EDITORIAL POLICIES

Competency Criteria
The editorial board consists of research scientists and medical specialists with rich research experiences. Editors play a key role in our journal. We usually follow the guidelines stated at "ONET" based on the knowledge, skills, and ability of candidates. Our strategy is to select editors who can manage the growth of the journal. Usually, we prefer those with an impressive academic career. Excellent communication skills, the capability to teamwork, and prominence in the community are the complimentary principles. The editors and editorial board are working as volunteers at our center.

Peer Review
The single most important criterion for accepting a paper is the novelty and scientific rigor. The peer-review and editorial processes are the main mechanisms for ensuring the quality of published articles. To this end, the submitted articles are rigorously peer-reviewed to ensure that high-quality submissions are published. These published articles reflect the up-to-date research findings, with reliable and sound results, objective and unbiased discussion of the results. For further information about our peer review process please refer to the special page provided at the top of this page.

Author Contributions
The authors are those who have made significant and substantial contributions to the manuscript, including conception, design, execution, and interpretation of the publications. All named authors must meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship, take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, and have given final approval for the version to be published. Finally, the corresponding author signs the copyright agreement on behalf of co-authors. An author is generally considered to be someone who simultaneously meets the following conditions in authorship criteria include: 1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work, AND 2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content, AND 3. Final approval of the version to be published, AND 4. 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.
All authors should declare that their submission is their own original research. However, they must warranty the reality and authenticity of their data. Also, they must declare that their manuscript has not been published elsewhere before, or even submitted and under review in another journal. They are not allowed to use the verbatim text of formerly published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere. The same research project must not be published in more than one journal. The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal office during all steps. Furthermore, the corresponding author should respond to the editorial office and should cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication and actively participate in the peer review process as well as provide an erratum. Our affiliated Journal does not allow to add or delete authors or changing the orders of authors following the final acceptance. Acknowledgment should be clearly declared in all submissions. References should be stated numerically based on the order of citation in the Vancouver style. Besides, all the resources that helped to perform their research work should be added clearly.
It should be noted that if AI software like ChatGPT has been utilized to assist in any part of the manuscript, then it should be undoubtedly acknowledged in the manuscript and during the submission. The AI software does not meet the authorship criteria and is unable to accept responsibility and accountability for the research outcome therefore it is impossible to be listed in the author list. 

Study Designs
All animal studies should follow the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines. Protecting patient or animal rights under investigation is of great importance. The welfare of animals used for research must be respected. Reporting guidelines for some specific studies are recommended as follows. Randomized trials (CONSORT), Systematic reviews (PRISMA), Diagnostic studies (STARD), Study protocols (SPRIT), Clinical practice guidelines (AGREE), and Qualitative research (SRQR). Authors should adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki in medical research involving human subjects, human material, or human data. Independent local, regional or national review body should approve the study by receiving ethical approval from an ethics committee. Authors should guarantee the integrity of reported data and answer all comments raised by peer-reviewers during the production process. If the author fails to provide a satisfactory answer to the comments of peer-reviewers, the paper would be rejected. Ethical issues should be completely observed by the authors. All participants in a research project should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects.
The authors should mention a clinical trial registration number of trials in their methods. Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding), based on the CONSORT guideline. Permission should be obtained by authors for using all copyrighted material including figures or tables from another journal. The Journal keeps the right to ask for raw data even after publication.
 

Informed Consent
Informed written consent should be obtained from all participants or their legal parties, if applicable. Patients information should be kept secret and anonymous. Besides, the Journal reserves its right to request the related documents.

Publication Fees
The Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation in Ophthalmology has been published quarterly since 2012, is affiliated to a non-profit corporation, and due to having no financial resources or publishing advertisements, it receives article processing fees. An article-processing fee applies only to accepted manuscripts. If a paper is accepted for publication, the authors need to pay a publication processing fee equal to 2400 EURO prior to proof. The Article Processing Fee covers mainly the production costs such as journal production, web hosting, CMS, database, online repository, archiving, XML conversion, reference formatting, unlimited number of color figures, and free extensive English editing. The article processing fees are non-refundable following the acceptance letter, if the author withdraws submission from consideration or in case of retraction.

