Compliance of ORL-HNS Journals in Türkiye with the Principles of Transparency

Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing is one of the important standards for the functioning and publishing quality of peer-reviewed scientific journals. The aim of this study is to evaluate Turkish otorhinolaryngology, head and neck surgery (ORL-HNS) journals according to these principles and to point out the areas that need improvement.

This descriptive study is based on the evaluation of website contents of eight Turkish ORL-HNS journals according to the 16 principles of transparency criteria. The number of scientific papers published in 2020 and 2021 were retrieved from the respective websites of the journals. The impact factors were calculated by analyzing the citations in 2022 via Google Scholar. The probable relationship between impact factor and compliance with transparency principles was investigated. Impact factor and transparency principles were studied to draw attention to the international standards which can contribute to journals for international scholarly publishing.

The journals highly comply with website publishing, ethics, access, and ownership criteria; however, most of them do not comply with advisory council, advertising, other income, and business practices criteria. While the first three journals with the highest impact factors comply with 12 to 14 of the 16 criteria, the last three comply with five to 12.

The journals with high transparency criteria scores and high impact factors suggest that these criteria are important in terms of the reliability and validity of the information, and citation. Moreover, the websites of Turkish scientific ORL-HNS journals were seen to need improvement according to the transparency criteria, especially regarding financial issues such as business, financial status, and advertising.