Instructions to Authors

Turkish Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences journal is published 6 times (February, April, June, August, October, December) per year and publishes the following articles:

*Research articles
*Reviews
*Preliminary results/Short communications/Technical notes/Letters to the Editor in every field of pharmaceutical sciences.

The publication language of the journal is English.

The Turkish Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences does not charge any article submission or processing charges.

A manuscript will be considered only with the understanding that it is an original contribution that has not been published elsewhere.

The Journal should be abbreviated as “Turk J Pharm Sci” when referenced.

As of 2022, authors are not required to provide Turkish Abstracts during manuscript submission.

The scientific and ethical liability of the manuscripts, as well as the copyright, belongs to the authors and the commercial rights of the manuscripts belongs to the Turkish Pharmacists’ Association, Academy of Pharmacy. Authors are responsible for the contents of the manuscript and accuracy of the references. All manuscripts submitted for publication must be accompanied by the Copyright Agreement Form. Once this form, signed by all the authors, has been submitted, it is understood that neither the manuscript nor the data it contains have been submitted elsewhere or previously published and authors declare the statement of scientific contributions and responsibilities of all authors.

Experimental, clinical and drug studies requiring approval by an ethics committee must be submitted to the JOURNAL with an ethics committee approval report including approval number confirming that the study was conducted in accordance with international agreements and the Declaration of Helsinki (revised 2013) (http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/). 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. In experimental animal studies, the authors should indicate that the procedures followed were in accordance with animal rights as per the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals ( http://oacu.od.nih.gov/regs/guide/guide.pdf ) and they should obtain animal ethics committee approval.

Authors must provide disclosure/acknowledgment of financial or material support, if any was received, for the current study.

If the article includes any direct or indirect commercial links or if any institution provided material support to the study, authors must state in the cover letter that they have no relationship with the commercial product, drug, pharmaceutical company, etc. concerned; or specify the type of relationship (consultant, other agreements), if any.

Authors must provide a statement on the absence of conflicts of interest among the authors and provide authorship contributions.

All manuscripts submitted to the journal are screened for plagiarism using the ‘iThenticate’ software. Results indicating plagiarism may result in manuscripts being returned or rejected.

Editors are authorized to revise the article during the final check for language proficiency before publication.

The Review Process

This is an independent international journal based on double-blind peer-review principles. The manuscript is assigned to the Editor-in-Chief, who reviews the manuscript and makes an initial decision based on manuscript quality and editorial priorities. Manuscripts that pass initial evaluation are sent for external peer review, and the Editor-in-Chief assigns an Associate Editor. The Associate Editor sends the manuscript to at least two reviewers (internal and/or external reviewers). The Associate Editor recommends a decision based on the reviewers’ recommendations and returns the manuscript to the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief makes a final decision based on editorial priorities, manuscript quality, and reviewer recommendations. If there are any conflicting recommendations from reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief can assign a new reviewer.

The scientific board guiding the selection of the papers to be published in the Journal consists of elected experts of the Journal and if necessary, selected from national and international authorities. The Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors may make minor corrections to accepted manuscripts that do not change the main text of the paper.

In case of any suspicion or claim regarding scientific shortcomings or ethical infringement, the Journal reserves the right to submit the manuscript to the supporting institutions or other authorities for investigation. The Journal accepts the responsibility of initiating action but does not undertake any responsibility for an actual investigation or any power of decision.

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 (2013, archived at http://www.icmje.org/).

Preparation of research articles, systematic reviews and 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 statement of 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, a 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).

Phytochemical profile/fingerprint analysis by advanced techniques (HPTLC, HPLC, LC-MS, etc) must be also presented in the studies performed with crude herbal extracts. The paper with preliminary qualitative experiments (tube experiments, TLC) for identification of the extracts are not accepted.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

Manuscripts can only be submitted electronically through the Journal Agent website (http://journalagent.com/tjps/) after creating an account. This system allows online submission and review.

Format: Manuscripts should be prepared using Microsoft Word, size A4 with 2.5 cm margins on all sides, 12 pt Arial font and 1.5 line spacing.
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: The cover letter should include statements about manuscript type, single-Journal submission affirmation, conflict of interest statement, sources of outside funding, equipment (if applicable), for original research articles.

ETHICS COMMITTEE APPROVAL

The editorial board and our reviewers systematically ask for ethics committee approval from every research manuscript submitted to the Turkish Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. If a submitted manuscript does not have ethical approval, which is necessary for every human or animal experiment as stated in international ethical guidelines, it must be rejected on the first evaluation. Research involving animals should be conducted with the same rigor as research in humans; the Turkish Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences asks original approval document to show implements the 3Rs principles. If a study does not have ethics committee approval or authors claim that their study does not need approval, the study is consulted to and evaluated by the editorial board for approval.

SIMILARITY

The Turkish Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences is routinely looking for similarity index score from every manuscript submitted before evaluation by the editorial board and reviewers. The journal uses iThenticate plagiarism checker software to verify the originality of written work. There is no acceptable similarity index; but, exceptions are made for similarities less than 15%.