Conflict of Interest
Any conflict of interest related to the manuscript should be declared by authors. These include but not limited to commercial, personal, political, and intellectual aspects. All editors, editorial staff, and reviewers should also report potential conflicts related to the submissions they are working with. Authors are preferably asked to fill the uniform disclosure form available through http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/.

Corrections and Retractions
We respect the research integrity therefore, a research integrity officer and committee have been assigned at our center. If serious scientific misconduct is found, the article will be retracted during any step of production or after post-publication. If fraudulent behavior is suspected, further investigations might include the author's higher authorities. Corrections or retractions of published articles will be made by publishing a correction or retraction note. In this way, the original article remains in the public and the subsequent note will be published. The decision to publish the correction or retraction is based on the COPE guidelines. However, if the error is minor, a correction statement will be published soon. Moreover, we will take responsibility if errors were caused by our side. If errors were caused by the authors, a Correction will be published in the next earliest possible issue.

Disclaimer 
All statements expressed herein in our publications are merely those of the author(s) and do not reflect the publisher or editorial board. The publisher and the board members do not endorse any service or product presented in our publications and disclaims any accountability or liability for such materials.
 

Copyright
Published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License which permits copy and redistributes the material just in noncommercial usages if the original work is properly cited. 
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PEER REVIEW POLICIES

In all stages of our work, above all, ethics is our concern. Our emphasis has been mostly on the scientific rigor of the articles examined by publishing original and review articles, and case reports along with a comprehensive review. Quality control has always been one of the pivots of our academic structure. All submissions undergo a double-blind external peer-review process. The peer review process from submission to decision is defined as below:

Submission of Manuscript: The corresponding author submits the paper to the journal through the journal management online system or occasionally through email.

Editorial Office Screening: The editorial office checks the composition of papers and arrangement as well as check the text similarity. Primary manuscript check is to evaluate duplicate submission, plagiarism, or other technical concerns. If manuscript does not meet the submission requirements, the manuscript is returned to the authors for corrections, or even rejected owing to ethical concerns.

Editor-in-Chief Evaluation: The Editor-in-Chief checks that the manuscript is appropriate based on the journal scope as well as novelty, scientific importance, and relevance to the general readership. If not, the paper may be rejected. Note: Articles submitted by the board, staff, and Editor-in-Chief will also be subjected to peer review. These types of papers should be handled by another person of the editorial board (without conflict of interest) and in all processes, those who have a conflict of interest should not be involved. Furthermore, in this case, the editor should be blinded to the reviewers' identity.

Inviting Peer-Reviewers: Manuscript that passes the initial screening is reviewed by at least two peer reviewers. The editorial office sends invitations to the experts who believe would be appropriate reviewers. All submissions undergo a double-blind external peer-review process. Editors, staff, and potential reviewers should present their conflict of interest.

The Conduction of Review: The reviewers submit their comments to the editorial office based on a comprehensive checklist, with a recommendation to accept or reject it, or else with a request for minor or major revision. Their comments will be passed to the authors following confirmation by the assigned editor including any relevant reviewer comments. The above review process may be repeated if a manuscript revision (major or minor) is requested. The responses to the comments along with the comments of reviewers will then be evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief to reach the final decision.
 

Other Concerns
All submissions undergo a confidential peer-review process. Originality, reliability, publication ethics, statistical validity, language, and relevance are important factors for reviewers to accept the submission. There is no warranty to accept the manuscript if authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit the manuscript. Rejected manuscripts would not be re-reviewed. All manuscripts are treated by the editorial staff, editors and assigned reviewers as confidential information. The comments of reviewers are not published. The identity of reviewers remains anonymous.

Author(s) may present list names of potential reviewers when submitting a publication, however, the selection remains the editor's decision. Relevant previously published articles must be identified by the reviewer if not cited in the references and constructive comments should present to improve the quality of the article. Also, any similarity regarding data or method with other previous publications must be reported to the Editor-in-Chief although the journal checks the similarity report of the text at the screening level by software. If there is any conflict of interest between the reviewer and the authors or with the research funder, the manuscript must be reviewed by another person. The peer reviewers are volunteers selected from those who have an impressive academic career.

