be organized with logical and sequential subheadings.
Results: The demographic properties of the study population, the main and secondary results of the hypothesis testing must be provided. Commenting on the results and discussing the literature findings should be avoided in this section. Present as much data as possible at the level of the unit of analysis, graphically if possible. Emphasize the magnitude of findings over test statistics, ideally using size of effect and associated confidence intervals for each outcome.
Discussion: The main and secondary results of the study should briefly presented and compared with similar findings in the literature. Providing intensive background information should be avoided in this section. Consider only those published articles directly relevant to interpreting your results and placing them in context. Do not stress statistical significance over clinical importance. Avoid extrapolation to populations or conditions that you have not explicitly studied in your investigation. Avoid claims about cost or economic benefit unless a formal cost-effectiveness analysis was presented in the Methods and Results sections. Do not suggest “more research is needed” without stating what the specific next step is. Optionally, you may include a paragraph “In retrospect, . . .” to candidly discuss what you would do differently if given the opportunity to repeat the study, so others can learn from your experience.
Limitations: The limitations of the study should be mentioned in a separate paragraph subtitled as the “Limitations” in the end of the discussion. Explicitly discuss the limitations of your study, including threats to the internal and external validity of your results. When possible, examine the magnitude and direction of each bias and how it might affect the interpretation of results.
Conclusion: A clear conclusion should be made in the light of the results of the study. The potential effects of the results of the study on the current clinical applications should be stated in a single sentence. Inferences that are not supported by the study results should be avoided.
Acknowledgments:
References: References section should be in a separate page.
Figure Legends: Figure legends should be included in the main text in a separate page and this page should be the at the end of the main text file.
Tables: At the end of the main text file as separate pages or as a separate file.
Figures: Should not be included in the main text file and should be uploaded as separate files as with the properties describes above in required filetypes section:
Ethics or Review Board Approval: If your manuscript involves original research, you will be asked to verify approval or exemption by an institutional review or ethics board. AGRI Journal will be unable to further consider manuscripts without approval or formal exemption. (The only exceptions are for analyses of third party anonymized databases which already have pre-existing IRB approval or exemption.)
Case Reports: Brief descriptions of clinical cases or the complications that are seldom encountered in algology practice and have an educational value. Consideration will be given to articles presenting clinical conditions, clinical manifestations or complications previously undocumented in the existing literature and unreported side of adverse effects of the known treatment regimens or scientific findings that may trigger further research on the topic. Abstracts of case reports should mainly include information about the case, should not exceed 150 words, must be on a separate page and should be unstructured. The main text of Case Series should be structured with the following subheadings: Introduction, Case Presentations, Discussion and References.
Brief Report: Original reports of preliminary data and findings or studies with small numbers demonstrating the need for further investigation. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words and structured as research articles. Limitations include: maximum 6 authors, 4000 words (including references, tables, and figure legends), 15 references, 4 tables and/or figures. Besides these constraints, all the formatting, approval, ethics and writing guidelines of research articles also applies to brief reports.
Review Article: Comprehensive articles reviewing national and international literature related to current algology practice. Generally AGRI Journal publishes only invited review articles. Other authors should contact the editor prior to submission of review articles. Maximum 2 authors, 4000 words (including references, tables, and figure legends). There is no limit to the number of references.
Letter to the Editor: Opinions, comments and suggestions made concerning articles published in AGRI Journal or other journals. Letters should contain a maximum of 1,000 words and 5 references are allowed for these single author submissions. No abstract is required.
