TR Dizin criteria explained for authors

What TR Dizin is

TR Dizin is a national citation index for scholarly publications from Türkiye. It is operated by TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM and lets users search journals, articles, authors, institutions and publishers, with bibliometric and citation analysis on top. The portal also notes a link between TR Dizin and the evaluation of national journals for associate-professorship applications (ÜAK) that have passed a committee review. For a Turkish medical researcher, TR Dizin matters mainly because a national index can count in local academic assessment, even though it is not an international database such as MEDLINE.

Being listed in TR Dizin is a decision of an external committee. A journal cannot claim it until the index shows it, and an author should check the index itself rather than trust a journal's own statement.

Criteria journals must meet

ULAKBİM publishes an English-language "TR Index Journal Evaluation Criteria" page. The version I read carries no date and refers to the 2019 and 2020 peer-review submission rules, so treat the details below as a guide and confirm against the current page. In summary:

• Follow-up period. Approved applicants are followed for at least one year; newly published journals for two years. During this period issues must appear on time and be uploaded to the online monitoring system (ODIS).
• Editorial structure. A language editor for the publication language is expected, and field editors for broad-scope journals. Boards should be institutionally diverse: at least one third of the editorial board from different institutions, and each member's institution (or at least city and country) shown.
• Peer review. At least two reviewers from different institutions per article. The journal uploads review files for sampled articles, including a rejected one, and the files must show a scientific evaluation rather than only a format check.
• Article mix. Research articles should make up at least half of the scientific articles in a year, and health sciences, dentistry and pharmacy journals are expected to publish at least 12 research articles a year.
• Ethics. Ethics committee approval for human and animal studies must be stated in the article, including the board name, date and number in the methods section and on the first or last page. The journal needs a separate ethics section for authors, reviewers and editors that refers to ICMJE recommendations and COPE guidelines. Permission from the owners of scales used in data collection must also be declared.
• Formatting. Detailed article-writing rules for tables, figures, titles, abstracts and references, and consistent page numbering within a volume.
• Special and additional issues. Extra issues have their own numbering and may not exceed one third of the normal publication period; congress-abstract issues are excluded from that limit.

The process itself has a preliminary expert evaluation followed by a committee that looks at publication ethics, the effectiveness of peer review, the quality and independence of the editorial board, and article formalities such as spelling, reference accuracy, titles, abstracts and keywords. Rejected journals are monitored for a further year before re-evaluation, and a journal rejected twice in a row is not considered for two years. Accepted journals must keep uploading issues on time or can be removed.

This journal's status (from the Indexing page)

This section is completed from the journal's Indexing page. It should say only what that page documents: whether the journal has applied to TR Dizin, whether it is listed, and the date of the last check. If the journal is not listed, that is the accurate answer; a journal can be young and well run and still be outside the index. Readers who want to verify a claim should search the journal title in TR Dizin directly.

Official sources

Always read the official pages, because evaluation rules and calendars change. Start with the TR Dizin criteria page and the application and evaluation process page, and use the TR Dizin help desk and FAQ for questions. Before you choose a journal for a promotion file, check that the journal currently appears in the index and that the relevant years are covered, and confirm with your own institution how it counts TR Dizin publications.

Sources

• TR Dizin portal: https://trdizin.gov.tr
• TR Index Journal Evaluation Criteria: https://trdizin.gov.tr/en/tr-index-journal-evaluation-criteria/
• TR Index application and evaluation processes: https://trdizin.gov.tr/en/tr-index-application-and-evaluation-processes-2/