Instructions to Authors

GENERAL INFORMATION

Viral Hepatitis Journal (Formerly Viral Hepatit Dergisi) is an independent, peer-reviewed international journal published quarterly in April, August, December. The official language of the journal is English.

Viral Hepatitis Journal is a scientific journal that publishes retrospective, prospective or experimental research articles, review articles, case reports, editorial comment/discussion, letter to the editor, surgical technique, differential diagnosis, medical book reviews, questions-answers and also current issues of medical agenda from all fields of medicine and aims to reach all national/international institutions and individuals.

Viral Hepatitis Journal does not charge any article submission or processing charges. Any processes and submissions about the journal can be made from the website: http://viralhepatitisjournal.org/. Past issues of the journal are also available at this website. Manuscripts should submitted online from https://vhj.manuscriptmanager.net/.

The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) number of the correspondence author should be provided while sending the manuscript. A free registration can be done at http://orcid.org.

In the international index and database, the name of the journal has been registered as Viral Hepatitis Journal and abbreviated as Viral Hepat J.

SCIENTIFIC POLICIES

Scientific and Ethics Responsibility

The author(s) undertake(s) all scientific responsibility for the manuscript. All the authors must actively participate in the study. The author(s) guarantee(s) that the manuscript itself or any substantially similar content of the manuscript has not been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere. If the manuscript had been presented in a meeting before; the name, date and the province of the meeting should be noted.

Experimental, clinical and drug studies requiring approval by an ethics committee must be submitted to the Viral Hepatitis Journal with an ethics committee approval report confirming that the study was conducted in accordance with international agreements and the Declaration of Helsinki. The approval of the ethics committee and the fact that informed consent was given by the patients should be indicated in the Materials and Methods section (including approval number). All papers reporting experiments using animals must include a statement in the Material and Methods section giving assurance that all animals have received humane care in compliance with the "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" and indicating approval by the institutional ethical review board.

The content of the submitted manuscripts should conform to the criteria stated in "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals" published by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and updated in 2016 (available at http://www.icmje.org/).

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 articles sent to be published in the journal shouldn’t have been published anywhere else previously or submitted and accepted to be published. However, a complete report that follows publication of a preliminary report, such as an abstract can be submitted. If authors intend to discard any part of the manuscript, a written application should be sent to the Editor.

In case of retraction of the text by author(s) for any reason again needs a written and signed application explaining the reasons.

The name of the institution where the authors work and the name of the institution or the department in which the study has been conducted should not be mentioned in the submitted manuscript.

The corresponding author must give the full corresponding address (including telephone, fax number and e-mail address). Contact information for corresponding author is published in the journal.

The authors should keep a copy of the submitted manuscripts and other documents.

If the whole or a part of the submitted manuscript needs to be published somewhere else, Editorial Office must be informed accordingly.

Author Rights

By signing the Copyright Agreement Form, authors retain the copyright of their work and agree that the article, if accepted for publication by the  Viral Hepatitis Journal will be licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND). The authors agree to transfer the commercial rights to the Viral Hepatitis Society when the article is accepted for publication. When the article is to be re-used by the author as a book chapter or in a collection or compilation or expanded into a book for commercial purposes, permission is required to be sought from the Journal, which reserves its right to levy or waive a fee for such re-use, and appropriate attribution is required to be given to the original publication in the Journal explicitly.

Review Process: Upon submission, all manuscripts are reviewed to check for requirements requested by the Journal. Manuscripts that do not comply with these requirements will be sent back to authors without further evaluations. All the papers are first evaluated by the editor; later the papers are sent to advisory board members. If needed, some questions can be asked to the authors to answer; or some defaults may have to be corrected by the authors.

The result can be acceptance, minor revision, major revision, rejection in the current form, or rejection. Accepted manuscripts are forwarded for publication; in this stage, all information and data are checked and controlled properly; the proof of the article to be published by the journal are forwarded to the writers for proof reading and corrections.

The Editorial Policies and General Guidelines for manuscript preparation specified below are based on “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals" (ICMJE Recommendations) by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

Preparation of research articles and systematic reviews meta-analyses must comply with study design guidelines: CONSORT statement for randomized controlled trials (Moher D, Schultz KF, Altman D, for the CONSORT Group. The CONSORT statement revised recommendations for improving the quality of reports of parallel group randomized trials. JAMA 2001; 285: 1987-91) (http://www.consort-statement.org/),

PRISMA for preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, The PRISMA Group. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement. PLoS Med 2009; 6(7): e1000097.) (http://www.prisma-statement.org/),

STARD checklist for the reporting of studies of diagnostic accuracy (Bossuyt PM, Reitsma JB, Bruns DE, Gatsonis CA, Glasziou PP, Irwig LM, et al, for the STARD Group. Towards complete and accurate reporting of studies of diagnostic accuracy: the STARD initiative. Ann Intern Med 2003;138:40-4.) (http://www.stard-statement.org/),

STROBE statement—checklist of items that should be included in reports of observational studies (http://www.strobe-statement.org/),

MOOSE guidelines for meta-analysis and systemic reviews of observational studies (Stroup DF, Berlin JA, Morton SC, et al. Meta-analysis of observational studies in epidemiology: a proposal for reporting Meta-analysis of observational Studies in Epidemiology (MOOSE) group. JAMA 2000; 283: 2008-12).

