Dear Readers;
The year 2020, which we started with the hope of a year full of new hopes and beauties, has been a difficult year for our country and the world. For this reason, the beginning of the year 2021 came with a bit of disappointment and worries about whether the troubles would end. I think we have achieved many successes on behalf of our journal under these difficult conditions, despite all the intensity and worldwide negativities.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which changed the face of the world, caused us to make changes in our journal, our efforts and our goals. We deeply felt the difficulties experienced by all healthcare professionals during this period. When we took a look at what we did last year, we switched our entire publishing format to English and the language of journal on our website became English. This year, we released three supplements, one of which contained the abstracts presented at our student congress, and two of them were for COVID-19. We had to increase the number of 1 supplement to 3 supplements, which we planned for the treatment options and drug applications used in COVID-19, due to the intense interest in the subject and a large number of valuable articles. We published 2 of them in 2020. We will publish the third in the first months of 2021. I would like to mention the efforts of our assistant editor, Fatemeh Bahadori, who assumed the duty of guest editor in this process and thank him for her efforts. I would also like to thank our Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Ahmet Akça and our Rector Rümeyza Kazancıoğlu, who supported us in solving financial problems.
I would like to mention two things that make us happy and that we can evaluate as our success. First of all, the number of clicks on our website and reading of our publications has increased approximately 5 times this year. I would like to state that the indexes we have participated in recently and the fact that our publication language is English has contributed to this result. Second, the number of studies submitted to our journal increased by 100% in 2020. Since the number of articles we could publish was limited, we had to reject some valuable articles submitted by you. Due to this interest, we decided to increase the number of articles we published in each issue this year and to meet your demands to some extent. Another change is that we will publish your articles according to the diversity of issue based on the requests received and the decision of our editorial board. We had published your articles according to the order of acceptance of the publication until this year. This means that the publication of the questionnaire, reliability and validity studies may therefore be delayed a bit. I would like to thank you, our dear readers, for providing us this momentum and increase.
Another innovation we have planned for this year is to add a new section titled “COMMENT”, where articles will take place on a topic chosen by the Chief Editor, which includes current issues and innovations. In this issue, we set the title of the first article as “Problems of Healthcare Professionals in the COVID-19 Pandemic” in memory of the healthcare professionals who showed unique heroism and lost their lives during the pandemic process. As it is known in the fight against COVID-19, the healthcare professionals fighting on the front have struggled very seriously. Many of them died. I wish mercy from Allah to our healthcare professionals who lost their lives, and patience to their families and relatives. Healthcare professionals continue to struggle with many problems in the ongoing process. With our sense of gratitude for their memory, we will discuss the problems they have experienced and the problems that are still being experienced, inspired by a meeting on this subject. I think you will read the topic “Problems of Healthcare Professionals in COVID-19 Pandemic” with interest.
I would like to mention the articles that stand out in this issue by expressing my happiness to bring you together with our articles that are increasing day by day. The experimental study by Uzer G et al., entitled “Comparison of Small-diameter-hole and Traditional Microfracture in Cartilage Repair and the Effect of Adding a Hyaluronic Acid-based Acellular Matrix Scaffold: An Animal Study”; the method study by Arısoy S et al., entitled “Development and Validation of an In Vitro Dissolution Method Based on HPLC Analysis for L-Dopa Release From PLGA Nanoparticles”; the dentistry study by Dönmez N et al., entitled “The Effects of Thermo-mechanical Aging on Microleakage in Composite Restorations Polymerized Using One New Generation and Two Conventional Led Light Curing Units”; the study by Eser A et al., entitled “The Efficacy of Eltrombopag Treatment in Patients who developed Platelet Engraftment Failure after Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Single Center Experience”; and the study by Karatoprak et al., entitled “Report of a Case of Signet Ring Carcinoma Presenting as Gastric Mucosal Thickening: A Diagnostic Dilemma” were the articles at the forefront.
I would like to thank Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nükhet Kütük for her support so far, who left us, while welcoming our friends who attended our editorial board in the new year. I would like to thank both our assistant editors and referees, who achieved a 20% shortening in our publication evaluation process despite our increasing number.
Dear Readers,
I congratulate you on your new year and wish it to be useful for our country and our world. May everything be as you wish, to meet you in our next issue.
Best regards,
Prof. Dr. Adem AKÇAKAYA
Editor-In-Chief