We offer a special service entitled Presubmission Enquiries; therefore, those outside the scope of our journal are omitted in the initial screening phase. For this service, the corresponding author emails an abstract and a cover letter to the editorial office. We attempt to respond within one week with notes on the suitability of the proposed manuscript. The goal of the presubmission enquiries service is to make the statement that the received manuscript reasonably satisfies the measures detailed in the scope of the journal. Although there is no guarantee on our part to accept all submissions after the presubmission enquiries process, this service has made our acceptance rate reach about 60%.

ETHICS & ADVERTISEMENT POLICIES

In all stages of our work, above all, ethics is our concern. Please refer to our pages about peer review policy and editorial policy to find out more related ethical concerns. 

We endorse the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) policies in editorial, peer review, advertisement, ethics, informed consent, handling cases requiring corrections, retractions, and editorial expressions of concern. We also respect policies of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

Conflict of Interest
Conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) research grants from funding agencies (the research funder and the grant number are required), financial support for educational programs, employment or consultation, position on advisory board or board of directors or other types of management relationships, financial relationships, for example, receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may gain or lose financially by the publication of the article in any way, intellectual property rights (e.g. patents, copyrights and royalties from such rights), holdings of spouse and/or children that may have a financial interest in the work.

Any conflict of interest related to the manuscript should be declared by authors. These include but not limited to commercial, personal, political, and intellectual aspects. All editors, editorial staff, and reviewers should also report potential conflict of interest related to the submissions they are working with. 

Informed Consent
Regarding human researches, an informed consent and ethical approval should be clearly mentioned in the method section. The author should also embrace that all experiments (human or animals) were performed in compliance with the relevant institutional guidelines, and also should state the institutional committee(s) name that approved the study.

Study Subjects
All animal studies should follow the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines. Protecting patient or animal rights under investigation is of great importance. The welfare of animals used for research must be respected. Reporting guidelines for some specific studies are recommended as follows. Randomized trials (CONSORT), Systematic reviews (PRISMA), Diagnostic studies (STARD), Study protocols (SPRIT), Clinical practice guidelines (AGREE), and Qualitative research (SRQR). Authors should adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki in medical research involving human subjects, human material, or human data. 

Independent local, regional or national review body should approve the study by receiving ethical approval from an ethics committee. Authors should guarantee the integrity of reported data and answer all comments raised by peer-reviewers during the production process. If the author fails to provide a satisfactory answer to the comments of peer-reviewers, the paper would be rejected. Ethical issues should be completely observed by the authors. All participants in a research project should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects.

Corrections and Retractions
We respect the research integrity therefore, a research integrity officer and committee have been assigned at our center. If serious scientific misconduct is found, the article will be retracted during any step of production or after post-publication. If fraudulent behavior is suspected, further investigations might include the author's higher authorities. Corrections or retractions of published articles will be made by publishing a correction or retraction note. In this way, the original article remains in the public and the subsequent note will be published. The decision to publish the correction or retraction is based on the COPE guidelines. However, if the error is minor, a correction statement will be published soon. Moreover, we will take responsibility if errors were caused by our side. If errors were caused by the authors, a Correction will be published in the next earliest possible issue.

Advertising Policy
We do not accept advertisements from 2015. However, we do believe that advertisements are independent of editorial decisions. All advertising contents should be clearly indicated as an advertisement, they should not be confused with the editorial contents and articles. Those advertisements seem to be unsafe for health or those disclosing racial, ethnic, sexual, and religious issues are not admissible. All advertisements for drug-related content should inspire rational use and must not be misleading in nature. Furthermore, editorial decisions and publisher assignments will not be predisposed by an advertisement and sponsors. The publisher has the right to withdraw drug-specific targeted campaigns to be linked in a specific article. All inquiries should be reviewed by the advertising standards committee at the publisher's office. The editors and the publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or productions referred in the articles or advertisements.

Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
The Journal complies with the ICMJE uniform requirements for manuscripts. This is clearly indicated in the Submission Guidelines. Also, our affiliated Journal follows the COPE guidelines and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. The statements and opinions contained in this journal are solely those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the editor or the publisher's ones.