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

Authors are encouraged to follow the following principles before submitting their article:

• Research articles and article collections should not exceed 15 pages including the text, figures, tables and references, while short announcements and case report presentations should not be longer than 5 pages.

Short Announcements

        i. Turkish title, english title, author name and institution(s) (Turkish and Engilish)
        ii. Turkish and english Abstract (max 300 words)
        iii. Turkish and english Key Words
        iv. Introduction (max 300 words)
        v. Materials and Methods (max 400 words)
        vi. Results (max 400 words)
        vii. Discussion (max 700 words)
        viii. Referances (should not exceed 15), all words 2000 not exceed.

• Author number for review articles should not exceed three.

• Author number for case report presentations should not exceed four.

• Articles should be written with double line space in 10 font size and right, left, upper and lower margins should all be 2.5 cm. Writing style should be Arial.

Manuscripts should have double-line spacing, leaving sufficient margin on both sides.

Manuscripts should be written with Microsoft Word.

Abbreviations: Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter. Internationally accepted abbreviations should be used; refer to scientific writing guides as necessary.

Cover Letter: Cover letter should include statements about manuscript category designation, single-journal submission affirmation, conflict of interest statement, sources of outside funding, equipments (if so), approval for language for articles in English and approval for statistical analysis for original research articles.

Title Page: Title should be concise and informative (in Turkish and English). The title page should include a list of all contributing authors and all of their affiliations. Positions of authors and names of departments and institutions to which they are attached and the province should be written. Supply full correspondence details for the corresponding author, including phone, mobile phone, fax number and e-mail address.

ARTICLE SECTIONS

The text file should include the title in Turkish, keywords, the title in English, keywords in English, the text of the article, references, tables (only one table for one page) and figure legends (if any), respectively. Within the text file, the names of the authors, any information about the institutions, the figures and images should be excluded.

Abstract: Turkish and English abstracts should be given together with the article title. It should be divided into four sections in the following order: Objectives, Materials and Methods, Results and Conclusion. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words. Abstracts for case reports should be unstructured and shorter (average 100-150 words; without structural divisions in Turkish and English).

Objectives: The aim of the study should be clearly stated.

Materials and Methods: The study and standard criteria used should be defined; it should also be indicated whether the study is randomized or not, whether it is retrospective or prospective, and the statistical methods applied should be indicated, if applicable.

Results: The detailed results of the study should be given and the statistical significance level should be indicated.

Conclusion: Should summarize the results of the study, the clinical applicability of the results should be defined, and the favorable and unfavorable aspects should be declared.

Keywords:

• They should be minimally 3 and maximally 6 and should be written in Turkish and English.

• The words should be separated by semicolon (;), from each other.

• English key words should be appropriate to “Medical Subject Headings (MESH)” (www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).

• Turkish key words should be appropriate to “Turkey Science Terms” (www.bilimterimleri.com).

Original researches should have the following sections;

Introduction: Should consist of a brief explanation of the topic and indicate the objective of the study, supported by information from the literature.

Materials and Methods: The study plan should be clearly described, indicating whether the study is randomized or not, whether it is retrospective or prospective, the number of trials, the characteristics, and the statistical methods used.

Results: The results of the study should be stated, with tables/figures given in numerical order; the results should be evaluated according to the statistical analysis methods applied. See General Guidelines for details about the preparation of visual material.

Discussion: The study results should be discussed in terms of their favorable and unfavorable aspects and they should be compared with the literature.

Study Limitations: Limitations of the study should be detailed. In addition, an evaluation of the implications of the obtained findings/results for future research should be outlined.

Conclusion: The conclusion of the study should be highlighted.

Acknowledgements: Any technical or financial support or editorial contributions (statistical analysis, English/Turkish evaluation) towards the study should appear at the end of the article. Only acknowledge persons and institutions who have made substantial contributions to the study, but was not a writer of the paper.

References: Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. See General Guidelines for details about the usage and formatting required.

