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Welcome to the second issue in 2010 of the Düşünen Adam: The Journal of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences. The editorial board would first like to thank our advisers and readers for their continued interest and support.

In this introductory chapter, we would like to address some of the issues that caught our attention in the first half of the year. The first is the concept of “informed consent”, which is described on page 14 of the “Declaration of Informed Consent” from the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) as follows: “The process in which an individual who is capable of making decisions accepts and gives his/her consent to the surgical operations to be undertaken once he/she has been informed about and understood the prognosis, treatment options, and other procedures he/she will undergo.” This journal insists that authors clearly state in the “Method” chapter of their articles that the patients they used in their work provided their informed consent. Online submissions lacking proof of informed consent are thus not accepted.

The second subject to be addressed is “ethics committee approval”. According to the Declaration of Research Ethics from the TTB (page 41), all proposed research projects must be assessed and approved by an independent and autonomous ethics committee. According to the Regulations Pertaining to Amendments to the Regulations for Clinical Research, published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Turkey dated March 11, 2010 under number 27518, interventions involving invasive methods must be approved by an ethics committee, whereas non-invasive interventions may be evaluated by ethics committees set up within related institutions.

The third subject relates to “authors’ names” and the listing thereof in articles. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the profession of writing presupposes intellectual contribution and in order to become a writer, the following three criteria must be met: 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. According to the TTB’s Declaration of Ethics in Publishing (page 43) these three criteria must be met for a researcher to be included in the team of authors of a scientific publication. A researcher who does not meet all three criteria may not be mentioned as an author. It would seem more appropriate to mention the other contributions in the Acknowledgement section at the end of the article.

Today, many journals question which roles an author assumes. The right to become an author should not be granted to persons who are not actually eligible for this title; the authors should be listed in accordance with their level of contribution, regardless of their status. This also applies to thesis papers that are later published. The right to become an author of an article, including ranking in the list of authors, must be determined at the very beginning of the project through mutual decision and should be mentioned in the application submitted to the ethics committee. An important step towards applying true criteria for authors may be making it a precondition that every author sign forms for the transfer of copyrights after the approval of an article sent to this journal.

We hope that the interest and support of our authors, advisers and readers will continue as long as our journal remains in publication.