REFERENCES

Authors are solely responsible for the accuracy of all references.

In-text citations: References should be indicated as a superscript immediately after the period/full stop of the relevant sentence. If the author(s) of a reference is/are indicated at the beginning of the sentence, this reference should be written as a superscript immediately after the author’s name. If relevant research has been conducted in Türkiye or by Turkish investigators, these studies should be given priority while citing the literature.

Presentations presented in congresses, unpublished manuscripts, theses, Internet addresses, and personal interviews or experiences should not be indicated as references. If such references are used, they should be indicated in parentheses at the end of the relevant sentence in the text, without reference number and written in full, in order to clarify their nature.

References section: References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. All authors should be listed regardless of number. The titles of Journals should be abbreviated according to the style used in the Index Medicus.

Reference Format

Journal: Last name(s) of the author(s) and initials, article title, publication title and its original abbreviation, publication date, volume, the inclusive page numbers. Example: Collin JR, Rathbun JE. Involutional entropion: a review with evaluation of a procedure. Arch Ophthalmol. 1978;96:1058-1064.
Book: Last name(s) of the author(s) and initials, book title, edition, place of publication, date of publication and inclusive page numbers of the extract cited.
Example: Herbert L. The Infectious Diseases (1st ed). Philadelphia; Mosby Harcourt; 1999:11;1-8.
Book Chapter: Last name(s) of the author(s) and initials, chapter title, book editors, book title, edition, place of publication, date of publication and inclusive page numbers of the cited piece.
Example: O’Brien TP, Green WR. Periocular Infections. In: Feigin RD, Cherry JD, eds. Textbook of Pediatric Infectious Diseases (4th ed). Philadelphia; W.B. Saunders Company;1998:1273-1278.
Books in which the editor and author are the same person: Last name(s) of the author(s) and initials, chapter title, book editors, book title, edition, place of publication, date of publication and inclusive page numbers of the cited piece. Example: Solcia E, Capella C, Kloppel G. Tumors of the exocrine pancreas. In: Solcia E, Capella C, Kloppel G, eds. Tumors of the Pancreas. 2nd ed. Washington: Armed Forces Institute of Pathology; 1997:145-210.

TABLES, GRAPHICS, FIGURES, AND IMAGES

All visual materials together with their legends should be located on separate pages that follow the main text.

Images: Images (pictures) should be numbered and include a brief title. Permission to reproduce pictures that were published elsewhere must be included. All pictures should be of the highest quality possible, in

JPEG format, and at a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

Tables, Graphics, Figures: All tables, graphics or figures should be enumerated according to their sequence within the text and a brief descriptive caption should be written. Any abbreviations used should be defined in the accompanying legend. Tables in particular should be explanatory and facilitate readers’ understanding of the manuscript, and should not repeat data presented in the main text.

MANUSCRIPT TYPES

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

Below are the word limits applied by the TJPS, specific to manuscript types;

Type of manuscript Abstract word limit Word count Number of authors Reference limit (max)
Original paper 250-400 2000-4000 unlimited 40
Short communication/ Technical note 150-250 1000-2500 5 20
Review 250-400 2000-5000 5 60
Letter to the Editor - 500-1000 3 5

Original Articles

Clinical research should comprise clinical observation, new techniques or laboratories studies. Original research articles should include title, structured abstract, key words relevant to the content of the article, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, study limitations, conclusion references, tables/figures/images and acknowledgement sections. Title, abstract and key words should be written in English. The manuscript should be formatted in accordance with the above-mentioned guidelines and should not exceed 16 A4 pages.

Title Page: This page should include the title of the manuscript, short title, name(s) of the authors and author information. The following descriptions should be stated in the given order:

1. Title of the manuscript (English), as concise and explanatory as possible, including no abbreviations, up to 135 characters
2. Short title (English), up to 60 characters
3. Name(s) and surname(s) of the author(s) (without abbreviations and academic titles) and affiliations
4. Name, address, e-mail, phone and fax number of the corresponding author
5. The place and date of scientific meeting in which the manuscript was presented and its abstract published in the abstract book, if applicable

Abstract: A summary of the manuscript should be written in English. References should not be cited in the abstract. Use of abbreviations should be avoided as much as possible; if any abbreviations are used, they must be taken into consideration independently of the abbreviations used in the text. For original articles, the structured abstract should include the following sub-headings:
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: A list of minimum 3, but no more than 5 key words must follow the abstract. Key words in English should be consistent with “Medical Subject Headings (MESH)” (www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html).

Original research articles 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. The conclusion of the study should be highlighted.
Study Limitations: Limitations of the study should be discussed. 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 and evaluation) towards the study should appear at the end of the article.
References: Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the references. See General Guidelines for details about the usage and formatting required.

Review Articles

Review articles can address any aspect of clinical or laboratory pharmaceuticals. 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 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).

Letter to the Editor

Letters to the Editor may be submitted in response to work that has been published in the Journal. Letters should be short commentaries related to specific points of agreement or disagreement with the published work. Letters should be no longer than 500-1000 words with no more than five complete references, and no more than three authors.