Case Reports

Case reports should present cases which are rarely seen, feature novelty in diagnosis and treatment, and contribute to our current knowledge. The first page should include the title in Turkish and English, an unstructured summary not exceeding 150 words, and key words. The main text should consist of introduction, case report, discussion, acknowledgment, conclusion and references. The entire text should not exceed 5 pages (A4, formatted as specified above).

Review Articles

Review articles can address any aspect of viral hepatitis Review articles must provide critical analyses of contemporary evidence and provide directions of or future research. Most review articles are commissioned, but other review submissions are also welcome. Before sending a review, discussion with the editor is recommended.

Reviews articles analyze topics in depth, independently and objectively. The first chapter should include the title in Turkish and English, an unstructured summary and key words. Source of all citations should be indicated. The entire text should not exceed 25 pages (A4, formatted as specified above).

Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor should be short commentaries related to current developments in viral hepatitis and their scientific and social aspects, or may be submitted to ask questions or offer further contributions in response to work that has been published in the Viral Hepatitis Journal. Letters do not include a title or an abstract; they should not exceed 1,000 words and can have up to 5 references.

References: The authors are required to cite only those references that they can submit to the Journal in the event they are requested to do so. References should be cited in numerical order (in parentheses) in the text and listed in the same numerical order at the end of the manuscript on a separate page or pages. All authors should be listed regardless of number. Journal abbreviations should conform to the style used in the Cumulated Index Medicus (www.icmje.org). Only list the literature that is published, in press (with the name of the publication known) or with a doi number in references. It is preferred that number of references do not exceed 50 for research articles, 100 for reviews and 10 for case reports.

Follow the styles shown in examples below (please give attention to punctuation):

In reference section of the article, there should be no writing in languages other than English. The text language of the article should be indicated in parenthesis at the end of each reference.(e.g. Yoldaş O, Bulut A, Altındiş M. The Current Approach of Hepatitis A Infections. Viral Hepatitis J 2012;18:81-86. (Turkish).

Format for journal articles; initials of author’s names and surnames, titles of article, journal name, date, volume, number, and inclusive pages, must be indicated.

Example: Tabak F, Ozdemir F, Tabak O, Erer B, Tahan V, Ozaras R. Autoimmune hepatitis induced by the prolonged hepatitis A virus infection. Ann Hepatol. 2008;7:177-179.

Format for books; nitials of author’s names and surnames, chapter title, editor’s name, book title, edition, city, publisher, date and pages.

Example: Vissers RJ, Abu-Laban RB. Acute and Chronic Pancreatitis. In: Tintinalli JE, Kelen GD, Stapczynski JS (eds.), Emergency Medicine: A comprehensive Study Guide. 6 st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Co; 2005; p. 573-577.

Format for on-line-only publications; DOI is the only acceptable on-line reference.

Figures, Pictures, Table ‘s and Graphics:

• All figures, pictures, tables and graphics should be cited at the end of the relevant sentence.

Explanations about figures, pictures, tables and graphics must be placed at the end of the article.

• Figures, pictures/photographs must be added to the system as separate .jpg or .gif files.

• The manuscripts containing color figures/pictures/tables would be published, if accepted by the Journal. In case of publishing colorful artwork, the authors will be asked to pay extra printing costs.

• All abbrevations used, must be listed in explanation which will be placed at the bottom of each figure, picture, table and graphic.

• For figures, pictures, tables and graphics to be reproduced relevant permissions need to be provided. This permission must be mentioned in the explanation.

• Pictures/photographs must be in color, clear and with appropriate contrast to separate details.

Conflict of interest: If any of the writers have a relationship based on self-interest, this should be explained.

Acknowledgment: Only acknowledge persons and institutions who have made substantial contributions to the study, but was not a writer of the paper.

All manuscripts submitted to the Viral Hepatitis Journal are screened for plagiarism using the Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate software. Results indicating plagiarism may result in manuscripts being returned or rejected.

Checklist for Submitted Articles:

Articles must be complete. They must include the following:

• Cover Letter

• Title Page

• Article sections

• Turkish and English titles

• Abstract (250 words) (Turkish and English)

• Keywords (minimum 3; maximum 6)

• Article divided into appropriate sections

• Complete and accurate references and citations

• List of references styled according to “journal requirements”

• All figures (with legends) and tables (with titles) cited.

• "Copyright Agreement Form" signed by all authors.

• Manuscripts lacking any of the above elements will be rejected from the production process.

Communication

Viral Hepatitis Journal
Address: Sağlık Mah. Süleyman Sırrı Cad, No: 2/15 Sıhhiye/Ankara/Turkey
Phone: +90 312 433 74 26
Fax: +90 312 433 06 54
E-mail: [email protected]